§ 220 ii (7); ysgatfydd ‘perhaps’; Llan Decw̯yn; caneiti̯o ‘to brighten’ (of the moon) < cannaid; cartref, pentref.
(3) The mediae were unvoiced before voiceless consonants; thus atsein b.t. 20, datsein r.m. 289, Botffordd g. 102. In Late Mn. orthography etymological spellings prevail, as adsain Ezec. vii 7, Bodffordd. The latter, the name of a place in Anglesey, is always sounded Botffordd, in spite of the spelling with d.
(4) It is seen from (1), (2) and (3) above that a media is liable to be unvoiced before any consonant in the middle of a word. But we have seen in the preceding subsections that a change which took place medially also occurred when the group belonged to different words. Hence final mediae must frequently have been sounded as tenues before an initial consonant; and this is very probably the reason why they were so commonly written as tenues, the pre-consonantal form being generalized in writing. The facts are briefly summarized in § 18 ii.
But before an initial vowel it is certain that a final explosive, though written as a tenuis, was in fact a media in the 14th cent. In the following examples from r.p. (which might easily be multiplied) it is seen that the final t or c in heavy type must be pronounced d or g to correspond to a media in the other part of the line:
- Digystuẟ | anrec am (dec ystwyll 1202,
- Glot oleu | yn (glew dalu 1203,
- Gwledic eurswllt | vu (gwlat a gorseẟ 1208;
so before a liquid:
- Temɏl ẏgrist | teu amlwcrat 1200.
Such a slip as Set libera nos a malo Ỻ.A. 150 shows that the scribe was in the habit of writing final t where the sound was d. Cf. also § 18 iii. That the written tenuis does not mean that the vowel was short in a monosyllable like gwac now gw̯āg is proved by such a spelling as yn waac…y gadeir waac w.m. 449, r.m. 293. Cf. § 55 i.
The final media before an initial consonant, however, corresponds to a tenuis in much later cynghanedd, especially when the initial is voiceless:
- Hebswydd | mor (hapus a hwn g. 239
- Brigffydd | a bairkoffa hwn, etc., P.Ỻ. Ixxix.
Though the explosive is now a media before an initial consonant as well, we have a trace of the tenuis in ap for ab (for fab § 110 iii (2)), as in ap Gwilym beside ab Edmwnd.
(5) Since the explosive was a tenuis before a consonant we have ‑p m- and ‑t n‑; these combinations were mutated to mh and nh in the following examples, the voicelessness of the tenuis being retained after its assimilation: Amhadawc p 61/18 r. for Ap Madawc, Amhredydd c.c. 334 for Ap Mareduẟ, am mydron b.b. 94 (m ≡ mh § 24 i), etc.; prynhawn w.m. 70, r.m. 50, Ỻ.A. 121 for pryt nawn w.m. 162, r.m.
