‘I have known [what it is] to love thee; I have been reading thy vigil.’ See D.G. 38.
v. A late contraction usually takes place when a word ending in a vowel is followed by i ‘his’ or ‘her’, Ml. y, and often when it is followed by the preposition i ‘to’, Ml. y. Ac, ag lose their final consonant and form a diphthong with the former, as a’i̯ Ml. W. ae, ay ‘and his, with his’, but not with the latter: ac i ‘and to’.
- Ancr wyf fi’n cyweirio i̯ fedd.—7 syll. § 44 vi.
- Da i̯ Gymraeg, di-gymar oedd.—7 syll., i above.
- Nos da i̯ walch onest y Waun.—7 syll. g. 177.
‘Good night to the honest fellow of Chirk.’
Rising Diphthongs.
§ 34. i. The rising diphthongs in the Mn. language are as follows:—
| i̯a as in cani̯ad, i̯âr; | w̯a as in anw̯ar; |
| i̯e as in i̯echɥd; | w̯e as in adw̯en; |
| i̯o as in rhodi̯o, i̯ôr; | w̯i as in cedw̯ir; |
| i̯w as in i̯wrch, rhodi̯wn; | w̯o as in gwatw̯or; |
| i̯ỿ as in i̯ỿrchell; | w̯u as in galw̯ut; |
| w̯ɥ as in edw̯ɥn; | |
| w̯ỿ as in penw̯ỿnni. |
In Ml. W. i̯ is generally written y, § 17. The combinations i̯i, i̯ɥ, i̯u, w̯w do not occur in Mn. W. They occur in verbal forms in Ml. W. but are generally simplified; see § 36 i, ii.
ii. When i̯ or w̯ comes before a falling diphthong the combination becomes a mixed triphthong; as i̯ai in i̯aith ‘language’; i̯au in teithi̯au ‘journeys’; w̯aw in gw̯awd ‘song, mockery’; iw͡y in meddyli̯w͡yd ‘it was thought’, neithi̯w͡yr, D.G. 424 (now generally neithi̯wr § 78 i (2)) ‘last night’. We have a tetraphthong in the old pronunciation of gw̯aɥw (or gw̯aew) § 30.
iii. When an unaccented i comes before any other vowel the two are frequently contracted into a rising diphthong; thus di|ó|ddef ‘to suffer’ becomes a disyllable di̯ó|ddef D.G. 137. Some early examples occur, as er|i̯ṓed ‘ever’ for *er | i | ṓed ‘since his time’. di̯ṓer ‘by heaven’ § 224 iv (2) is a monosyllable, as the metre shows in r.p. 1206, D.G. 46, 51. di̯awl ‘devil’ must have been contracted into a monosyllable in O. W.
