First up, for the purposes of SSiW it doesn’t matter in the least - say whichever comes to mind first and don’t worry if you say “Wyt ti’n mynd” and Aran says “Dach chi’n mynd” (or whatever). If you know you’re right in what you said, happy days! If you know in yourself you need more practice with one form, try to lean towards using that more often.
In the real world, you are never going to offend someone (or come over as standoffish) if it’s obvious that you “a learner” and trying hard to communicate in Welsh. I find personally that I rarely use “chi” for a single person - it tends to be only if I’m meeting someone I don’t know very well who’s in a position of high authority (e.g. a government minister). It might just be a combination of our slightly more informal company and my age, but I use “ti” with everyone in the organisation, from the CEO downwards (and individual board members), and everyone I correspond with for work.
Interestingly, younger people I work with call me “chi”, but that just serves to make me realise how old I must seem to them!
I’m from Yorkshire originally and can confirm some of us do still use “thee” or “thi” as it’s often pronounced (in my area at least). Never used “thou”, but occasionally “thine”.
Well to be fair I’m not sure anyone in Yorkshire pronounced it as “thou” in the last century or more. Either tha or thi, right?
Is your area West or North/East? I understand there’s a fairly noticeable dialect divide.
Would it be rude to ask what generation you are, and the others included in the “some of us” who still use thi?
I’m actually from South Yorkshire, but it is/it was heavily industrialised (coal and steel), so in that sense it shares a lot with West Yorkshire though theres definitely a difference in accents.
I’m in my thirties, and probably use Yorkshire-isms a bit more than some people in know in my generation. I’m guessing probably a result of family working in those industries. That said growing up I knew a lot of people my age with much stronger accents than me so I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s used more than I’m aware of.
I guess also I’m probably from the last generation where many parents worked in industry, and before people moved quite so much for work (like me).
One last thing to add, we did have one lad at school who moved from a different town (probably 10 miles away). At times his accent was unintelligibly different. Hard to imagine that’s still the case.
You’ve got me thinking now - yes I would say thee (thi) and tha but wouldn’t use tha that much. I believe they locally used to call people from Sheffield “di-da’s” because they pronounce it that way.
Ah, but do I want it to be obvious I’m a learner? And what if it’s equally obvious that I’ve been learning long enough to know the grammatical difference and am making a conscious choice to be formal or not?
As a comparison, I think of the first time I was invited to call a friend’s mother by her first name, instead of Mrs Baker. I was about 9 years old, and among my classmates even knowing what certain adults’ first names were was still regarded almost as forbidden knowledge.
It felt so rude to call this grown-up lady Sharron, but not addressing her as she asked would also be very rude… it honestly was quite stressful at first. Using ti with new acquaintances, especially ones who look old enough to be my parents or grandparents, feels just like that. And worse, I know that because I’m a learner they are likely giving me leeway, so whichever pronoun I use they will accept but which one is truly respectful?!
The internal panic is a very silly, probably very English thing. I blame my grandmother, and spending my childhood in fairly posh school and church environments.
Interesting that some people call you chi even though you said you call everyone ti. So it isn’t always mirrored! I’d suspected not.
My dad is from Leeds, and he reckons he can pinpoint to within a few miles’ tolerance where someone is from inside Yorkshire by accent and nuances of speech. He is nearly 70 though, I don’t know how pronounced accents are for younger people.
For what it’s worth, I’ve never heard him use thee or thy or tha, nor my grandparents on his side, who were both Leeds born and raised. I’ve always assumed that way of speaking was largely rural. There’s a fascinating video I saw a while ago of a farmer speaking a rural dialect from North Yorkshire, and he’s almost unintelligible.
Exactly! I find that most people around me now don’t get it though.
I grew up right on a borderline between social groups and attitudes, and changed school and church just before my teens, and general social expectations were in flux just at that time. (There’s a couple at church who have always been first-named by zoomers, but most millenials grew up calling them Mr and Mrs Brunton.) So I was often not sure whether I was coming or going, and I tended towards formality as being less likely, generally, to cause offence. The worst reactions usually were along the lines of “You’re such a polite child! So old-fashioned!” and this rarely seemed too terrible a thing to be. And when being less formal really mattered to people like Sharron, I got used to it. Eventually.
Practically everyone else my age (and many older!) seemed to go the other way and gleefully throw every formality out the window the second they could.
You’re absolutely right - as with your Sharron Baker dilemma, there really isn’t a simple answer! My young colleagues call me chi, because to them that’s the right thing to do, and to do otherwise would feel so wrong to them. (My nieces, in their 20s, do as well!) But there is a part of me that doesn’t like it!
So while the level of formality is perhaps not what I would choose, I understand and respect their reasons for using it.
It is quite common to ask the question, as well, if you feel it would help: “Chi neu ti”? I’ve seen this done between first-language Welsh speakers on first meeting. Cut to the chase, and all that…
I’m visiting a coffi a chlonc group tomorrow to talk about my work - it’ll be interesting to see what they call me!
I had a friend from Lancashire who said he had previously worked in an office in Wigan, with four girls (presumably, young women) from Wigan. To me, no doubt, all five of them would just have sounded Northern (or, being generous to myself, Lancashire). To him, the ‘girls’ all had Wigan accents. But the girls were all from different parts of Wigan, and they swore blind to him that they could tell by their accents which part of the city each other came from. This would have been late '80s, with speakers probably born c. 1970.
When I was a child using an adult’s first name was unthinkable. Except when they were close friends of one’s parents and then they became honorary aunties and uncles, so they were Auntie Peggy and Auntie Vera. I had several such “aunties” who were no blood relation.
But the ti/chi conundrum is difficult when you haven’t grown up with it. In our chat group, we’re all “ti” to one another, but I need to listen more carefully in the Merched y Wawr meetings because I noticed one of them used “chi” with me. Oops!
