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 THE ARTICLE

. i. The definite article is ỿr, ’r or ỿ. There is no indefinite article in Welsh.

The full form ỿr is used before a vowel or h, as ỿr afon ‘the river’, ỿr haul ‘the sun’, dwfr ỿr afon, gwres ỿr haul; the ỿ is elided after a vowel, as i’r afon ‘into the river’, o’r tɥ ‘from the house’; before a consonant the r is dropped, unless the ỿ has been elided as above, as ỿn ỿ tɥ ‘in the house’.

O. W. has only the first two forms, written ir and r; thus ir tri ‘the three’, ir pimphet do. ‘the fifth’, ir bis bichan do. ‘the little finger’, ir mant do. ‘the thumb’, ir guolleuni ‘the light’, or deccolion  gl. decadibus, or bardaul leteinepp gl. epica pagina, dir escip 120 ‘to the bishops’. After a diphthong we have ir, as nou ir emid ‘that of the brass’. The form ỿ is in regular use in early Ml. W., as E betev ae gulich y glav 63 ‘the graves which the rain wets’.

In Ml. W. r is used after a ‘and; with’, o ‘from’, ẏ ‘to’, na ‘nor’, no ‘than’; but usually y or yr after other words ending in vowels, as kyrchu y llys, … a chyrchu y bordeu 5, llyna y llys do. 6, etc. The reason is probably that the article, as a proclitic, was generally joined to the following word, thus yllys ‘the court’, so that these groups became isolated in the scribe’s mind, and were written in their isolated forms. On the other hand, the article could not be separated from the above monosyllables (cf. yny which is the regular form of yn y ‘in the’), hence after these it assumes its post - -