making comparisons

Let’s say that your car is fast. If you’re comparing your car to someone else’s, you could say that it’s as fast, faster, or the fastest.

‘Fast’ is the basic word, and is called the positive form. ‘As fast’ tells us that it moves at the same speed as the other car. ‘As fast’ is called the equative form. ‘Faster’ tells us that the first car moves more quickly than the second car, but that there are other cars which might move quicker still. ‘Faster’ is called the comparative form. ‘Fastest’ tells us that no other cars can move more quickly than this car. ‘Fastest’ and is called the superlative form.

Short adjectives
In Welsh as in English, when you have a short adjective of one or two syllable, you can create these forms by adding a suffix to the stem of the positive form:

When the positive form ends in -b, -d, -g, -dl, -dn, -dr, -gr these change to -p, -t, -c, -tl, tn, -tr, -cr before the suffix is added. Sometimes, internal vowels change - w and aw become y and o - and sometimes -n and -r are doubled. There are other irregularities, but you will learn these exceptions as you go along.

The equative form is often used with ‘cyn’ preceeding it, which causes soft mutation (not of rh or ll), e.g. cyn wynned, as white.

Here are some examples of of adjectives and their different forms:

Some borrowings add -ied, -iach, -iaf, especially in the North: e.g. braf, brafied, brafiach, brafiaf also neis, ffres, cwl, crand, nobl.

Of course, some adjectives are irregular:

Long adjectives
Where you have adjectives of two or more syllables, these are used with the different forms of ‘more’, (mor, mwy, mwyaf), instead of using endings. Mor is followed by soft mutation, but does not affect rh and ll.

Note that those irregular adjectives in the table above cannot be used with ‘mwy’. Also, adjectives of exactly two syllables can use either method.

Here are some examples:

As big as a house…
To say that something is ‘as… as…’, use the equative plus â: ‘cyn… -ed â…’ when you have a short adjective that uses the endings, or ‘mor… â’ when you have a long adjective which uses the forms of ‘mwy’.

Some examples:

Remember that â causes aspirate mutation to the word that follows, and changes to ag when a vowel follows.

Faster than a speeding bullet…
To say that something is ‘-er than’, use the comparative plus na: ‘-ach na …’ or ‘mwy… na …’.

Remember that na causes aspirate mutation to the words that follows, and changes to nag when a vowel follows.

The quickest fox…
When using the superlative, and saying that something is ‘the -est’, you have to use the identification sentence structure which puts ‘bod’ towards the end. When you say that this mountain is the highest, you have to say ‘y mynydd ‘ma ydy’r uchaf. You must not use mae with a superlative.

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