The gentleman in question had the situation explained to him by a few people (including the lady) but just wouldn’t let it go. He understood eventually. Funnily enough I haven’t seen him there since.
I am dying to know - did you address him with ‘ti’ or chi’?
I give respect to everyone at first … respect deserves respect. What do you think?
You should invite him back…he’ll enjoy spending two hours correcting everything i say
(Love my welsh keyboard…it even suggests welsh words for english ones!)
That’s another rhetorical question, right?
No, I really need everyone’s opinion on this.
Right, I think we need some way of indicating sarcasm and whether something is a rhetorical question or not.
Oh, sorry - my question was rhetorical, but I appreciate your input.
Ah yes - I can really imagine it! This made me laugh! I moved to Yorkshire at 16, so had similar ‘what??!’ issues - generally followed by ‘tha wansteh wesh thee earoils aht lass!!’
Are they mutually exclusive? (rhetorical question)
I see the problem. I’d class him as not worth the bother! And I’d be very, very polite if I absolutely had to address him, while trying to avoid the man!
To @Samantha Snap!
To @petermescall How did you get a Welsh keyboard? Isn’t it a bother when typing English?
To @HowlsedhesServices Why do you prefer a language which was revived from death rather than one struggling to stay, not just alive, but kicking? Oh, I guess you are Cornish, in which case you count as family! We were all just British once!!
Not Petermescall, but on that subject as I’ve found my onscreen keyboard so useful.
On android phones (but unfortunately not apple stuff) you can download an app called “swiftkey” for free. It’s a very, very good predictive text onscreen keyboard.
You can download a Welsh language dictionary to it, and this makes it an excellent predictive text keyboard- I’m still surprised at how good it is. In fact, I sometimes think it’s too good in that I come to rely on it getting the words right automatically when typing!
You can set the language to Welsh and English, and, perhaps surprisingly, this does not seem to cause any problems.
It very, very rarely suggests a Welsh word instead of an appropriate English one, or vice versa.
It’s well worth getting, in my opinion.
Mine isnt swiftkey, off the top of my head i am not sure but if i type an english word it offers me welsh suggestion. See screenshot below. Its pretty good
@petermescall I think it’s called Literatim:Keyboard Cymraeg. I’ve not used it but it looks brilliant if it does what you say well.
yes thats the one
Sorry. I leaped to conclusions as usual. I sort of thought you had Welsh connections, I know Tatjana and Seren don’t so it was stupid to presume it! I wonder if, by any chance you saw the Crowning of the Bard at this year’s Eisteddfod Genedlaethol? The rep from ‘other Celic Nations’ who actually got to speak made me cringe. He was Scots and his Gaelic sounded awful, as if he was on day 1 of a course for beginners!! In fact, I’m still not totally sure if he was trying to speak Gaelic or Cymraeg!!
Oh, and I didn’t mean to disparage Cornish, if it is genuine - I wasn’t sure how much evidence there was for it, how much was written down and when. I was just confused about your motives. If I was Cornish, I might well want to learn it, but, well, I’m not!
To @petermescall would your keyboard work for an ipad? Or a laptop? @tatjana do you know?
Mine is for android…there was a welsh keyboard for ios 7 and 8. but not tried it.
I tried learning Cornish, but lost interest before I hit too far. Lack of emotional interest, as you say.
Plenty of people (not me!) learn languages simply out of a detached interest. A connection to, love of or even interest in the culture, people or country connected to it is not necessary at all. In fact, imagine all the people in the days of the Raj learning languages of people they held in patronising contempt!
I only have interest in learning Welsh (I’ve discovered, have of sort of tried a couple of others!)
It’s the emotional connection with me which brought me to it and kept me at it.
The emotional connection to a country which you consider to be your country, whether born here, brought up here, living here, family connections, liking the idea of Wales, whatever.
Seems to be the case with you too! And with most people I know.
But learning Welsh through a simple interest in the language rather than an any interest or liking of the people or country is, of course, a perfectly valid thing to do.
Oh, like you, I couldn’t do it at all, absolutely!
But I know some people who do.
Horses for courses, everyone is different, neither way is “right” or “wrong”.
(Mind you, I don’t think those people in the days of the Raj even realised they were being patronisingly arrogant!
Enoch Powell’s “My goodness, how can you say I am a bigot- I speak Urdu!”)
Edit- [On that basis, I once saw an old "how to speak “Urdu” book in a second hand bookshop. It was obviously aimed at colonels in the Raj, and seemed to consist entirely of phrases like “Qucker!” “You fool! Have you not got eyes to see?”
The advice at the beginning was “however much this book can teach you, it is important to speak Urdu with people to learn. So lose no time in speaking to your servants in Urdu”!
Tragically comic stuff.]
Sorry, I don’t.
Dober večer (Good evening), @Tatjana. I imagine that Ste/Si (Chi/ti) still applies in Slovenia? I visited Slovenia and Croatia some years ago and knew that I would meet some people who wouldn’t be speaking English. I thought it only polite to learn some basic phrases in advance. Anyway, I was introduced to an interpreter and plucked up the courage to say how are you. I blurted out “Kako Si” (Shwd wyt ti?) - the wrong version! It all went quiet for a moment - and then she kindly explained “I’m so sorry, you threw me for a minute; I thought you must know me, and I didn’t recognise you”. Anyway, after this initial disaster, I spent the rest of the visit being a real pain, asking anyone I met to teach me as many real phrases as possible. Just one last point. Never before had I met such lovely, friendly people.