Mae'n gas gen i dreigladau!

Thanks to the increasingly useless bus service in North Wales (bring back KMP!), I arrived at my class at Coleg Menai last night late and cold. My frustrations were compounded by a lesson on the finer points of the treiglad trwynol, or nasal mutation, which is used to change the way you talk about things that belong to you.

Despite having mastered the treiglad meddal (soft mutation) to the point of using it instinctively now, the treiglad trwynol is one which, I confess, I normally avoid, or use a general "ung" sound before each noun, hoping the resultant sound bears some resemblance to what it should be. Fy athrawes i (no nasal mutation needed there, woo!) Non, however, wasn't going to let me get away with that.

Apparently remembering that TCP is a Bloody Good Disinfectant is useful, but only if you remember what the letters T, C, P, B, G and D mutate to. I struggled on this point. It appears I will have to delay applying for that job as a much needed translator for Swansea Council for a while yet!

Having eventually just about managed to grasp that cath (cat) becomes nghath if belongs to me, my tad (dad) is fy nhad i and my brawd (brother) is fy mrawd i, I discovered that this all goes out the window when talking about the possessions of other people. If the cat is his, you say ei gath o and if it's hers, this becomes ei chath hi!. It's exhausting just thinking about it all.

I'm advocating here and now a communist state in Cymru, where nobody owns anything. Not for any real political reason now, this is purely borne from the fear of looking stupid. I don't want to start talking about a woman's parrot as if she's a man, or my bike as if it doesn't belong to me at all! Alternately, I could just be a lazy Bangor-ite and omit the mutations altogether, letting a cat be a cath, whether it's yours, mine, his, hers or even theirs.

Or maybe I could actually abandon tonight's plans for climbing and fireworks yng Nghaernarfon(!), sit down with my textbook and remember it all... an unlikely prospect! Learning from locals in the real world is better by far. That's my excuse anyway, and I'm sticking with it.