Pet Hates........or FFS

[Marco]

That's because when it was close to dying out in the 1970s they started teaching it in schools and promoting it on radio and TV so 40-odd years later it's back again. Which is what you experience now.

It still refutes what you said earlier, and any notion that Welsh speaking in Wales is "extinct". It's anything but - and it's been like that since I started regularly coming down here in the late 80s/early 90s. Therefore, its resurgence is not just something that's new.

Marco.

[Marco]

The Welsh are reinterpreting their culture as they go along, they had bugger all interest before the mid seventies.

Fair enough, Geoff. I'm talking about since the late 80s, to now. That the period I have direct experience of, and since then the Welsh language has very much been promoted in Wales, and so it is far from extinct.

Marco.

[Marco]

If someone from the village of Coedpoeth (English translation: Codpiece) wandered into a shop in England brandishing a Welsh accent, would he be ignored, or insulted in rhyming slang? NO, because we're good people,* more concerned with being respectful and welcoming towards others, regardless of their origins.

Shame really, up to this point North Wales looked like a place worth visiting, but no matter how hilly the hills or how woolly the sheep, nothing is worth that kind of aggro. Lakeland fells are prettier anyway, they make Snowdon look like a lunar landscape

*Generalising of course, there will be exceptions. Although some may look down on Coedpoeth, I know Larry Blackmon is a big fan

Hahaha... Love it. Was largely pulling yer leg!

Marco.

[Marco]

The Welsh are reinterpreting their culture as they go along, they had bugger all interest before the mid seventies.

Actually, I've just spoken to Del, who was born in a small village in Wales (Gresford), just outside of Wrexham, and I'm informed that there was still large sections of Welsh speakers in the local community and surrounding towns and villages, especially in places such as Coedpoeth, Llangollen and Bala. This would've been in the early 70s.

She didn't go to it, but there was also a dedicated Welsh school nearby back then called Ysgol Morgan Llwyd [in fact it still exists, see here:http://ysgolmorganllwyd.wrexham.sch.uk/ , and where only Welsh was spoken, so ample proof that Welsh speaking was fairly widespread even then. However, it didn't start being promoted in ordinary schools until the 80s, and since then more so, up to the point now of the current education system promoting it to first language status.

Marco.

[Pierre De Grenoble]

As a small example, there's a little village just outside of Wrexham, called Coedpoeth, and if you walk into any shop there, or the local pubs, they'll all be speaking Welsh, and if you go there with an English accent, speaking English, they'll give you a filthy look - and worse probably ignore you and mutter something unpleasant!

Honestly, that's the scene mostly throughout North Wales, which outside of Wrexham consists of nothing else but farms and small towns/villages. There are more sheep than people! Different story in South Wales, near Cardiff and Swansea, where things are rather more 'England-fied', although in the valleys there are still plenty of Welsh speaking towns and villages.

I just wish that Gaelic was spoken more in Scotland... Celts rule!

Marco.

The last time I was staying in Wrexham for 4/5 weeks (25 ish years ago) I was working in Gwersylt (If my memory spells that right) I well remember that I could walk into most pubs that were handy to Errdig Rd and the locals would speak English until they heard my Essex accent, then they started speaking the Welsh with a scouse accent.

My own experience has been that its the West Coast that are the natural welsh speakers even in a biggish and student town like Aberystwyth,

You could have 6 locals in a small shop all happily chuntering away inthe Welsh.

Here in Cardiff it appears to my jaundiced eyes, that speaking the Welsh is a political yuppie thing, I'm in Whitchurch in North Cardiff and the only Welsh speakers I hear are young scruffy but affluent couples with badly behaved kids.

[Joe]

As a small example, there's a little village just outside of Wrexham, called Coedpoeth, and if you walk into any shop there, or the local pubs, they'll all be speaking Welsh, and if you go there with an English accent, speaking English, they'll give you a filthy look - and worse probably ignore you and mutter something unpleasant!.

'Small nation syndrome'.

[Marco]

My comments were largely tongue-in-cheek, hence the smiley! Steve's summary of events is more accurate

Marco.

[Marco]

My own experience has been that its the West Coast that are the natural welsh speakers even in a biggish and student town like Aberystwyth, [/LEFT]

You could have 6 locals in a small shop all happily chuntering away inthe Welsh.

Yup, that's one of the reasons why I love it out there: so unspoiled in many ways, especially by the worst influences and commercial excesses of modern existence!

The pace of life is relaxed, the scenery is beautiful and little has changed in the last 30 years. Our idyl! That's why if we were moving to somewhere else in Wales, it'd either be out to the west coast (St David's perhaps?) or into Powys, to our favourite little village there of Montgomery: https://www.google.com/search?q=mont...HnKo6cgEjsCwM:

Life as it used to be in the good old days - *totally divorced* from the rat race!

Marco.

[Macca]

It still refutes what you said earlier, and any notion that Welsh speaking in Wales is "extinct". It's anything but - and it's been like that since I started regularly coming down here in the late 80s/early 90s. Therefore, its resurgence is not just something that's new.

Marco.

No it doesn't, I never said the resurgence was new. if you read the article I linked to, when they did the census in 1971 they found out that the language was dying out so after that active efforts were made to re-introduce it by teaching it in schools and having radio and television shows in Welsh, putting up Welsh road signs and so on.

If that hadn't happened no-one would be speaking it now, fifty years on. That was the only point I was making.

[Macca]

Of course it is another good example of how having pride in your country and its culture is only a bad thing if you are English.