Yesterday I accidentally saw an article published about a month ago on a newspaper called “Il Foglio”. The title promised to list 10 reasons why Italian rugby team would not win against Wales.
I see he goes on listing just 7, for the most part quite ordinary and stereotypical, with a few anecdotes -supposed to be funny, I don’t know if true or not.
But he probably ran out of ideas around 5 or 6, and decided to write:
Because no language is more ignorant - ignorance in rugby is quality, talent, appreciation - than Welsh, which ignores harmony and disregards vowels.For example, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch: it’s the name of a village on Anglesey island, literally means (adds translation in italian, probably found on wikipedia)
I guess that note about ignorance being a quality in rubgy was meant to make the whole thing sound better and not offensive but…I mean!!!
I did!
Also because, ironically, official Italian language has only A E I O U for vocals.
So I said I agree on the fact that rugby is in most Welsh people DNA (and not in ours). But the language has 2 more vowels than us and sounds beautiful (even though it might not seem so when you first see it written) and the team wins all the same!
They didn’t answer, but they did publish it as a comment. So if someone ever reads it, at least they know!
Terribly offensive. Repeats history of Romans trying to Latinize all languages. Celts drove Romans crazy until latter developed the phalanx and beat the Welsh militarily. Where are they now?
This is a very loose connection to this thread but;
Emma and I have just spent a long weekend in Amsterdam. We went to a local deli for lunch and the girl serving me asked where we were from. I said Cardiff, Wales and then added “in Britain” because she’d looked a bit blank. Then she said “but not really because you have your own language”. I loved this.
