My initial reaction was one of slight irritation, because it is a fairly superficial treatment of locally important issues, viz. the spelling of place names, because it belittles the language itself (ultieme scrabbletaal - ultimate scrabble language), and because it contains inaccuracies, so I had intended to write a reply to the author. But upon reflection, I decided that the fact that there is an article about Welsh in a major Dutch newspaper at all is a Good Thing - Wales is usually only mentioned in the context of football and rugby, and many (but certainly not all) people don’t realise that Welsh is a language, rather than a dialect of English.
I’d rather you wrote to the Language Commisioner and told her to stop wasting her time winding up the locals and get on with doing something positive for the language… I saw the list of people on the committee and just thought to myself how much money is it actually costing to investigate whether the way we spell our own place names conforms with the way The Boss thinks they should be spelt.
I won;t carry on with my rant because it will contravene the board guidelines, because this story (and a previous one about Varteg) just winds me up…
Thanks for sharing, anyway. Maybe you’d like to point out to the author that with all those zs and vs and ks, Dutch is a far more valuable Scrabble Language for English boards, but would be totally unplayable on a Welsh board.
I followed Aran’s suggestion, and wrote a kind reply with a few clarifications, and the comment that with words like “waarschijnlijk” and “dichtstbijzijnde”, it could be argued that Dutch equally qualifies as the ultimate scrabbletaal, and I also pointed out that in the Netherlands, there are place name like 's Hertogenbosch and 's Gravenhage that also suffer from pronunciation problems. Anyway, Patrick replied saying that he wished he had known a bit more about the issues at hand before he penned his article, and that he plans to visit Wales next month to write a more extensive article about attitudes in Wales towards independence and nationalism. Aran has kindly agreed to be a contact for him, but could I get Patrick in contact with you as well, knowing your feelings about these issues?
I understand and to a degree agree [oo! Rhymes!] with what you say, but I do wonder if that magnificent specimen of humanity, genius and defender of the Welsh nation and language - Paul Murphy- will be leaping into action to defend the inhabitants of Penistone in Yorkshire from the laughter and derision of the world which they are subject to day in and day out. Hang on, maybe if he, and people like him, hadn’t made a fuss, no one would have noticed? Nah, daft idea.
derde overgrootmoeder? maybe? Apart from counting and some very basics I never really got too far with my Dutch. Hopefully I will one day rectify that.
