Well the Welsh for egg is ŵy and the plural is wyau. So plenty of vowels there for you ;-)
P.S. I left of some circumflexes higher up - sorry.
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Well the Welsh for egg is wy with a circumflex above the w. I also left of some circumflexes higher up . Tried to do it right here but the forum did not allow.
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When you live here for a while you learn to automatically ignore the Welsh bit of the sign (as indeed do most of the Welsh as less than 20% of them speak the language).
Mind you, when on a trip back to England it seems strange to see a sign for a school that doesn't have "Ysgol" written on it.
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Live in a bi-lingual area of Spain, and the village name varies with which approach road you use. Amongst others there's Puebla de San Julian; Puebla de San Xulian; Pobra de San Xiao; Poboa Sann Xian; plus all other combinations of the Spanish and Gallego portions. Even more confusing is that sat-navs have different names for the village depending on the zoom level you set. And as for looking up an address.....
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I thought 'sospan vach' - as sung at Llanelli RFC - meant 'little soldier'.
Where are you, Pugugly?
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Dwi yma - dwi ddim yn siarad Cymraeg ond mae Missis fi (wedi dysgu i Lefel "A")*.
31% speak or read Welsh according to latest stats and up to 88% in certain areas. Great language - I am reliably informed its totally phonetic so that when you learn pronunciation rules its easier than English. Has more vowels than in in English a,e,o,i,u,w,y as it follows Latin closer than English - hence the often quoted myth of an absence of vowels.
It was the 14th language for the bible to be translated into - Mrs P has just bought a 17th Centuary Welsh Bible which she intends to read (she is an atheist) - the language owes its survival to the fact that people were allowed to worship in their own language.
Sosban Fach is the nickname of Stardy Park in Llanelli and the song involves a soldier - an extra "pennill"was added when the Llanelli thrashed the All Blacks in the 70s.
As regards the question, apparently in the north its staunchly milltir and down south varies for the reason given above.
*Apparently means I don't speak it but my other half does.
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I had the strange experience of arriving aged 10 from a rather good boarding school in a foreign country at a Pembrokeshire village school where most classes were in Welsh and many of the other children didn't speak English. I was only there for a few weeks and didn't learn any Welsh to speak of, but I did learn to pronounce it and I also learned to say that long name and spell it.
I hope Geoffrey of Monmouth isn't your source for anything PU. Apparently he was one of the most fanciful historians ever (to put it politely) and responsible for inventing forty entirely fictitious kings of Scotland (covering the time when Caledonia was inhabited by peaceful but backward Picts).
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I think it was 1314 when the English last made the mistake of regarding the Scots as "backward Picts". Big mistake.....huuuuuuge.
Mind you they came back and did for us properly later........
;-)
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Ah, the Scots were another matter. Bunch of Norse cannibals from Ulster I understand. Changed the whole complexion of the place.
(Hastily adopts false name and emigrates)
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We'll find you.......
;-)
Edit - anyway I thought you mentioned once that you could trace roots on the Emerald Isle ?
Cannibals indeed.....
Edited by Humph Backbridge on 09/10/2008 at 19:52
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The cannibal thing may well be a slander, just couldn't resist mentioning it. But they were a Norse tribe of hard men from Ulster who invaded the Highlands and occupied them for some time. Before that Caledonia was occupied by Picts.
I saw some drunk blokes chanting 'We hate Scotland!' in Gray's Inn Road once. When I got to the pub I quoted them with some amusement. Someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was a tall geezer with a diagonal blue cross painted on his face. Fortunately he turned out to be quite a nice peaceable individual (a Pict no doubt).
:o}
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Meanwhile on a long forgotten Celtic road a Welsh/Irish sign eagerly awaits more on the original topic....
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where most classes were in Welshand many of the other children didn't speak English.
Couldn't.... or wouldn't? You do get the odd awkward sod down here (more so with the Gogs up north) who professes not to understand English, but since it's taught in all Welsh schools methinks you were perhaps being excluded a bit.
English is the predominant language in Pembrokeshire, long known as "Little England beyond Wales", although nowadays Welsh is making a comeback as it's taught in schools.
I've lived in Carmarthenshire for the last five years, and TBH you can get by perfectly well without speaking any Welsh at all, though the odd "Diolch yn fawr" coming from an Englishman makes a good impression. I don't profess to speak the language but since I work with Welsh speakers I do understand a fair bit; sometimes more than they think .
I actually found the road signs a very useful way of learning basic Welsh words; as others have said it's the pronounciation that gets you.
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They called Pembs Little England then too, Harleyman. But that was in 1949/50. There was no TV, and the BBC broadcast in Welsh. Further up the dirt road from the farm we stayed in at Dinas Cross was a smaller farm where they only kept chickens and a goat. Rita (12) spoke enough English to alarm me. Gary (9) didn't speak much at all. They were dead tough, but friendly. And a lot of the kids at the school weren't fluent in English. Of course they probably speak Estuary now.
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The song is rather odd!
www.welshpedia.co.uk/wiki/wales/index.php?title=So...h
Having been to a match there a few years ago I'm pretty certain that the rugby posts at Stradey park are topped by red "sospans" rather than red soldiers - but I can't find a clear photo to prove it!
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The myth of Welsh is that it is a single language - apart from the fact that about 90% of Welsh people have no interest in speaking Welsh and kids are forced to learn it, badly, at schools which bumps up the Welsh speaking statistics - and the reality is that people in South, West and North Wales actually speak different types of Welsh.
Then there is 'academic' Welsh which the snobs - i.e. the taffia - speak and which they think makes them superier to everyone else. A friend of mine, born in Carmarthen and a fluent West Walian Welsh speaker, recently had to go to a meeting in the Welsh National Library Aberystwyth Uni, about 50 miles from where he was born, and he told me that he knew he would not be able to understand the Welsh spoken there.
Believe it or not, out of the many many many Welsh speaking QUANGOs in Wales, there is one now which is using tax-payers' money to convert English names into Welsh and, at the moment, they are working on changing the names of curries into Welsh - yep, oneday there will be a Welsh word for Korma, Vindaloo and so on.
The Gogs - Welsh speakers - played a blinder with Thatcher in the early 80s. They kind of hinted that Wales would turn into another Northern Ireland and ever since then BILLIONS of pounds have been spent on the Welsh language ensuring that a VERY SMALL clique of Welsh speakers control all the top jobs in Wales - the Assembly, the Welsh Civil Service, the Media, etc, etc. I know of entire families who work in, and who have made themselves seriously rich, from Welsh language TV. Sadly, the result is that the 90 or so percent of English-speaking Welsh have no control over their own country and you guys in England have no idea on what your taxes are being spent in Wales.
Back to the roads - near Port Talbot is the town of Aberavon. A few years ago road-signs had 'A'von' painted on them and on the road which ended up with loads of traffic heading for Avon driving through Aberavon. Only in Wales.
I could go on all day about the Gogs and what goes on in Mickey Mouse Wales. It would be funny if so much money wasn't being wasted by a small self-serving clique... usually on themselves IMPO.
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It's amazing how things change is such a few years, when I lived in South Wales until about 10 years ago:
Taffia stood for the Cardiff Crime Gangs or criminals generally (Taff, the river in Cardiff, and Mafia)
Gog stood for the idiot from North Wales (Welsh for North is Gogledd)
Only the most pedantic Welsh Speakers would say that there are anything other than minor differences in North Welsh and South Welsh, Academic Welsh (ha ha). I did a conference call recently with a Glaswegian, a Geordie and a guy from Washington DC. I appreciate that the line was bad - it was alleged that we were all speaking English, not that it sounded like it.
As to Billions of pounds - Ha Ha - can you state your source? Having worked in places like Merthyr Tydfil - they are welcome to some extra cash.
Yes there are some idiots who won't accept anything other than a Welsh word, but in 99.99% of cases that is simply changing the spelling - Ambwlans, Rugbi - etc etc etc.
I enjoyed Welsh TV - Pobol y Cwm was a laugh - Sam tan (Fireman Sam) and Super Ted were both Welsh in Origin, we even have a Pingu tape in Welsh (sounds identical to the Pingu tape in English though), and the adverts for the Rugby were superb - "fee fi fo fum - I smell the blood of an Englishman" was a classic. S4C had some great programs in English
Throughout the world there are families making a fortune out of English language broadcasting - why must Wales be any different?
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When you live here for a while you learn to automatically ignore the Welsh bit of the sign
Whoa there! Why in the world would you live there and not learn the local language? If I were moving house to one of the Celtic parts of the country, one of the first things I'd do on arrival would be to look up somewhere to learn Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish or whatever the locals use. Mind you, I have somewhat of a facility for learning languages, so I'd jump in enthusiastically.
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>> Whoa there! Why in the world would you live there and not learn the local language?
Language is a communication too. As 100% of the population speak English, and 80% of those speak only English why bother? My ageing brain has enough trouble coping with what it already knows without taking more on board.
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As 100% of the population speak English .......
That doesn't apply now in any large city in England!
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If I were moving house to one of the Celtic parts of the countryone of the first things I'd do on arrival would be to look up somewhere to learn Gaelic Welsh Cornish or whatever the locals use.
Of course you would, but as the saying goes, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions"; one of the first things I did on moving to Wales was to acquire a couple of "teach yourself" books with CD's, to get a grip of the language. Waste of time and money, I pick up far more in day-to-day conversation. As has been said earlier, though, "correct" Welsh often bears little resemblence to what's actually spoken in the South and West, and is often written slightly differently too.
Welsh is not a language, it's a way of life; and I don't mean that unkindly.
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That's a very good view Harleyman.
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