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I'm worried because I am starting to agree with too many things said on the MB. It's not the nature of the beast.
I have little sympathy with the Welsh language as it has been politicised. Scots Gaelic is in a similar position socially, but because it has not become a political tool I have a love and respect for the language.
English, German and French will indeed get you round most of Europe. However, there are a few simple rules. Do not speak German in the Netherlands and do not speak French in Belgian Flanders. I have never tried Dutch in Wallonia.
German appears universally understood in the former parts of the German and Austrian Empires.
Hugs
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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About Wlesh, Cossie write:
>I should perhaps mention my un-favourite language - welsh! So far as I know, there is no-one in Wales who does not speak English, but in a professional capacity I have encountered several welshmen who have refused to talk to me in English. I do know a little welsh, but with idiots like that I see no reason to attempt to use it!
The Welsh had their language beaten out of them in schools by English schoolteachers and by rules that said this language was to cease. I think it was not the Welsh who politicised their native tongue. I can hardly blame them for refusing to speak English to an Englishman if they were some of the ones beaten.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Don't forget that Cossie is Scottish and that the Welsh 'attitude' is usually reserved for the English. They react differently if they know you are Scottish or Irish.
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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... he always seemed quite civilised to me!
Seriously, though, my reservations about Welsh stem from the precise circumstance which he mentioned. The language has become a political tool.
Of course I don't support the enforced repression of the language, but such evidence as I have seen indicates that this is - at least to a significant extent - a politically-motivated exaggeration. What is certainly true is that with the advent of free education in the latter part of the nineteenth century the policy was to ensure that every child could speak English with complete fluency. I accept that things went a little overboard with the decision to teach all other subjects only in English, but even then a zeal to ensure English fluency is not synonymous with a desire to suppress Welsh.
Though there were some Welsh speakers throughout the country, it was the predominant language of communication only in the North and West. There were almost no Welsh speakers in the extreme South-West, or indeed in many parts of the South and the Southern Borders.
Language is a living thing; it evolves at a far faster rate than most of us realise. Words are 'borrowed' from other languages; I'm not sure why we call them 'loan words', because they are never returned to the original owners! 'Burger' did not appear in American English until 1939; it reached Britain after 1941. It is, of course, a contraction of the German 'Hamburger' and probably originates from 'Hamburgerwurst' (Hamburg-style sausage). But it is now undeniably an English word, capable of forming compounds such as Beefburger or Burger-Bar. This phenomenon is nothing new. The English words for the principal domestic animals reared for meat were cow, sheep and pig - and they still are - but by around 1300 the meat derived from these animals began to be called beef, mutton and pork respectively, adopting the medieval French word for the animals themselves - modern French boeuf, mouton and porc.
To a modern ear, even Victorian English seems stilted; the English of Chaucer is hardly intelligible and the language of the Dark Ages doesn't sound like English at all. It's a huge and (to me!) fascinating subject, but the simple point I am making is that language changes - fast!
Minority languages eventually decline and die; if the economic necessities of life make it necessary to learn and use a different language, that language will ultimately prevail. Pictish, the original language of much of Scotland, has been dead for a thousand years or more. The Gaelic which originally displaced it is now spoken by only a small minority in the North and West. English reigns supreme - not because England is superior, but because you can communicate with infinitely more people in English than you can in Gaelic. No-one is suppressing Gaelic; it has enthusiastic support from linguists and historians alike, but it is accepted as a part of history. It's something to preserved - something well worth preserving - but it isn't in conflict with English. Similarly in the Irish Republic the Gaelic-speaking area in the West, known as the 'Gaeltacht', is protected by government and encouraged to preserve its language and customs, but Irish Gaelic is again seen as part of cultural history, not as an alternative to English.
Considering that English is the most widespread language on the planet, the British have quite a good record of tolerance of other languages under their sphere of influence, but nature takes its course and by around 1200 Welsh had died out in what is now Cumbria. It survived (in a somewhat altered form) for almost another 600 years in Cornwall. It receded steadily in Wales. The new, political, Welsh is thrust down the throats of the entire population with much more zeal than English was promoted a century ago. And it's a very political Welsh, in which loan-words are shunned for artificial Welsh creations, as the French tend to do in France.
Road signs in South-West Wales are now all bi-lingual, and Welsh names are invented for villages and communities which have been thoroughly English since they were first established. It's all so silly, and demeaning to a language which can claim inherent beauty and fine literature, but which - to be blunt - has no purpose in the modern world but to fuel the fires of nationalism. That, I would suggest, is deeply sad - it is unity, not fragmentation, which offers hope for the world.
Here endeth the lesson. The collection plate will be circulated later!
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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Flattery will get you everywhere.
Hugs
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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Cossie, I found that post fascinating. I'd never really thought about the political agenda behind the sustenance of native language before.
I'd uphold your post as one of the most interesting posts I've seen on this board -- precisely because it's an issue I don't remember anyone ever having touched on before.
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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... but, in future, don't send praise, send money!
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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