I regularly listen to Italian media and the Italian language is often interweaved with english/foreign words. Which I’ve read Italians enjoy doing as it adds colour. You will hear words like - weekend, jogging, hooligans, self-service, shopping, bargain - popping up in many conversation. Perhaps one reason I’m not self conscious about making mistakes when I use their language. Obviously, I want to refine my tongue but don’t feel any guilt when I get it wrong or use a foreign word.
This fear of getting things wrong was I believe one great factor why it took me so long to have a conversation in Welsh. There seemed - I was wrong - there was a pressure to be perfect before I spoke.
I’m sure most native English speakers are inter-grating foreign words everyday in conversation from - ciao, cappuccino, vino, kebab…without second thought of - “What’s the English equivalent?”
I think this is very true - and also pretty common in English (and every other language, I’d bet).
The people who sit the Uwch exam certainly aren’t the only confident speakers going through the process (in fact, I’ve met people who’ve done that exam who I would hesitate to call confident speakers) - but as a rough guide, it is (or should be) a very loud alarm bell.
I love the idea of learner cafés, absolutely brilliant. I’m sure the SSiW community could play a huge important role.
Should we maybe have an online conference to see what sort of ideas come out, and if there are particular things the community would like to do?
I conference seems to be a good idea, although I don’t know for the life of me how I would do that. I tried Skype once…
With Regard to ‘Wenglish’ or any other ‘version’ of Welsh it seems to me that they should not be seen as one version of the language or the other. I would not dream of telling a Geordie that they didn’t speak proper English. The different versions of the language should just been seen as dialects/accent. Isn’t criticising the way someone else speaks just a form of snobbery? I don’t know…
I was thinking about our local dialect which, although dying out is still heard from time to time. If I wrote, “Ow do mon” I don’t suppose people would have to think for a second, but:
If someone walked past you, looked up and said, “Ow do mon!” you would know instantly that it is a greeting, and know what it mean’t. Literally How do you do man!
Other fairly common, but dying out words, are wunna, cunna and canna (Wouldn’t, couldn’t, can not).
Is this fixation on ‘Proper’ Welsh due to the big difference between written and spoken styles?
In terms of things like ideas to spread the language, I personally believe it has to be ‘grass roots’ upwards and I think SSIW is a fantastic example of this approach.
As a peope I think we are inately supicious of anything recommended by ‘authority’, and I know that I am obstinate enough not to do something simply because the ‘authorities’ think I should. Just a crazy thought…
When I first moved to Yorkshire aged 10, I heard “Wat de they cal thi?” and, after two repeats, finally realised it was “What do they call thee?” and gave my name. In those days dialects were looked down on and ‘speaking correct English’ something encouraged at Grammar School. I gained a Yorkshire accent in days to fit in at school because what the kids valued wasn’t what the staff wanted!!! Years later, I had a lot of trouble explaining to my 1st language Cymraeg friend that if he put up a notice in perfectly correct English in Yorkshire, people honestly wouldn’t understand it!! That was all to do with ‘flammable’ and ‘inflamable’!! As for the Welsh Princes, I pray for aid! The only difference between Yr Alban and Cymru is lack of ability to trust each other to run things!! (Oh, all right, where I live now has been settled, but not conquered, whereas our people were beaten or conned from the Roman times onwards!!
Oh, on another tack, those of you who learned English in places like Finland and Norway and the Netherlands, where everyone speaks it so well, what method of teaching is used there???
p.p.s. Sorry to all the academics I insulted by generalising!! I have had some friends who honestly thought any research done for reasons other than pure curiosity was of dubious merit, as well as many (like me) who actually wanted to solve problems!!
Yes, I guess there is a difference between an academic approach, which you could say SSiW is, because it’s academically very sound (even if it doesn’t conform to people’s standard idea of an academic course), and having to set public exams, which among other things, then are in danger of being used as a political football, along with league tables, “teaching to the test” and all the rest of it.
Ditto, in Germany, they talk about “Denglish”, and some German speakers get upset about it, as do some French speakers about Frenglish.
But it can’t be legislated against, and people, especially young people, will use the language as they want to and not according to some fixed set of rules.
Hopefully though, elegant imaginative language, of whatever origin, will always speak for itself, and never mind the rule book.
In the 70’s an English friend lived in Vienna for a while. Later, when he & his wife moved from Australia to Brussels for a while, I went on a trip with them, including a visit to Germany. A waitress told my friend, in German, that he had been taught terrible German, Austrian German. He told her (in Austrian) that he’d lived in Vienna, to which she reacted by saying something on the lines of, “Oh, I am so sorry, you poor man, it is not your fault that you learned to talk like that!” She then told him the 'right’ way to say what he had said originally!!!
I can only speak for the Netherlands - English is taught in school in fairly traditional ways, but you hear it everywhere on TV, radio, films (they use subtitles, unlike in France and Germany), so you subconsciously absorb quite a bit whether you want to or not. In the Netherlands there is also a culture in which acquiring other languages is encouraged, and it is expected that you know at least one other language (English primarily now, in the past German and French also, but to a lesser extent now).
From what I hear (e.g. on the language learning site “HTLAL”) it’s pretty much the same in the Scandinavian countries. It’s even the case that some university course books (maybe school books as well…not sure about that) are in English.
Ironically though, although Scandinavians tend to understand the language of the other Scandinavian countries, when reading e.g. novels from another Scandinavian country, they prefer them to be translated into their own language. Interestingly, Norwegian and Danish look pretty much identical on the page, but they sound quite different.
Oh yes! A friend of mine learned Norwegian. (I’m not sure why, as a challenge, I think!) Later, he went to Norway, and when he tried to talk to people in Norwegian, they were insulted because it implied he thought they couldn’t speak Engish!!!
I am surprised to find that teaching is much the same as here!! I do think someone should try to get the educationalists interested in the SSiW method!!
That is exactly what I would expect! The ‘speed’ with which any government does anything owes more to the snail than the cheetah and educationalists may love bandwagons, but getting them aboard is not a rapid process!! All too often, they go running after another bandwagon altogether!! (Medical researchers do the same!!!).
Elitism is a many pronged fork. Not only do we (Welsh) have language police telling us the version of grammar we use is wrong (thankfully I haven’t run into that one except in jest) but many mam-iaith speakers don’t have the belief in their own version. Someone in Swansea said to me ‘you don’t want to practice with me, my Welsh isn’t proper - it’s Swansea Welsh’ and my mam-iaith aunt in mid Wales said exactly the same about Montgomery Welsh.
Maybe as well as lifting awareness of Welsh via legislation, and creating educational opportunities with Welsh-medium schools, the Senendd could promote pride in the diversity of the language in the existing ground-level of native speakers. It seems many elderly people don’t speak their first language because they are a hangover from the generation brought up to believe Welsh was an impediment to all those things the Blue Books told us were true. Time those myths were not only laid to rest but exposed for what they were and who they were perpetrated by, and National Pride at grass-roots given a boost which would filter upwards. This wasn’t intended to be a rant, sorry, but if the elderly could be helped to have a sense of real value in their original tongue, maybe they would come out of the woodwork and help provide that solid base which continuity needs.
I think this is a really good point. It’s understandable that there is a pull towards what I have heard called “high welsh” of church speaking, Eisteddfod performances, and perhaps centred on the northern welsh heartlands. What I have heard, though I can’t remember where, as an account of the diversity of welsh dialects is that these are the languages of many tribes who retreated into wales from the rest of the UK as various waves of invaders pushed them out of their own lands. So some of the diversity of welsh dialects reflects the many different ancient tribes who spoke related-but-different languages, but also needed to speak to their new neighbours in what is now Wales, as well as to the latin-speaking international traders. It’s a great explanation for why it seems that cymraeg may have many more dialects retained from antiquity than in other parts of the UK.
I love the term “mam-iaith” which I’ve not heard before. Maybe we can all help promote the view that every variant of cymraeg has precious linguistic gems which deserve celebration and exhibition?
There was a national campaign, run through the Mentrau Iaith, a few years ago to persuade people that their Welsh was/is good enough for use outside the home. This was to counter some of the feelings reported above, about how only chapel Welsh was good enough to be used outside (and sometimes even in) the family context.
I love the term “mam-iaith” which I’ve not heard before. Maybe we can all help promote the view that every variant of cymraeg has precious linguistic gems which deserve celebration and exhibition?