Schroeder In Wales

[OrbWeaver]

Erm, people can still read Latin and Ancient Greek.

Yes they can, myself included (to an extent). And people will still be able to read Welsh even if it is no longer used as a day-to-day language.

 

The point is that a language falling out of mainstream use does not mean that its cultural history will be lost.

 

Having Welsh signs in your store and a staff member that speaks Welsh doesn't cost anything. In fact, most companies provide a Welsh service just out of courtesy.

If your business produces lots of documentation and is required by law to maintain Welsh versions of eveything, there will be an ongoing cost in relation to the employment of translators or native speakers. It may not matter much for a corner shop, but for a large web-based business the expense could be considerable.

 

No one is forcing anyone to do anything, it's the Welsh speakers who want th right to speak Welsh in their own country, just like the French would expect to b able to use French in their country, and the Germans, and Spanish, ecetra.

They already have the right to speak it. What they seem to be asking for is the right to be understood in it, which is something completely different.

 

I have the right to speak in Latin if I wish, however I cannot expect service providers to use the language just because I refuse to use anything else.

[oDDity]

Wow, this pretty much confirms you as an idiot. Of all the people I've had to convince of the importance of language preservation over the years, you're the only one who has failed to grasp the importance of culture.

Culture is much more than tradition, it’s what adds colour to our world.

 

For fucks sake, you’re making a video game that pretty much depends on a mix of cultures to create its atmosphere. If culture wasn’t important we might as well set the Dark Mod in a concrete factory where everyone wears grey suits.

That's got nothing to do with culture. Obviously groups of people developed differently in isolation, architecture, customs, fashion, language etc, but we're not isolated any more, so trying to maintain those differences for the sake of it is both idiotic and childish.

Welsh is an older language than English. I can read a battle report from 603a.d. as if it were yesterday’s news. There are thousands upon thousands of books, plays, poetry, and so on that would be lost forever if Welsh were to die out. Imagine if that happened to English; everything you've ever enjoyed through that language, be it books, computer games, music, movies, ecetra, having all the meaning in them either partly of entirely wiped out because people no longer understand it.

 

English is handy for talking to people whose second language is also English. Most of the world’s population has shown themselves fully capable of speaking two languages without any trouble. The only people who want English as the only language on earth must have a real inferiority complex. I’d rather ditch English and preserve all the cultures on earth English is destroying than keep English and see all those cultures smothered by your imperialistic dick-waving.

I'll tell you the real reason you want to speak Welsh, shall I?

It's because you happen to have been born in Wales.

It really doesn't matter which language we use to communicate in, since they're all capable of the same thing, so we may as well all speak the same one. Sure, keep welsh as a little hobby that you speak for fun, like those repressed accountants who meet in pubs for Tolkien evenings and speak in Elvish, but don't try to make out that there's anything important about it, or the human race would be worse off if it was forgotten. THere are probably more languages that have been forgtten than currently exist.

 

The stupidest statement in a rant full of them. Why forget the past when it’s such a vast resource of culture, and start again? That makes about as much sense as you deleting all your Dark Mod models and starting again. Why? There’s just no point, at all. Idiotic.

Culture is a way of deliberately and systematically differentiating yourself from others. It instagates, maintains and develops a 'them and us' attitude - exactly the sort of annoying attitude you have.

It's that 'them and us' attitude which has been the direct casue of all the worst things that have ever happened in the world.

It's forgivable for people in the past to have that small-minded, incestuous attitude, given that long distance travel and communicaiton was difficult, if not impossible for virtually everyone, so their world was small, but there is no excuse for it in todays world, with instant global communication and cheap wolrd travel, we don't need to break ourselves down into pathetic little tribes, build walls, and wave flags over them any more....that is, most of us don't, but you're obviously a little welsh twat sititng on your little welsh parapet waving your little welsh flag, desperately trying to convince yourself that there's a single person in the outside world that could give fuck if Wales sank into the sea tomorrow.

[Macsen]

Yes they can, myself included (to an extent). And people will still be able to read Welsh even if it is no longer used as a day-to-day language. The point is that a language falling out of mainstream use does not mean that its cultural history will be lost.

 

How much of latin and greek survives today? A few decaying fragments? Who knows how much cultural history has been lost? A few empire's worth, anyway. No, having a few dusty academics being able to read latin doesn't mean the culture has survived.

 

If your business produces lots of documentation and is required by law to maintain Welsh versions of eveything, there will be an ongoing cost in relation to the employment of translators or native speakers. It may not matter much for a corner shop, but for a large web-based business the expense could be considerable.

 

We don't ask that the internal workings of the company be in Welsh, just that they provide a Welsh service to the customers. So no, no mounds of paper work. Translation is £60 per thousand words, so a company could have five hundred door signs and product names translated for that much, plus the small cost of putting these signs up (not much, since the Welsh usually appears on the same sign as the English). The cost is tiny. Employing a native speaker costs no more than employing an english speaker, and there is no short supply of Welsh speakers in Wales.

 

They already have the right to speak it. What they seem to be asking for is the right to be understood in it, which is something completely different.

 

False. Having the right to speak a language is having the right to live your life through it. I wouldn't expect to be able to speak Welsh in England just as I wouldn't exect to be able to speak England in France. But not being able to use the Welsh language to fulfil your basic needs (buying food, paying for petrol, ecetra) in a country where Welsh is the original language of the country, where the national anthem is in Welsh, is a terrible state of affairs. The Government say they are all for preserving the Welsh language, but when people can't use a language in day to day life it will inevitably die off.

[Fingernail]

I do believe in inherited culture, however. Tales, music, sciences; all of these derive from earlier versions and from different parts of the world.

 

So in this sense Latin and Greek cultures have lived on - through the cultures of those places they themselves influenced.

[Macsen]

That's got nothing to do with culture. Obviously groups of people developed differently in isolation, architecture, customs, fashion, language etc, but we're not isolated any more, so trying to maintain those differences for the sake of it is both idiotic and childish.

 

So we should all be the same? Identical? I don’t maintain Welsh culture for the sake of it, but because I enjoy it. In the same way I enjoy Japanese culture even though I couldn't really have been born further away from there. What you’re promoting is a dull lifeless world where everyone lives the same, thinks the same. A world where everything is tailored to the stupidest in our midst, because they can’t tolerate difference.

 

Hell, in other words.

 

I'll tell you the real reason you want to speak Welsh, shall I? It's because you happen to have been born in Wales.

 

And you don’t understand Welsh and think English is superior because you don’t speak the language and live in a country completely deprived of culture. If I had been born to any other minority culture I would feel the need to defend it just as I am defending the Welsh culture.

 

It really doesn't matter which language we use to communicate in, since they're all capable of the same thing, so we may as well all speak the same one. Sure, keep welsh as a little hobby that you speak for fun, like those repressed accountants who meet in pubs for Tolkien evenings and speak in Elvish, but don't try to make out that there's anything important about it, or the human race would be worse off if it was forgotten. THere are probably more languages that have been forgtten than currently exist.

 

Again, you’re missing the link between language and culture. Without the Welsh language there wouldn’t be a Welsh language culture. It isn’t just a matter of porting everything over from one language to the other. Of course, since you only speak English I wouldn’t expect you to understand this. There are words in Welsh that have no meaning in English just as there are words in English that have no meaning in Welsh.

 

Culture is a way of deliberately and systematically differentiating yourself from others. It instagates, maintains and develops a 'them and us' attitude - exactly the sort of annoying attitude you have.It's that 'them and us' attitude which has been the direct casue of all the worst things that have ever happened in the world.

 

Excuse me, but most of the suffering in the world has been caused by empires trying to crush cultures and nations they don’t understand and bring your so-called ‘unity’ to the world – the Roman Empire, the British Empire, the Nazis.... Wales had never shown any desire to crush any other nation and culture – apart from on the rugby pitch.

 

that is, most of us don't, but you're obviously a little welsh twat sititng on your little welsh parapet waving your little welsh flag, desperately trying to convince yourself that there's a single person in the outside world that could give fuck if Wales sank into the sea tomorrow.

 

Why would I care if anyone in the outside world cared? I wouldn’t care if N Ireland sank into the sea tomorrow, but I would care if somewhere with an interesting culture sank into the sea and took all those who could interpret that culture with them.

 

I do believe in inherited culture, however. Tales, music, sciences; all of these derive from earlier versions and from different parts of the world.

 

So in this sense Latin and Greek cultures have lived on - through the cultures of those places they themselves influenced.

 

Correct.

[oDDity]

So we should all be the same? Identical? I don’t maintain Welsh culture for the sake of it, but because I enjoy it. In the same way I enjoy Japanese culture even though I couldn't really have been born further away from there. What you’re promoting is a dull lifeless world where everyone lives the same, thinks the same. A world where everything is tailored to the stupidest in our midst, because they can’t tolerate difference.

Hell, in other words.

I see, so you're saying that everyone within the welsh culture behaves exactly the same way, has the same interests and dresses the same, are you?

No, of course they don't, so don't come out with such dozy statements as 'if there were no cultures then everyone would be identical and all wear the same grey suit'

There's plenty of room for individual diveristy without flag waving and moat construction.

And you don’t understand Welsh and think English is superior because you don’t speak the language and live in a country completely deprived of culture. If I had been born to any other minority culture I would feel the need to defend it just as I am defending the Welsh culture.

Trying to artificially maintain any culture is pointless. If a culture isn't stong enough to survive, then let it die. The world is slowly gravitating towards unity, and that is a good thing.

Again, you’re missing the link between language and culture. Without the Welsh language there wouldn’t be a Welsh language culture. It isn’t just a matter of porting everything over from one language to the other. Of course, since you only speak English I wouldn’t expect you to understand this. There are words in Welsh that have no meaning in English just as there are words in English that have no meaning in Welsh.

The point is that you can't communicate anything in Welsh that you can't communicate in English. In fact, English has by far and away the largest vocabulary of any language, so there are far more ways to communicate most things in Engish than in any other language.

Two thirds of the people in Wales can't speak a word of it, so it hasn't really got much of a chance, has it?

Excuse me, but most of the suffering in the world has been caused by empires trying to crush cultures and nations they don’t understand and bring your so-called ‘unity’ to the world – the Roman Empire, the British Empire, the Nazis.... Wales had never shown any desire to crush any other nation and culture – apart from on the rugby pitch.

Those empire builders all started off with their own strong notion of culture, that their culture was so good that other cultures would benefit from it, and of course, those other cultures thought so highly of their own culture that they were never going to give it up, they'd rather die, and so that's what they did. Their culture was more important to them that their life. So, you see, it's this notion of culture that's at the root of the problem.

You can't force unity on people, it has to evolve naturally, but that's never going to happen as long as people insist on stickng so doggedly to their dusty old traditions and clutching their cultural baggage like their life depends on it.

Why would I care if anyone in the outside world cared? I wouldn’t care if N Ireland sank into the sea tomorrow, but I would care if somewhere with an interesting culture sank into the sea and took all those who could interpret that culture with them.

One person's interest is another's boredom. Don't assume that becasue a few Welsh people care about Welsh history, that it means it's actually important or is of interest to anyone else.

[thestemmer]

The problem with your argument, oDDity, is that all you're doing is taking the worst aspects of culture and parading them around in front of everyone. There's more to culture than nationalism and elitist thinking. You pick a culture at random, and you'll find nothing inherently harmful about the majority of customs and traditions that make up that culture. In fact, most of them help to enrich people's lives. It's the dangerous aspects of culture, the ones that as you say foster the "them and us" attitude, that have to be eliminated to make the world a more peaceful and unified place. Unless you mean to suggest that culture is at its most basic level a "them and us" paradigm, which I believe it isn't, I don't think that you can justify your statement that the world would be a better place without it.

Edited December 9, 2005 by thestemmer

[Macsen]

I see, so you're saying that everyone within the welsh culture behaves exactly the same way, has the same interests and dresses the same, are you? No, of course they don't, so don't come out with such dozy statements as 'if there were no cultures then everyone would be identical and all wear the same grey suit' There's plenty of room for individual diveristy without flag waving and moat construction.

 

What you don’t realise is that you are part of a culture. The way you talk, the way you act from day to day, the way you cook, are all part of a culture. And any diversity you show is all within the confines of your culture. Would you write a barddoniaeth for the Bryddest in the Eisteddfod tomorrow? No, because you have no perception of what that means, and none of other cultures. Being stuck within one culture doesn’t make you free, it makes you captive.

 

I’ve spent time in America, Africa and the Middle-East. Don’t tell me I’m somehow close-minded. All these different cultures represent different roots of thought, they’re all precious, and should all be maintained.

 

A question; if the Japanese government were tomorrow to offer that all nations under the sun unite under the Japanese culture, that every culture speak Japanese and all eat Sushi, that all venerate the wrapping on a present almost as much as the present itself, that all compulsively bow even when on the phone, that all do those ‘strange’ things that are part of their culture, would you go out for lessons and start to cook raw fish? To hell you would, you’d want to keep on living as you had before, part of the Anglo-American culture.

 

There’s no flag waving or moat construction here; I’m not a nationalist; I’d support the Welsh culture if it was located in the Bahamas. The country means nothing to me, but the culture that exists in it does.

 

Trying to artificially maintain any culture is pointless. If a culture isn't strong enough to survive, then let it die. The world is slowly gravitating towards unity, and that is a good thing.

 

But it is strong enough to survive. The fact that thousands of Welsh people are up in arms and campaigning to keep our culture shows that it’s strong enough. It isn’t being artificially maintained; if anything it’s being under supported. The Labour Government is doing its best to kill it off, but it won’t go.

 

The point is that you can't communicate anything in Welsh that you can't communicate in English. In fact, English has by far and away the largest vocabulary of any language, so there are far more ways to communicate most things in Engish than in any other language.

Two thirds of the people in Wales can't speak a word of it, so it hasn't really got much of a chance, has it?

 

You can communicate things in Welsh that you can’t communicate in English. You’re making statements based on inexperience and ignorance here. Anyone who speaks two languages would know that you can communicate ideas in one that you can’t communicate in another.

 

Thousands of novels, short stories, songs, ecetra. are all written in Welsh. You can’t translate them. If everyone stopped speaking Welsh they’d be gone forever. You simply couldn’t say them in English.

 

I can’t believe how it could be unexciting for any island not to have so many genuine Celtic cultures living and breathing under their very noses. Take the following:

 

Ar fy nesg mae crair

mwy sanctaidd na’r Groes Naid

Fe’i cipiwyd o laid yr Annwfn o dan y cwm.

 

Daw’n fyw liw nos fan y lamp.

I fyny drwy ei siafftiau du

daw golau all ddenu dynion dall.

 

o wyll ei tai. O’i fewn mae aenonau’n

ymegino; cywasgwyd bydoedd ynddo.

O’i ddal at fy nghlust clywaf guro

 

moroedd y cynfyd ar eu traethau coll,

sgrechfeydd y creigiau wrth i’r gwres

doddi tiroedd yn gyfandiroedd, wrth i dan

 

eu chwythu’n ecstatig ar wahan

drachefn. Ac yn ddwndwr parhaus o’i berfedd,

swn y maen awyr yn agosau.

 

That’d be exciting if it came from 2000 years ago, but it was composed last year, for fucks sake. If I erected a genuine medieval City in front of you you’d be impressed, but if I erect a genuine language from two thousand years ago in front of you, you want to burn it all down.

 

Those empire builders all started off with their own strong notion of culture, that their culture was so good that other cultures would benefit from it, and of course, those other cultures thought so highly of their own culture that they were never going to give it up, they'd rather die, and so that's what they did. Their culture was more important to them that their life. So, you see, it's this notion of culture that's at the root of the problem.

You can't force unity on people, it has to evolve naturally, but that's never going to happen as long as people insist on stickng so doggedly to their dusty old traditions and clutching their cultural baggage like their life depends on it.

 

Isn’t that exactly what you’re saying; that we should submit to your Anglo-American culture, rather than stick to Welsh culture? Those other cultures fought back because they were bloody well attacked by an invading army. Are you saying the British were wrong to fight against the Nazis because they didn’t want to be overrun by a generic aryan culture that’d destroy an hope of induviduality? If our British ‘lowly culture’ hadn’t fought back against the Nazis you’d be all in leather now marching up and down a street singing ‘hail Hitler’, and thinking it was all entirely normal and wondering how any lowly foreign culture could disagree with you. All the Nazis wanted was unity, after all!

 

RE: 'them and us'. I repeat; the Welsh have never tried to invade anyone, we’re happy as we are, leave us the fuck alone.

 

One person's interest is another's boredom. Don't assume that because a few Welsh people care about Welsh history, that it means it's actually important or is of interest to anyone else.

 

If the culture of Welsh people is such a boring topic for you, why bother yourself with it? Why do outsiders actively campaign for the extinction of Welsh culture? The fact is that it is of interest to you, you can’t sit back and watch a non-Anglo-American culture thrive on your own little Britain, so you have to yell and retch and fill multiple threads complaining about it.

 

I repeat; the Welsh have never tried to invade anyone, we’re happy as we are, leave us the fuck alone.

[oDDity]

A question; if the Japanese government were tomorrow to offer that all nations under the sun unite under the Japanese culture, that every culture speak Japanese and all eat Sushi, that all venerate the wrapping on a present almost as much as the present itself, that all compulsively bow even when on the phone, that all do those ‘strange’ things that are part of their culture, would you go out for lessons and start to cook raw fish? To hell you would, you’d want to keep on living as you had before, part of the Anglo-American culture.

THe Japanese aren't in a position to make such a demand, and never will be. I suspect the anglo/american culture will be at some point. Certainly the English language will become almost ubiqutous, not by force or any command, but it will continue to naturally flow through the world until it's simply common sense for everyone to learn it, just for the sake of having a global language. English already has a good head start, it's already more widely geographically dispersed than any other, and has huge financial backing. What the English started by force, the Americans are continuing.

I think english is a good language. It isn't full of snobbery, like Spanish or French. They have grand meetings where they decide what should and shouldn't be part of their precious languages, whereas English constantly evolves naturally, no one can force words into it, or block them from entering. It developed from the confluence of half a doxen differnet languages and contiunes to take words from other languages. It's certianly the most cosmopolitan of all languages, and maybe that's why people have an easier time with it.

 

But it is strong enough to survive. The fact that thousands of Welsh people are up in arms and campaigning to keep our culture shows that it’s strong enough. It isn’t being artificially maintained; if anything it’s being under supported. The Labour Government is doing its best to kill it off, but it won’t go.

You can communicate things in Welsh that you can’t communicate in English. You’re making statements based on inexperience and ignorance here. Anyone who speaks two languages would know that you can communicate ideas in one that you can’t communicate in another.

You can communicate them in different ways in different languages. That's not the same as communicating completely different ideas. Whatever ideas you can communicate in welsh are obviously useless anyway, since you've never achieved anything noteworthy as a culture.

At least Greek and Latin speakers achieved great things, and their languages deserve to be remembered, they have a decent case to argue, but you have none, apart from 'we want to keep Welsh alive simply becasue it exists'

It isn't strong enough to survive. The very fact that people have to campaign to try and keep it alive, proves that it's dying.

Thousands of novels, short stories, songs, ecetra. are all written in Welsh. You can’t translate them. If everyone stopped speaking Welsh they’d be gone forever. You simply couldn’t say them in English.

 

I can’t believe how it could be unexciting for any island not to have so many genuine Celtic cultures living and breathing under their very noses. Take the following:

 

 

That’d be exciting if it came from 2000 years ago, but it was composed last year, for fucks sake. If I erected a genuine medieval City in front of you you’d be impressed, but if I erect a genuine language from two thousand years ago in front of you, you want to burn it all down.

Big deal. THere are people who could construct a beautiful poem in Elvish, and that language was only invented 50 years ago. I could make up another language today and construct poems in it. What does that prove?

Literature has nothing to do with it, the only relevant argument for keeping a language alive as genuine and officially recognised, is how many people want to speak it, and for welsh that number is very small. 60% of your population can't speak a word of it, and only 20% are fluent.

What do you want to do - start forcing schoolkids to learn welsh?

What kind of viewing figures does S4C get? I bet it isn't even financially viable, and is no doubt propped with subsidies.

 

Isn’t that exactly what you’re saying; that we should submit to your Anglo-American culture, rather than stick to Welsh culture? Those other cultures fought back because they were bloody well attacked by an invading army. Are you saying the British were wrong to fight against the Nazis because they didn’t want to be overrun by a generic aryan culture that’d destroy an hope of induviduality? If our British ‘lowly culture’ hadn’t fought back against the Nazis you’d be all in leather now marching up and down a street singing ‘hail Hitler’, and thinking it was all entirely normal and wondering how any lowly foreign culture could disagree with you. All the Nazis wanted was unity, after all!

Nazi Gernamy wasn't a culture, it sprang up virtually overnight and was held together by fear.and lies. It was the work of a few individuals, and withiout them it wouldn't have happened.

If it was, then you've just proven how nasty, dangerous and vicious nationalism is, so I've won either way.

 

Also, everyone knows that you're automatically beaten in a forum argument as soon as you bring up the nazis.

 

RE: 'them and us'. I repeat; the Welsh have never tried to invade anyone, we’re happy as we are, leave us the fuck alone.

If the culture of Welsh people is such a boring topic for you, why bother yourself with it? Why do outsiders actively campaign for the extinction of Welsh culture? The fact is that it is of interest to you, you can’t sit back and watch a non-Anglo-American culture thrive on your own little Britain, so you have to yell and retch and fill multiple threads complaining about it.

 

I repeat; the Welsh have never tried to invade anyone, we’re happy as we are, leave us the fuck alone.

No one is actively campaigning to murder the welsh language and culture, it's dying a natural death.

You and some others have it hooked up to a bunch of machines that keep it barely alive, but that can't last forever. You'll all die eventually and the people that follow won't bother. You can't hold back the tide of the modern world for long. Welsh culture and language are relics, they belongs in the past. Your grandchildren can read about them in history books, and visit museums to see them, but they shouldn't be forced to actually live it, when the modern world offers them so much more.

[Macsen]

THe Japanese aren't in a position to make such a demand, and never will be. I suspect the anglo/american culture will be at some point. Certainly the English language will become almost ubiqutous, not by force or any command, but it will continue to naturally flow through the world until it's simply common sense for everyone to learn it, just for the sake of having a global language. English already has a good head start, it's already more widely geographically dispersed than any other, and has huge financial backing. What the English started by force, the Americans are continuing.

 

You’ve missed my point. My point is that the English and Americans are happy enough to tell every other culture to lay down their arms and let the big grey water of Anglo-American culture wash over them, but if the situation was reversed they’d want to keep living as they were.

 

I think english is a good language. It isn't full of snobbery, like Spanish or French. They have grand meetings where they decide what should and shouldn't be part of their precious languages, whereas English constantly evolves naturally, no one can force words into it, or block them from entering. It developed from the confluence of half a doxen differnet languages and contiunes to take words from other languages. It's certianly the most cosmopolitan of all languages, and maybe that's why people have an easier time with it.

 

Ah, so you do think the English language is somehow superior! What a coincidence that it is the only language you speak. And since when do the Spanish and French have meetings to decide which words go in and out? If the public start using new words you can’t stop them. You’ve got blinkers on.

 

You can communicate them in different ways in different languages. That's not the same as communicating completely different ideas. Whatever ideas you can communicate in welsh are obviously useless anyway, since you've never achieved anything noteworthy as a culture.

 

Once again, if you don’t speak a language and, in your case, admit to knowing nothing at all about it or the culture, any achievements are invisible to you. The Welsh language has a raft of literary achievements – the only kind that can be appropriated to a language; anything scientific, inventions, ecetra, could happen in any language. As far as ‘what have the Welsh done for us?’, the history of Britain is full of Welsh achievements; a welshman gave you a health service, a welshman steered you through the first world war, a welshman invented protestantism and brought to an end catholic rule over Britain, without Wales you would never have been the industrial superpower you were, the list goes on... so without Wales Britain would be a poor catholic country full of sick people ruled by Germans. Hooray for you.

 

At least Greek and Latin speakers achieved great things, and their languages deserve to be remembered, they have a decent case to argue, but you have none, apart from 'we want to keep Welsh alive simply becasue it exists'

 

As I said, the Welsh have achieved ‘great things’. But we don’t want Welsh just to be remembered, it should live on.

 

You What do you want to do - start forcing schoolkids to learn welsh?

 

Many are learning Welsh, because they want to. The number of Welsh speakers has grown from 18% to 21% in the last census. You can’t force anyone to learn a language, they do so because it’s worth the effort.

 

Nazi Gernamy wasn't a culture, it sprang up virtually overnight and was held together by fear.and lies. It was the work of a few individuals, and withiout them it wouldn't have happened.

 

Nazi Germany won support because it claimed that the German culture and German people was superior to all others, and that the entire earth would do well to be united under this one culture. The Welsh don’t want the Welsh language culture to spread ay further than our border. England has a great culture of its own that is currently being dumped for ‘Britishness’, a fuzzy idea that doesn’t really mean anything.

 

No one is actively campaigning to murder the welsh language and culture, it's dying a natural death.

 

No, it isn’t. There is an active campaign to kill it off. As recently as last century school children were beaten by teachers if they spoke the language at schools. The current government refuses to give the language equal rights with English, or make it an official language. The minister for the Welsh language, Alun Pugh (I’ve met him and interviewed him) can’t even speak Welsh. The Labour Assembly has decided to close the Welsh Language Board. The only thing keeping it alive are the people who continue to speak it from day to day, like me.

 

You and some others have it hooked up to a bunch of machines that keep it barely alive, but that can't last forever.

 

I think you’re confusing us with Irish Gaelic. They’re trying to bring that language back to life; Welsh is a living language spoken from day to day by thousands.

 

You'll all die eventually and the people that follow won't bother.

 

I’m only 21 you know, not some old fart like you; I am the younger generation, and the generations younger than me are speaking the language too. Welsh isn’t confined to dusty books; there’s a vibrant welsh youth culture. Check the listing for Welsh language gigs and there’s at least one every other day. We were supposed to stop bothering, by your count, about a century ago.

 

You can't hold back the tide of the modern world for long. Welsh culture and language are relics, they belongs in the past. Your grandchildren can read about them in history books, and visit museums to see them, but they shouldn't be forced to actually live it, when the modern world offers them so much more.

 

How the hell do you visit a language in a museum? And what exactly are the people who speak Welsh missing out on? I can enjoy everything you enjoy and a whole other culture that’s equally as rich. It seems to me that you are the one missing out.

[oDDity]

Either of us can learn any language we want and speak it as much as we like - and that includes welsh - so what's your problem?

You say the only thing keeping it alive is the people who speak it, and you also say their are many young people who want to speak it - well that's all you need to keep a language alive. It doesn't need to be written into law or given special treatment.

As you say, you can't force peope to learn it, so if the people in Wales want to speak it, then they will, though it seems that the majority of them can't be arsed.

Perhaps you should start blaming your fellow Welshmen for the deterioration of your language, instead of the English.

[Macsen]

Either of us can learn any language we want and speak it as much as we like - and that includes welsh - so what's your problem? You say the only thing keeping it alive is the people who speak it, and you also say their are many young people who want to speak it - well that's all you need to keep a language alive. It doesn't need to be written into law or given special treatment.

 

You have a very basic grasp of sociolinguistics. There are several reasons why Welsh is deteriorating despite the fact that the public is mostly supportive of it, here are the main ones:

 

To survive a language must be used daily within the community. Even though the number of people who can speak Welsh has gone up the number of situations they can use their Welsh in has gone down. I speak Welsh with my friends and family, but I can’t use it in my community from day to day because English speakers start to complain that they can’t understand what’s going on. If you have a meeting with one English speaker in it you either have to do the whole thing in English or hire a translator. If you can’t use the language to do the most basic things – use it at work, use it at school, use it while shopping, get your media through it – if every effort to speak Welsh is met with frustration, people are going to start their conversations in English. Welsh just does not have the same rights as English. The idea of the local shop is gone, shops are all international chains now, and these international businesses could care less about giving a service in Welsh. The answer to this problem is to change the law so that the Welsh language has equality with English.

 

The influx of non-Welsh speakers into Welsh speaking communities is destroying those communities. People from other parts of Britain buy holiday homes which raise house prices so locals can’t buy them and must move to non-Welsh speaking areas. The answer to this is to regulate the house market so that local people have the right to buy local houses first.

 

Also, unfortunately, many English speakers are rather vile towards Welsh speakers – like you are. If the black people in 50s America could turn white I’m sure many of them would, just because they’d have better rights and wouldn’t be treated poorly by racists. In the same way many people who speak Welsh just speak English because people like you are so spiteful.

[oDDity]

Not as single one of tose reasons yo gave stops welsh people from learning welsh and speaking it among themselves if that's what they wanted to do.

The only point that matters, is that they don't. The majority of them don't want to learn it.

It's a minority interest, even among the Welsh, and that's why the govenment has no interst in propping it up.

[Macsen]

Not as single one of tose reasons yo gave stops welsh people from learning welsh and speaking it among themselves if that's what they wanted to do.

 

The fact is that it does. If I can't speak Welsh 70% of the time, that does stop me speaking Welsh. That number is even lower in South Wales. People don't speak Welsh because they can't use it from day to day, because the entire infrastructure of Wales is in English, because the government refuses to pass laws giving equal rights to the Welsh language. It really is that simple, not hard to understand at all.

 

Now, we've already established that the number of people who do speak Welsh has grown from 18% to 20%, which proves that people do want to speak Welsh. That's a statistic, not an opinion. The problem is that while the government refuses to pass these laws, the amount of Welsh those people can speak from day to day falls. We don't want Welsh to be like Irish Gaelic; a language everyone can speak but no one does.

 

I don't see how anyone could be opposed to this: People want to speak Welsh. It is a precious culture that should be maintained. People who speak Welsh aren't missing out on anything, since they can all speak English and some French and other languages, and being able to speak more than one language is a benefit not a hindrance. Having Welsh as a first language certainly hasn't had any negative effect on my English, has it? The Welsh culture isn't a violent one, with no plans to attack other countries and convert them to Welsh.

 

The only bad thing about the Welsh language is that it costs a few very rich businesses a very small amount to put up bilingual signs. Frankly I couldn't care less.

 

So stop trying to bury the Welsh alive!

[oDDity]

The fact is that it does. If I can't speak Welsh 70% of the time, that does stop me speaking Welsh. That number is even lower in South Wales. People don't speak Welsh because they can't use it from day to day, because the entire infrastructure of Wales is in English, because the government refuses to pass laws giving equal rights to the Welsh language. It really is that simple, not hard to understand at all.

If you, and 20% of the population speak welsh as a first language, then everyone could do the same if they were bothered about it, despite the establish and infrastructure.

Now, we've already established that the number of people who do speak Welsh has grown from 18% to 20%, which proves that people do want to speak Welsh. That's a statistic, not an opinion.

Statistics, yes..they can prove anything for anyone.

The real reason for the small rise is almost certainly because people like yourself have been making such a big public fuss about it.

If it wasn't for you blowing your trumpets and stamping your feet, I bet that figure would have dropped and not risen.

If you're going to go around trying to emotionally blackmail people into speaking Welsh, then of course some will oblige. I doubt that figure will contunue to rise by much.

 

The problem is that while the government refuses to pass these laws, the amount of Welsh those people can speak from day to day falls. We don't want Welsh to be like Irish Gaelic; a language everyone can speak but no one does.

Well, ex-terrorist Sinn Fein delegates do, just to annoy people and generally waste everyone's time. I guess that's why I got my dislike and annoyance of Celtic languages from. I see people who want to speak them 'officially' as petty timewasters with alterior motives.

 

 

So stop trying to bury the Welsh alive!

I'm not. If everyone in Wales started speaking Welsh tomorrow and refused to speak any other language, it would make no difference to me whatsoever, I just think there's no point in trying to artifically maintain these things by pestering the govenment to prop it up, if it's stong enough to survive on it's own, then it will.

[Macsen]

Statistics, yes..they can prove anything for anyone.

 

Oh come on, there’s no way to manipulate that one statistic. The number that speak Welsh has risen, the statistic shows that clearly.

 

The real reason for the small rise is almost certainly because people like yourself have been making such a big public fuss about it.

 

And the only reason women have the vote is because they protested about it, and the only reason segregation came to an end is that black people did something about it. Are you saying fighting against a lack of equality is a bad thing? How dare us want what is fair!

 

We can only protest against the government, we can’t protest people into learning a language. I don’t follow people around with a big loudspeaker braying at them to learn Welsh. People have shown that thy want to learn Welsh. If the government made Welsh equal to English we’d see a further rise.

 

If you're going to go around trying to emotionally blackmail people into speaking Welsh, then of course some will oblige.

 

LOL How exactly are we emotionally blackmailing anyone?

 

Well, ex-terrorist Sinn Fein delegates do, just to annoy people and generally waste everyone's time. I guess that's why I got my dislike and annoyance of Celtic languages from. I see people who want to speak them 'officially' as petty timewasters with alterior motives.

 

Yes, I had guessed that your hatred of anything Celtic was caused by those twats. They’re a political, nationalist group though. Just because they want everyone to speak Irish Gaelic doesn’t mean supporting the continuation of any language is a nationalistic, political act.

 

I just think there's no point in trying to artifically maintain these things by pestering the govenment to prop it up, if it's stong enough to survive on it's own, then it will.

 

As I said, it’s being artificially killed off, not artificially maintained. With the history of oppression and the Labour government’s hate of the Welsh language it’s surprising it is still around at all.

[Vadrosaul]

Where's oDDity?

[oDDity]

We worked out that I'm psychologically opposed to anything celtic due to my upbringing in a rather troubled area in rather troubled times, and its not fair to take it out on the Welsh, who had nothing to do with it.

[obscurus]

Trying to artificially prop up a language is quite pointless as anything other than a hobby - languages are constantly mutating and evol ving, and all will inevitably become extinct and be replaced over time. Try to read something written in Old English - it is closer to modern Dutch than Modern English, and very few modern English speakers could read documents written in English a few hundred years ago without some difficulty. Forcing companies to duplicate signs and so forth in multiple languages won't save minority languages for long - they might persist for a while longer, but over a few generations, the language will either go extinct from lack of speakers, or it will incorporate so much of the dominant language (in this case English) that it will become unrecognisably different.

 

In time even English will have mutated so much that the language we are writing these posts in now will be all but incomprehensible to all but a few lingusts - languages are not static things, but are ever changing.

 

In fact, every speaker of a language speaks a slightly different version of that language - people don't technically learn to speak the language of their parents as such, rather they essentially invent a language that is very similar from scratch, based on the language they hear the people around them speaking.

 

Every language has pros and cons - some things are more easily expressed in one language than another (for example, German is a very good language for expressing technical concepts, like instructuions for assembling an automobile, due to the way German syntax and word formation works, while French is very suited to discussing wishy washy things like philospohy or wine or cheese.

 

English has some big problems, most seriously the way it is spelled (lots of archaic spellings that are totally different to the pronounciation of the word) and some wierd inconsistencies that people who learn English as a second language rarely master.

 

English is rapidly being simplified by next generation speakers and non-native speakers, and there is a good chance that spellings of many words will change (for example, the way many people now write 'thru' instead of 'through' - the gh is redundant, as English speakers have long since stopped pronouncing this sound (which originally had a sound similar to the 'ch' in the German 'Bach' or Scottish 'Loch').

 

Many English speakers no longer conjugate the verb 'to be', the only verb in English that is conjugated. People are starting to drop the pluralised endings of words.

 

In technical linguistic terms, English has changed over the last few hundred years from being an inflecting language to an isolating language - grammatically it is becoming similar to Mandarin, which incidentally has nearly as many words as English, and is likely to be the main conteder for Global language dominace

Edited December 14, 2005 by obscurus

[Macsen]

Trying to artificially prop up a language is quite pointless as anything other than a hobby - languages are constantly mutating and evol ving, and all will inevitably become extinct and be replaced over time.

 

And continents shift over time, and one day the earth will be destroyed. Big deal, that hasn't stopped humanity doing their best to enjoy something while it's still around. If everyone shared your stoic outlook on life we'd still be scampering naked through the jungle - "no point getting dressed, we'll be dead in 40 years or so."

[obscurus]

I'm not saying you shouldn't speak Welsh, or that you shouldn't encourage others to speak it, what I am saying is that Welsh will not be revived to the point that you could ever dispense with signs in English, or to the extent that every Welsh person can speak it fluently.

 

It is, like so many languages, a dying language - there are not enough speakers to sustain it for more than a few more generations. It is unlikely that there will be more than a dozen people who can speak it by 2100, if any at all (barring any major disruptions to Globalisation), unless the Welsh government essentially forces people to use it by severely restricting the use of non-welsh languages in Wales. And that would be very detrimental to the Welsh economy, as isolating yourself by putting up language barriers will severely restrict the amount of foreign trade and investment in the country.

 

At the moment, Spanish is rapidly overtaking English in America due to the fact that almost all of the population growht in the USA is from hispanic peoples. Globaly, Spanish, English, Mandarin are vying for dominance, and it is almost certain that any other languages will have drifted into irrelevance within a century or two...

 

 

Having a hobby is a good thing, one of my hobbies is inventing artificial languages. It is unlikely that anyone beside myself will ever know of their existence, it is purely for my own enjoyment. Same goes for people who wish to speak a near extinct language like Welsh or Gaelic - there is no reason you shouldn't enjoy speaking it or writing poetry in it, but you are kidding yourself if you think it will be re-adopted as a national language. Most European countries now teach English in schools as a compulsory subject - a sign of things to come...

[Macsen]

I don't recall saying that English would be ousted from Wales and the Welsh language would rule the roost. As long as Welsh remains a living culture as it is now I'm very happy.

 

The problem with your hypothesis is that you regard language change as if it were part of nature, going in and out like the tides. No, language is a human invention that is controlled by humans, and my actions can mean that the Welsh language lasts longer than it would have were I not here. I'm just trying to ensure the Welsh culture is passed on to the next generation; beyond that it's their job. If they fail, I won't care, I'll be dead. But at least I can enjoy the fruits of my labour while I'm here.

 

I find all this 'ooh you have a hobby' talk rather patronising. Welsh isn't some kind of made up language. 80% of people in my community speak it as a first language. I hear more Welsh here than I do English; it's not something I enjoy with a few friends on a tuesday night.

[obscurus]

...The problem with your hypothesis is that you regard language change as if it were part of nature, going in and out like the tides. No, language is a human invention that is controlled by humans...

 

 

It isn't a hypothesis, it is an observation. Ask any linguist. Language is a human invention, but it is one that humans an invention that humans instinctively develop naturaly, and is not easily controlled, it changes from one speaker to the next, and from one generation to the next. Meanings of words change (eg 'gay' = 'happy' -> 'gay' = 'homosexual'), new words are borrowed, old words are discarded, syntax changes.

 

Languages are demonstrably plastic, mutable and ephemeral. Languages do go in and out like the tides. If they didn't, all humans would be speaking the same language that the first humans to develop language spoke.

 

I don't mean to patronise you, but I have yet to see instruction manuals for stereo systems written with a Welsh translation. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, English, French, German, Spanish usually make it on there, but rare Celtic languages seldom do. It is just too uncommon a language to survive as human civilisation becomes more globalised.

[Macsen]

Seriously, Obscurus, you aren’t going to change my mind on this. You and oDDity haven’t said anything here that hasn’t been discussed and debated to infinity and beyond on a daily basis by the Welsh. You’re on the other side of the world and have little or no experience of this situation, while I’ve been embroiled in this debate for 21 years. And don’t give me any ‘impartial observer’ guff. If I started lecturing you on the cause of Australia’s current race riots you’d think me a bit cheeky, wouldn’t you?

 

Language is a human invention, but it is one that humans an invention that humans instinctively develop naturaly, and is not easily controlled, it changes from one speaker to the next, and from one generation to the next.

 

Language is controlled by human actions; it doesn’t slip through our fingers like gas, we can shape it and control it. The ‘flow’ of the Welsh language can be changed by a change in the law and a change in attitude; it already has, as changes in the law by the Thatcher government providing public services in Welsh and creating a Welsh television channel has lead to a increase in the number of people that speak Welsh. This proves that humans can intervene to save a language. In the same way humans can impact the environment; these days we can stop the tides going in and out.

 

I don't mean to patronise you, but I have yet to see instruction manuals for stereo systems written with a Welsh translation

 

Why would an Australian stereo manual have a welsh translation? I’d be rather appalled if the Welsh language became one of the dominant languages that seeks to shove our cultures on other nations of the world. All I want is that this culture exists in Wales, so that it can be enjoyed by the Welsh and anyone else with an interest in it.

[Vadrosaul]

Happy Rhagfyr Macsen