I wasn’t offended even a bit - I don’t have a drop of Celtic blood, just Greek and Russian and Polish! Though I wish I did, it would be lovely to have these fine features and very fair skin!
What I was trying to poit out is that Celtic cultures are my field of interest, and I would never never blame anyone for not being able to learn a difficult ancient language, if this person has a job and a family to feed and English is more relevant to them economically!
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Yeah- I’m able to say merry Christmas in all the Celtic languages (it’s not difficult) but I only said it it in English and Welsh this year. As I said it in both languages every year before I really seriously started to learn Welsh. I certainly envy anyone in the situation where they naturally say it in English, Welsh, Gaelic, Manx, Cornish and Breton.
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Surely being a foreigner is not an insult?
The Welsh language, and the Welsh way of thinking is why people learn the language?
Welsh culture, both in the English language and to a greater (though similar, extended!) extent in the Welsh language is foreign to people outside- not better, not worse, but worth investigating, surely? And that is what we are doing, to a greater or lesser extent as individuals here. That is what I understood, anyway.
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No, but if I had been implying that Stella-Seren was somehow ‘not one of us’… well, I didn’t mean that, but having dug one hole, I’d best stop with the spade before I bury myself in another!! 
I truly didn’t believe for a moment that you were implying anything like that, please forgive me, henddraig dear, for raising the topic at all! What I was very clumsily trying to say is that Celtic languages and culture (that I have been interested in since I was 13, which makes it 15 years now) are so very dear and interesting to me that it’s not surprising I would wish to learn a sentence in all of them!
That, I totally understand!! I know Tatjana started learning Cymraeg because she fell for rugby. Why did you choose the Celts? I know they may have originated in your neck of the woods. Is that why?
ps, Must go now to get food, so will not read your reply until, probably, yfore (I think that’s tomorrow!).
As a child, I loved fairy tales, and then as a teenager I began to develop a deeper interest in them and in the countries where my favourite tales were born. These countries were mostly the Celtic ones. That’s how I came to love Celtic culture and Celtic languages. I actually wanted to become a folklore researcher and travel to the most remote parts of Scotland to write down the stories and the songs, but I was told that everything that there was to record had been already written down long before I was born!
That may be true but discussion still happens. There is something on the BBC Wales Website about The Mabinogian which I will eventually get around to watching!
Language is what people make of it. Jackie very obviously didn’t intend to insult Stella, but if Stella felt any sense of exclusion from the word, then I wanted to address that feeling.
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Thank you! But it would have been extremely ungrateful of me to imply I have ever felt any sense of exclusion at all on this forum, where I have been treated most kindly all the time since I appeared here.
But I’ve often heard of people who feel slightly ashamed of not being fluent in their native language and I’ve come across very unkind attitudes towards natives who don’t speak their own language. Which is something I don’t agree with, and that was what I tried to convey:)
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