|
Post by gwynthegriff on Aug 9, 2013 20:30:27 GMT
David Lloyd George was born in Manchester. Being born outside Wales doesn't mean not being Welsh. The non-Welsh born in Anglesey are certainly non-Welsh. Many come from Manchester or Liverpool. A lot came originally to work on the construction of the Wilfa Nuclear Power Station and stayed on. A lot of publicans came from Manchester attracted by the Sunday closing in the 1970s. Places like Cemaes Bay and parts of Amlwch are stuffed full of retirees. From my recollection around two thirds of the population are Welsh (and Welsh speakers) while the remainder were English speaking incomers. 2001 Census: 67.6% born in Wales 70.4% 'knowledge of Welsh'
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2013 21:40:00 GMT
The non-Welsh born in Anglesey are certainly non-Welsh. Many come from Manchester or Liverpool. A lot came originally to work on the construction of the Wilfa Nuclear Power Station and stayed on. A lot of publicans came from Manchester attracted by the Sunday closing in the 1970s. Places like Cemaes Bay and parts of Amlwch are stuffed full of retirees. From my recollection around two thirds of the population are Welsh (and Welsh speakers) while the remainder were English speaking incomers. 2001 Census: 67.6% born in Wales 70.4% 'knowledge of Welsh' I have a 'knowledge of Welsh' which I learned because I was sick of people in North Wales speaking fast and looking at me like I had just landed from Alpha Centuri. I was taught by my mate from Ammanford whose mother once spoke Welsh to some young Plaid Cymru activists running a stall in the town centre and then being forced to speak in English to them as they only "speak the North West dialect". Nos da!
|
|
cibwr
Plaid Cymru
Posts: 3,558
|
Post by cibwr on Aug 10, 2013 11:13:56 GMT
Same in Birmingham... indeed the oldest branch of Plaid still going is in Birmingham I studied in Birmingham from 1985 to 1991 and there was a Welsh Chapel just outside the city centre which had been there since the 19th century. I know it, next to Dorothy Towers... Its still there.
|
|
cibwr
Plaid Cymru
Posts: 3,558
|
Post by cibwr on Aug 10, 2013 11:15:38 GMT
I remember meeting an old couple in Oswestry back in the 80s whose first language was Welsh but were lifelong in Oswestry. IIRC the banks in Oswestry have some bilingual signage. The Marcher Lordship of Oswestry was transferred to the county of Shropshire in the Laws of Wales Act. So you could say it was once Welsh. The same applies to parts of Herefordshire that were Welsh speaking into the 19th century.
|
|
|
Post by iainbhx on Aug 11, 2013 19:44:49 GMT
I studied in Birmingham from 1985 to 1991 and there was a Welsh Chapel just outside the city centre which had been there since the 19th century. I know it, next to Dorothy Towers... Its still there. Bethel, yes it is, although services are no longer always weekly. The preacher the other week was Lord Roberts of Llandudno. Hmm, that gives me an idea...
|
|
|
Post by gwynthegriff on Aug 11, 2013 20:19:50 GMT
I know it, next to Dorothy Towers... Its still there. Bethel, yes it is, although services are no longer always weekly. The preacher the other week was Lord Roberts of Llandudno. Hmm, that gives me an idea... Does Lord Roberts of said seaside resort ever sleep?
|
|
tim13
Non-Aligned
Posts: 71
|
Post by tim13 on Aug 11, 2013 20:20:08 GMT
I must say that when I was trying for the Euro-list in Wales I attended a couple of services in non - conformist chapels in Merthyr etc, to try to pick up on the timing and style - remembering back to my early student politics days in North Wales, political speeches very much had the same rhythms. That was English language chapels, although I have a little Welsh language, and have attended a number of services in Welsh. After I had failed to make the Euro-list, and I was a Welsh Assembly candidate, I was actually very fortunate to have the good Rev Roger (before he was Lorded), speak on my behalf - in Welsh, too. The real thing was much better than my lame copies!!
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 23, 2013 20:16:17 GMT
my mate from Ammanford whose mother once spoke Welsh to some young Plaid Cymru activists running a stall in the town centre and then being forced to speak in English to them as they only "speak the North West dialect". Unfortunately, there are people who will believe this. Reminds me of the stupid rumour in 1999 that the translation system in the new National Assembly had collapsed because the northern Welsh couldn't understand the southern Welsh and vice-versa.
|
|
|
Post by Penddu on Aug 23, 2013 22:10:09 GMT
I speak only a little Welsh and find a Gog ( northern Welsh) speaker more difficult to follow than southern Welsh speaker - but no more so than the differences between a cockney and a Geordie in English. More anti-Welsh scaremongering.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 24, 2013 0:02:15 GMT
I speak only a little Welsh and find a Gog ( northern Welsh) speaker more difficult to follow than southern Welsh speaker - but no more so than the differences between a cockney and a Geordie in English. More anti-Welsh scaremongering. There is not an an anti-Welsh bone in my body, I am being deliberately quoted out of context. The fact remains that when I set out to learn Welsh with the 'Cloncian' language course, it was very much a North Welsh dialect being presented as 'official' Welsh. Nobody tries to present either Cockney or Geordie as 'offical' English, although both are clearly English. My Godson speaks the Pitmatic of Ashington and the environs which, when I worked in HMP Durham, differentiated very clearly one group of Geordies from the other and was unintelligible by many people.
|
|
libfozzy
Lib Dem
Building a stronger economy in a fairer society.
Posts: 300
|
Post by libfozzy on Aug 24, 2013 9:01:52 GMT
I speak only a little Welsh and find a Gog ( northern Welsh) speaker more difficult to follow than southern Welsh speaker - but no more so than the differences between a cockney and a Geordie in English. More anti-Welsh scaremongering. I think that's exactly it. It is a different dialect and whilst they both clearly understand each other, there's bits that grate. Just like when I hear Glaswegians speak. But, what's almost certainly happened with this myth is that people have talked up the difference for comedic purposes, because ultimately, it's kinda funny (I know literally dozens of Welsh speakers who've told me jokes based around this premise, even though I know they can converse fine with gogs) and then it's found its way to people who aren't Welsh speakers, or familiar with Welsh and it's been repeated as fact. It's not anti-Welsh scaremongering. It's just normal human behaviour.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 24, 2013 14:54:23 GMT
Actually, I think it is more than that: just as the standardisation of English has reduced the richness of the dialects of the UK, the same can be the danger with Welsh. The point is that what was often described as 'poor' English was more likely a rich dialect that had its roots in the different settlements/invasions in those areas. A recently deceased friend of mine who was originally from Northumberland (and a polyglot himself) was always fascinated by how his uncle who worked on the dockyards in the 1930s could chat with seaman from western Norway in what were related dialects, except one was described as English and one as Norwegian. His uncle was illiterate, if he had spoken standard English he probably wouldn't have been able to chat to these men. I grew up using words that I didn't know weren't in common usage outside of Lancashire until I went to College, such as skriking, mithering, cruckle and skenning. Some are more widely used now due to television, etc, but were very much local and related to the local Anglo-Saxon roots of the language. If you travel up the east of the UK, from Suffolk to Orkney and the Shetlands, many dialect words are very similar and the 'musical lilt' of the speech is the same. The roots in Norse and Danish are important and forcing out the words to create a standard English has had a reductionist effect. You can find the roots of the old British settlements of western Britain in words used all the way from Cornwall to Galloway and these places would all of spoken a language which, whilst influenced by their local environments, would have been intelligible to those who speak Cymraeg.
|
|
cibwr
Plaid Cymru
Posts: 3,558
|
Post by cibwr on Aug 24, 2013 18:41:24 GMT
www.teachyourself.co.uk/Languages/Level2/WelshDialects.aspxby Christine Jones and Kara Lewis Traditionally, the principal identifiable dialects of Welsh are the Wyndodeg (Vendotian, of the north-west), Powyseg (of the north-east and mid Wales), Dyfydeg (Demetian, of the south-west), and Gwenhwyseg (of Gwent and Morgannwg in the south-east). However, it is common practice to speak of the key regional variations being between the Welsh spoken in north Wales and that of south Wales. Sometimes too much is made of the differences between north and south, although there are a good number of everyday words which vary between the two areas: South Wales North Wales tad-cu taid grandfather mam-gu nain grandmother llaeth llefrith milk pen tost cur pen headache nawr rwan now By drawing isoglosses on a map one can see in which areas certain words are used. What is interesting, however, is that these isoglosses are not all bunched together – there is no clear divide between the language of north Wales and that of south Wales. It is a gradual process with south Walian words gradually disappearing the more northwards one goes, and vice versa. Neither is it always a case of one word existing in the south and another in the north. There are, for example, around twelve Welsh words to describe the English word ‘sweets’! The most common are losin, da-da and fferins. Pronunciation too varies from area to area. For example, u is pronounced in the south as in the English word ‘pun’, whereas in the north, the sound is produced by lifting the middle of the tongue towards the roof of the mouth. There is no similar sound to this in English, but it is similar to the French ‘u’. My Grandfather on my mother's side, who was the last member of my family to be a native Welsh speaker (though my nieces - the next generation in my family - are all now bilingual) spoke excellent "Whitchurch" Welsh which was the local version of Gwenhwyseg.
|
|
|
Post by East Anglian Lefty on Aug 24, 2013 22:21:57 GMT
I speak no Welsh, so I can't personally confirm this, but I'm reliably informed (by somebody who ought to know, as he's got a publication history on Celtic linguistics as long as my arm) that if you look at the medieval source material, north Welsh seems to be more closely related to Strathclyde Brittonic than to south Welsh and south Welsh is closer to Cornish or Breton than to north Welsh. Of course, that doesn't necessarily follow that north and south Welsh were particularly distinct, just that they weren't necessarily each others' closest relatives.
|
|
cibwr
Plaid Cymru
Posts: 3,558
|
Post by cibwr on Aug 25, 2013 7:08:54 GMT
I think that would best be described as an exaggeration.
|
|
|
Post by East Anglian Lefty on Aug 26, 2013 17:14:08 GMT
Why? In an early medieval context, it makes eminent good sense. South Wales and south-west England were both thoroughly Romanised, whereas Gwynedd and the Cumbria/Dumfries area were almost unique in Roman Britain in not being civitates. You'd therefore expect a greater proportion of Romance loan words in both south Welsh dialects and Cornish than in north Welsh dialects and Strathcylde Brittonic. Prior to the early modern period, the easiest way to travel was by boat and we know the west coast of Britain was key trade corridor. South Wales could be expected to have much closer links to Cornwall via the British Channel than to north Wales via the interior. And early Welsh poetry, which is largely preserved in northern texts, is mostly concerned with the 'Old North' and some of it may even have been written there.
The difference between a language and a dialect is one of politics, not linguistics. Just because Cumbric is now counted as a separate language, doesn't mean it wasn't mutually intelligible with Welsh. And if we accept that they all formed a sprachbund, there's no necessary reason to believe that the two elements at the centre were the most closely related to one another, even if there are the only two units that are now functioning.
|
|
cibwr
Plaid Cymru
Posts: 3,558
|
Post by cibwr on Aug 26, 2013 18:03:33 GMT
Not in a modern context - Cornish and Breton are very very different from the south Wales dialects, All Welsh dialects are closer to each other than other Celtic languages - which is not what you seemed to be suggesting. Historically of course the formed a continuum - but Cornish became quite distinct from at least the 9th century, while certainly continuing to be closer to Breton than Welsh. The old north was certainly the origin of the oldest Welsh poetry and would be mutually intelligible throughout Wales.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 26, 2013 21:10:47 GMT
|
|
|
Post by No Offence Alan on Aug 26, 2013 22:44:05 GMT
Let's face it - Wales should be split in two with two capital cities: Liverpool for the North; Bristol for the South.
|
|
cibwr
Plaid Cymru
Posts: 3,558
|
Post by cibwr on Aug 27, 2013 7:48:54 GMT
Let's face it - Wales should be split in two with two capital cities: Liverpool for the North; Bristol for the South. Nice troll but no biscuit
|
|