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§ 34 ‘I have known [what it is] to love thee; I have been reading thy vigil.’ See D.G. 38.


 * 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. 177.

‘Good night to the honest fellow of Chirk.’

Rising Diphthongs.

i. The rising diphthongs in the Mn. language are as follows:—

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.

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 1206, D.G. 46, 51. di̯awl ‘devil’ must have been contracted into a monosyllable in O. W.