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Prepositions with endings

"About the weather" is am y tywydd, but "about you" isn't am ti, it's amdanat ti. Many Welsh prepositions take a personal ending when a pronoun follows them, a bit like a verb does. The good news: most of them follow the same pattern.

Grammar books call these conjugated or personal prepositions. The forms below are the spoken ones that most courses teach; the written forms are at the end of the page.

The pattern

Here are am (about) and ar (on), with the endings in bold. Am becomes amdan- and ar becomes arn-, then the same endings go on both:

The pronoun after it (i, ti, fe…) is the same one you'd use anywhere else. Fe (South) and fo (North) both mean "him".

Others that work the same way

Change the start, keep the endings:

Notice "you": at keeps -at (atat ti), but o, wrth and dros take -ot (ohonot ti, wrthot ti, drostot ti).

The odd one out: i (to, for)

This one only changes for "him", "her" and "them". The rest are just i followed by the pronoun:

In everyday Welsh

You'll use these all the time:

Welsh uses ar (on) for feelings and illnesses: the fear, the thirst or the cold is "on" you. Dweud wrth is "tell": you say something to (wrth) someone.

Verbs and their prepositions

Many everyday verbs come with a preposition, and it's often not the one English would use. Learn the pair together, as one phrase: gwrando ar is "listen on", and ymweld â needs â where English "visit" has nothing at all. With a pronoun, the preposition takes its ending as usual.

Am, ar, at, wrth, i and o all cause a soft mutation (aros am fws, wait for a bus, from bws); â causes an aspirate mutation (Chaerdydd, from Caerdydd), and becomes ag before a vowel: siarad ag Elen. In speech you'll often hear gyda (South) or efo (North) instead of â after siarad.

Negatives: mohono fe, mohonyn nhw

First, what's a short-form verb? Welsh can say most things in two ways:

• The long way uses a helping verb plus the verb-noun: Mae hi'n gweld (she sees, she's seeing), Gwnaeth hi weld (she saw).
• The short way puts an ending straight onto the verb itself, and the ending says who and when: gwelodd hi (she saw), gwelon ni (we saw), gwela i (I'll see).

Courses usually meet these first as the short-form past (es i, ces i, gwelodd hi). This is a different thing from the long and short forms of "to be" (Rydw i and Dw i), which are just the same words written out or shortened.

In speech you'll often hear these with a soft mutation even in a plain statement: Wnaeth hi weld, Welodd hi'r ffilm. That's because they used to start with fe (or mi in the North), which causes the mutation, and the fe or mi is now usually left out. You'll still hear Fe welodd hi… and Mi welodd hi….

In a negative, a short-form verb always takes a soft mutation (gwelodd becomes welodd), and then "not" before a definite object (a person, a pronoun, or "the …") isn't ddim. It's mo, short for ddim o ("none of"). With a pronoun, mo takes the endings of o:

Every person

This is the sticking point: a sentence like this has two endings, for two different people. The ending on the verb says who did it; the ending on mohon- says who it was done to. Here's every person, both ways round, with the positive beside each one:

In the positive, the person seen is a plain pronoun after the verb (ti becomes di, and i becomes fi). In the negative it moves onto mohon-. In speech the positive often starts mutated too (Welais i di), from a dropped fe or mi.

In the South you'll hear gweles i and gwelest ti for gwelais i and gwelaist ti. The rest are the same everywhere. It helps to say each one aloud and swap just one part at a time: Welais i mohonot ti, Welais i mohono fe, Welais i mohonyn nhw…

Names, "the", and other verbs

The same mo works with any short-form verb. Before a name it's just mo; before "the", mo and y join up as mo'r. Notice the verbs mutate in the negative: deall → ddeallodd, bwyta → fwytodd, gorffen → orffennon.

When it's plain ddim

With something indefinite ("anything", "any cake", "a film") there's no mo, just ddim. In the positive, an indefinite object straight after a short-form verb takes a soft mutation: rhywbeth → rywbeth, cacen → gacen.

And with the long forms (Dw i ddim yn…, O'n i ddim yn…) there's no mo at all: the ddim already does the work.

In formal writing

• The "me" form often ends in -f: amdanaf i, arnaf i, ataf i.
• "Us" ends in -m: amdanom ni, arnom ni.
• The pronoun after is often left out, because the ending already says who: Meddyliais amdano (I thought about him).

Gan (with, by) has personal forms too. You'll know it from Mae gen i (I have) in North Wales Welsh. See North and South Welsh.

Common questions

Why is "about you" amdanat ti, not am ti?

Many Welsh prepositions take a personal ending when they're followed by a pronoun. Am (about) becomes amdan- with an ending: amdana i (about me), amdanat ti (about you), amdano fe (about him). With a noun it stays as it is: am y tywydd (about the weather).

What does Mae ofn arna i mean?

"I'm afraid", literally "fear is on me". Welsh uses ar (on) with feelings and illnesses: Mae syched arna i (I'm thirsty), Mae annwyd arni hi (she's got a cold).

What does mohono fe mean?

"Not … him", in a negative sentence: Welodd hi mohono fe (She didn't see him). Mo is short for ddim o, and takes the endings of o: mohona i, mohonot ti, mohonyn nhw. It's used with short-form verbs before a definite object; otherwise it's ddim.