Starting out?

A couple of true stories from my past.

When I moved back to Wales from Peterborough, I hired a pantechnicon to do my own moving and was accompanied by two mates. That night we went to the pub, my family's local. A welsh vallies' pub is usually very welcoming but always extremely noisy and this one was no exception. The locals, in addition to speaking extremely fast, tend to mangle their English, frequently cutting off word endings and even verb stems. That, combined with a dense accent often renders their speech unintelligible to outsiders. Anyway, we were all sitting, drinking and talking with old friends of mine I hadn't seen for years, my two mates sat with silly smiles on their faces. Of course I had fallen back into the local way of speaking and after a while one of my Peterborough mates turned to me and in all sincerity said, "I didn't know you could speak Welsh". In all honesty my two mates thought that the English we were speaking was actually Welsh. They were surprised and dumbfounded when I told them that everyone in the pub was speaking English.

Some years earlier while I was in the RN, me and two mates spent a few nights climbing and bivvying in Snowdonia. I had arranged for us to stay the last night with relatives near Dolgellau. That night we went to the local pub. It wasn't very busy and there were two  lads at the bar when one of my mates went up to buy the first round. The two locals' speech was completely audible where I was sat and in the sloppy way of some local young people were peppering their Welsh here and there with English phrases. When my mate got back with our pints he was outraged and trotted out the old thing about the locals switching from Welsh to English on hearing an English accent. I just told him to pay close attention to their conversation for a minute or two. After a few moments the penny dropped.

I'm not saying that the switch does not happen, I know it does, but not as often as people think. Sometimes only the familiar registers amongst unfamiliar speech and when for a time, because of local usage, it doesn't appear in the next sentence or two the perception can be born that switching is taking place when in fact it's not.

Bit like a pasty really................................full of crap!

(in response to Frum not Mal!)

That is VERY true Mal, and I too have seen this "misunderstanding" occur.

It doesn't help when some do not appreciate that in some areas, Welsh is the ONLY language in daily use. Some imagine it is only spoken as a tourist gimmick.

I once had to deal with an elderly woman whose husband had collapsed who had not spoken English for 25 years due to being disabled and not leaving her exclusively welsh speaking village.

All she kept doing was apologising for being unable to think of her words in English!

Frum wrote (see)

Elfed Roberts wrote (see)

research shows tht polyglot people have a higher i.q. than monoglot people, be ie welsh/enlish...french/english....german/dutch etc...etc.

Other research shows that if all the Welsh living in England returned to Wales, the average intelligence would rise.

In both countries.

Edit : to add a smiley.  But is that sincere?

Why are you so insensitive? It should be obvious to anyone why we are so grumpy. If you had any sympathetic feeling at all you wouldn't need to ask and if you don't know I'm not going to tell you.

I was taught that by my first wife. She's English.

Se@n wrote (see)

You live in a lovely country. Why are you so grumpy?

In my home Welsh village the phrase for someone who talks a lot is,

He or 'She's got more chops than Eric the butcher!!'

Since this thread has been ressurected I read the first page of threads (took me the whole page before I realised it was an old thread ). Anyhow, I read the phrases Colm ab ifan posted (although I suspect back then he was called something else). I just realised how many phrases I heard when I was growing up. Half my family is from Liverpool and were within living memory immigrants from North Wales (that low, green hills area just before Snowdonia that you can cut across to Llanrwst).

It wasn't necessarily my family that used them but their friends in Liverpool, including many with no Welsh connection at all (more likely Irish origin). Just thought I'd add that I heard phrases like (English spelling) cootch or cuutch for a hutch or a coal store, etc. using well when you meant fat or skinny, etc. It just that slang language does travel and even the Welsh slang travelled. Or at least it did when I were a lad (a few years ago now). Just thought you Welsh might be interested in that (probably knew it before).

I live in south wales and these are some of the things i say in everyday life:

I'll do i now in five minutes. or I'll do it now later! *Usually shouted if my mam asks me to do something.

Ych a fi *ewww i dun like that*

dew dew * usually said when shaking my head*

Were to you now?

Best thing to do is just watch Gavin and stacey!! very factual.

Ych a fi appears in Under Milk Wood - Ych a fi, those old owls