Spoken v Written Welsh

If kids have found a way of using and speaking Welsh that is natural to them and fits with who they are, then what’s not to like about that - you couldn’t engineer that, even if you wanted to.

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I spent very little time around Cardiff - just enough for the essential stuff, like buying a few records and trying a few local beers. :sunglasses: :laughing:
The guy from the brewery (I can’t remember the name, but I can find it if someone’s curious) could speak very little Welsh. I asked him if (in his experience) Welsh language was going up or down, and he said definitely up: they have a lot of kids from the University as clients, a lot of them have been in Welsh medium education, and a lot more of them chat in Welsh rather than English.
Many of them, maybe, speak “Cymraeg Glantafiaidd” - but does it really matter? The good thing is that they do speak it, not really what accent they have, right?

p.s. I got hooked on Welsh language by the sound of it, so for my ears pleasure I’m always going to be quite a purist/tradistionalist. :grin: - but when it’s time to speak and communicate…I don’t mind!
P.p.s. I actually also quickly visited a museum about Cardiff and saw the castle outside, but have to come back!

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Absolutely! My friends’ kids are part of that generation, and the fact that they’re using Welsh as their “out of school language” is the important thing.

The dialectology expert Iwan Rees was discussing this very thing on the Aled Hughes morning programme on Radio Cymru a couple of weeks ago. I’d post a link, but I’m afraid I’ve completely forgotten which day it was! (I tend to listen in the car going to work…) But basically he was saying that it’s a dialect like any other. Personally, I think it’s a healthy sign that the language is alive & kicking and evolving as all living languages should :slight_smile:

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PS Was the brewery Pipes? The little place in a courtyard a little out of the centre of town, round the corner from the Welsh bookshop?

The brewery was Crafty Devil. I had a look at the map now, and shop is very close to Pipes, actual brewery a bit closer to the railway and the place where students hang out mostly (I guess) Beelzebub’s bar, on Church st.
I found it quite by chance. Pipes, next time! :slight_smile:

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I would agree with this. Listening, really listening, can be the hardest part, but worth it I think.

I’ve seen the comment made more than once, and experienced it myself to some extent, that at the end of Bootcamp, sometimes, once people are allowed to speak English (if they wish), they have been surprised to hear the accents of others (and vice versa). So evidently, their “native” accent hadn’t interfered with their production of Welsh sounding sounds in those circumstances.

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I lived in Germany for a few months - before living there it was obvious immediately I started to speak German that I was English, after a couple of months I started to pick up a bit of the local accent and started to confuse people from other cities - they could tell I wasn’t German but weren’t sure where I was from. As a non native German speaker I can pick up obvious differences in German accent but can’t usually guess where exactly they’re from, but as a native English speaker I can tell pretty quickly if someone is from abroad and often roughly from where even if there English is excellent. I presume it’s the same when speaking Welsh. There is also such a huge variety in Welsh with different words used in different areas (llaeth vs llefrith etc) that it tends to be clear if you’re from a different region

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Thank you for all the positive replies to my question. I am looking forward to starting the course tomorrow even more so because of your encouragement.

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