5 Myths About The Welsh Language Debunked
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- Опубліковано 5 сер 2024
- In today's video we're looking at 5 Myths you hear all the time in the UK about the Welsh language. Things like Welsh being difficult to say, how the language has no vowels and the biggest myth of all, that the Welsh language is dying. I look at each of the myths and debunk them with actual facts and figures. look at me I'm turning into Huw Edwards (For those of you overseas, Huw is lead News Presenter on BBC News, Born in Bridgend, Welsh Speaking and all round LEGEND). 😀
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I’m a Mexican girl born and raised in the United States, and I am completely fascinated by the Welsh language. I’d love to visit Wales in the future.
Dont fucking bother it's a right shiit hole never stops raining and is full of drug addicts.
Hi I am Welsh and lived in Mexico.
Oh well, my family supposedly came from Abertawe in 1866, and were among the founders of El Triunfo in Baja California Sur. I have several documents that avail this.
You must
The landscape is beautiful. I remember taking the train from London to West Wales. As soon as we crossed into South Wales the landscape grew dramatic with dark clouds piled up. You only ever see clouds like that in London in a thunderstorm, but these were ordinary Welsh clouds. As well as the hills there are loads of beautiful rivers in Wales and waterfalls like Cenarth Falls in West Wales and in Rhaeadr Dyserth North Wales. These are picturesque little waterfalls, not like Niagra, by the way.
South Wales has lots of hills and valleys, West Wales is rolling landscape, North Wales has mountains, mid-Wales is absolutely beautiful.
The enemies of Welsh have to say it's a dying language. That undermines the people's confidence and if the myth/propaganda is repeated often enough, folk come to believe it. IMHO you need a publicity campaign on the theme of 'Welsh is a GROWING language". Ádh mór oraibh agus grá ó Éirinn!
We also need to make it that you can use Welsh as your daily language. In the south of Wales that is still quite difficult
Whenever someone trots out the old "Welsh has no vowels" line it's always a pleasure to inform them that it actually has more vowels than English.
@Gísiu Wolf No it doesn’t
@Gísiu Wolf That’s Old English
@Gísiu Wolf So we use Still use Æ in normal life?
I'm an English speaking Welshman (trying to learn Welsh currently), I always watch the rugby and football on S4C, especially now most of the games are behind pay walls for English language broadcasts
I watch S4C; I live in Staffordshire
Fi hefyd. Me too.
The dying language myth was really proven wrong to me the other day. I've lived in Bangor for the last 3 month, went to Caernarfon for the first time the other day and barely heard any English at all. Really made me want to improve my Welsh so I don't stick out so much 😂
Further on the 2nd point, I speak French and Arabic originally, English has given me way more trouble in pronouncing words than Welsh because of how inconsistent it is. Also a lot of the sounds people have trouble with in Welsh like the 'ch' exist in Arabic anyway so it ends up being fairly simple. Welsh in general has quite a few similarities with Arabic.
Even in English, I was taught that the vowels were: A, E, I, O, U...and sometimes Y and W.
Yes exactly. There are many vowel sounds in all European languages that are very similar. it's got nothing to do with an alphabet, it's vocalization of a sound. if people are interested in how languages sound check out a phonemic chart.
Glad you wrote that. My mother had a degree in English form Cal. She taught me the same
We got rhythm!
I was taught A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y
no mention of W
Omg I live in bwlchgwyn & we never get a mention in welsh videos😂
You know your a great channel when you Jason Shepherds running the channel
when we had analog TV, we could only get S4C and Welsh channels here in west Wirral, we couldn't get the English channels very well because there's a great big ridge blocking the winter hill mast, and we could only get the transmission from Moel-y-Parc mast in Denbighshire. I didnt learn any Welsh back then though, not until now.
never noticed this before but nawr in backwards is rwan just as north is opposite to south or backwards to a compass
Fuck me who gives a shit about your poxy Welsh language
Nawr < yn awr; Rwan < yr awr hon ...
One of the biggest problems with Welsh, from an outsider's point of view, is that the standard of teaching can be pretty dire. I did French, German and Welsh GCSE and in Welsh they never taught us any grammatical terms, in fact if I hadn't invested in Teach Yourself Welsh I wouldn't have got anywhere like as far as I did. At school they never even taught us that Welsh has masculine and feminine nouns like French! And it's only from the book that I learned that because a word like "melin" is feminine you say "y felin" whereas tŷ is masculine so it stays the same ~ y tŷ.
I really really wanted to speak Welsh, and I mean proper Welsh but the learning materials back in the 80s were pretty crap. I managed to get a grade A but it was only in ail iaith and I wanted mam iaith I did know English kids who did mam iaith Welsh so that wasn't an impossibility, the problem was, a lot of them had gone to ysgolion meithrin in Wales while I'd gone to a home counties primary school! I'm in London now but I still watch S4C. It's the only way I get to see Wales as it actually is, the beautiful landscape and everything. I could tune into BBC Wales or ITV Cymru Wales if I wanted to but they seem show mostly the same rubbish we get in the rest of the UK, so that's something else S4C does, it's the only truly Welsh TV channel out there!
Wow what do they teach in school then
Perfect example is LLANFAIR P. G., my father's hometown, where a LOT of the locals will always speak Welsh, only to use English if you're a visitor. When I go on holiday I use Irish for fun, but thanks to Duolingo and the mot/car tax reminders, I think I could brave the cash machines and paying car tax in Welsh next year =)
I have visited Aberystwyth twice and was impressed with the strength of Welsh there.
Loving your vids Jason, I've learnt a lot from them. Thanks.
I watch S4C And I live in bedfordshire England helps me to hear the welsh tongue and its so diverse so many topics I am trying to learn welsh and it helps
just happened on this video as I am thinking of learning Welsh. It is very attractive and this channel should be a great help. Thanks
Thank you Jason! I have recently started learning welsh and your channel is definitely my go to place..I live in Canada now but originally from the UK! Unfortunately the part of Canada I live in (Saskatchewan) there are not many welsh speakers! Or at least I have not been able to fone any... thank you very much for all your help...
Glad you’re enjoying the videos. My fav TV show is set in your part of the world I believe. I’ve been watching a lot of Corner Gas during the lockdown and its really keeping me sane.
@@LearnWelshPodcast Hey Jason, Corner gas is awesome and one of my favorite shows!
I actually live about an hours drive from the small town where they filmed the show!
In the show its called Dog River but in reality its called Rouleau!!
I was lucky enough to go visit the Gas station and Diner before they pulled it down a few years back.. However the rest of the town, hotel, police station and so is all there and in daily use!!
They actually made a movie a few years back called (corner gas the movie) well worth a watch! Your channel is helping me immensely and I can't thank you enough! My Grandparents were both from Wales and spoke Welsh as dod my father... Such a shame I never picked it up when I was younger! But its not going to stop me, I will get there haha... Cheers..
I lived in Aberystwyth , Wales , for three years , and I love the language. English is a foreign language in Wales .
I agree but...
Around 1965, Eirwyn Jones Pwllcymbyd, who worked in the Brechfa Forest between Rhycwmerau and Abergorlech, regaled my family with a tale about trialling a new invention for badgering (de-barking) logs. The Forestry Commission sent someone to work with him - from Betws-y-Coed.
They mounted the new bark-stripper on a tractor, and drove it up to the log pile to find out how many "cubes" they could process in a day. Now these two were both hill farmers who worked a couple of days a week for the Commission, but otherwise on their own farms, so they had a lot to talk about (and indeed, Jones Pwllcymbyd could talk for Wales).
Well, they gave it a go, Welsh, the two of them for whom Welsh was their first lsnguage, talking about the machine, their families, their farms as they worked, and had a tea-break, and had their sandwiches at lunch.
And after that, they agreed to speak English to each other, because they couldn't understand each others' dialects and pronounciation. I can't tell the tale as well as Eirwyn Jones, he was a great raconteur in both Welsh and English, but I don't doubt the truth of it, because in those days neither of them would have had mains electricity, there was no television in remote valleys, no S4C, and as far as I know, no Welsh radio, so they will never have heard the other's dialect.
I am an American with Welsh ancestors. I do not speak Welsh, but I am fascinated by it. I am learning Welsh using Dulingo. Where can I get a guide on how to pronounce the Welsh alphabet?
The wikipedia article on the welsh orthography
Hi mate, listened to your podcast years ago. Just started online lessons through ‘learn welsh’ and I’m really enjoying it. Subscribed.
Hi Ben. Great to see somebody from the old podcast days here. Glad you’re enjoying the videos.
Brilliant explanation on the vowels, thank you.
Mae gynni hi iaith Cymraeg llawer vowels ( neu ddweud ti mae llawer vowels gyda iaith Cymraeg ?). Having "w" as a vowel is just awesome - mae fy gair Cymraeg hoff ydy " ffrwchnedd" 🍌 Dw i'n gwylio S4C, online, yma ym Seland Newydd. Penwythnos diwetha gwyliais i dau gem rygbi, ar S4C, yn y dafarn Cymraeg ( yma yn Wellington). Mae S4C ydy ddefnyddiol iawn.
Absolute bollocks looks like you dropped the scrabble box on the floor. Just let the Welsh language fade away like the coal industry
@@matthewrandolph1255 Ewch i'r dan dy bont, troll.
@@matthewrandolph1255 A word that sums you up is the same in Welsh as it is in English:
*TWAT*
i have started to notice sins i started to learn Hebrew there eerily similarity to how the welsh language is structured and its the same when you look at Arabic and Aramaic linguistically you would think they would have grown up close to each other geographically speaking.
Good comment. The origin / migration stories of the ancient Cymry / Welsh say that they came from the east millennia ago. A book entitled Cymroglyphics, can be found using this ancient language to understand hieroglyphics. The ancient language is a living fossil,that has been left untouched and undiluted for thousands of years. So, it is not surprising it is very similar to other ancient languages.
I am keen to learn Welsh and I follow a Welsh speaking trucking vlogger and he gets caught out by the slight difference between North and South Welsh too!
Great video. Thank you from England.
Pan o'n i'n ifanc, Do'n i ddim yn gwybod unrhyw Gymraeg o gwbl ond nawr, Dwi'di bod yn dysgu Cymraeg a nawr, Dw i'n ddeall lawer o mwy Cymraeg!!!
Great video Jason keep them coming
Diolch John! 👍
English words have vowels! Then what about English words such as my, fly, cry, by, fry? Oh yes, in these words the y is said as an i. Oh, that is just as in the Welsh language!
- from an Aussie Taffy.
My mother was Welsh. She worked to change her accent because people in Texas couldn't understand her. First time that I went to Wales, I met my Aunt Stella that lived in the Mumbles. She had a lovely Welsh accent. Listening to Welsh people speak is so soothing to me. I should look for a Welsh partner. LOL
what about cymroglyphics? the alternative way of interpreting hieroglypics, it's a bit out there, but i found it very compelling.
Actually vowels are sounds, not letters, so there are many more of them both in English and in Welsh.
Finally some recognition for Bwlchgwyn!
Iam enyoying all your lessons what is missing is I would like to join you. Please help me. I love this language.
Suddenly welsh vowels suddenly make more sense to me. Why couldn't duolingo explain it like this
Comedy shows from England? Or comedy shows presented by toffs from the home counties?
Y can be used as a vowel in English
Diolch o galon am esbonio iaith y nefoedd. Cadw ati!!
When I was younger I was put off learning welsh cause of statements like 'welsh speakers can't even agree on how to speak Welsh'.
S4C has saved the language from dying. On 17 September 1980, the former president of Plaid Cymru, Gwynfor Evans, threatened to go on hunger strike if the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher did not honour its commitment to provide a Welsh-language television service. S4C started broadcasting on 1 November 1982.
S4C is great but not the only thing that’s saving the Welsh language. The Welsh assembly, Welsh language activists, our language becoming one of the official languages of Wales all helped hugely. And ordinary people, like myself, who fell in love with the language and feel the urge to share this wonderful language with friends and family.
@@LearnWelshPodcast Yes but S4C was the beginning of the reversal of its decline, which made all those other things that followed possible. It made the Welsh language 'cool' rather than 'hicky', in the eyes of the young. Previous to that I can remember the jukeboxes in Wales had just a few folk records, Dafydd Iwan, Tony ac Aloma and Hogiau'r Wyddfa, while now Welsh pop music covers absolutely all spectrums, and the same goes for the variety of tv programs, which didn't previously exist. Like I said, S4C made the language count for the masses and revived it's popularity in a way that nothing else could have done. In the 70s it wouldn't have been at all advisable (dangerous in fact) to go to Wrexham or Deeside and called them Welsh, but now they're proud to be Welsh. (more likely dangerous to call them English now maybe!)
Absolutely right. In the remotest hill farms if Wales, people never heard the dialect they didn't speak until S4C started to broadcast. When you only left your farm to visit a village shop or to trade sheep in the market, and had no mains services, you were, to some extent isolated even from your own language from the day you left school. S4C has saved the Welsh language, no doubt about it.
There's a new dialect in Mayhill Swansea...."Oww butt les set this car on fucking fire like and roll it down the hill...fucking pigs will come like and lets stone the van like...know wharr I mean like? fucking tidy like. Gimme some spice boys"
I'm still coming to grips with y. You get Ysbyty pronounced as Usbutee, but Aberystwyth as Aberistwith. Or is the second example anglicised?
It is slightly Anglicised - the first 'y' should be a schwa, like the first two in 'ysbyty' that you pointed out. However, for some reason we English can't get our heads round that. I think it's the idea of that sound in a stressed syllable that confuses us, as in English it's almost always unstressed.
General rule is, 'y' sounds like 'i' in the last syllable of a word, or in most monosyllabic words.
It's a schwa in other syllables of a word, as well as in short words like y, yr, yn, fy, dy.
Hope that helps.
@@MakerfieldConsort Good explanation. It's Aber(schwa)stwyth.
Welsh is a dying a language? I wish this was not true. The fact is that growing up in West Wales in the 80s you would hear Welsh on the streets of Llanelli and Carmarthen regularly, now it's a rare occurrence. Sure, more kids are able to speak it in South-east Wales but once they leave school they don't use it. Meanwhile in the heartlands in the west, young native speakers are leaving and being replaced by people who have sold their houses in London and Birmingham to live in beautiful Sir Gar or Ceredigion. I hope I'm wrong but there is I believe a slow death in the daily usage of the language. Falle gall rhywun o Arfon, Meirionnydd neu Ynys Mon cynnig barn ar ddyfodol yr iaeth?
A good fact: Welsh is the only Celtic language not considered endangered
Yn amal mae'r Cymry eu hunain ar fai - Rwy' wedi cwrdd â gymaint o rhieni Cymraeg eu hiaith - ond heb drosglwyddo'r iaith i'w plant.
Yr egus yw: 'So fy Nhymraeg i'n ddigon da'.
Beth dydyn nhw ddim yn sylweddoli yw bod safon eu Saesneg nhw'n waeth!
Jason - I would really like to know how to (correctly) pronounce the rally team from Neath with a Welsh name...In English, it means "Knights (or, Warriors) of the Night"......and, it ends in "y-nos" (I can do that bit !).
Marrr - chogg - ion- uh - nos
@@cymro6537 Cheers Jason, I first heard of them in the 60's and I think they're still going...keep the lessons coming they're great.
@@davecooper5951 Jason? Nope ,Cymro 😊👍🏴
@@cymro6537 Apologies Cymro - my mistake ! Thanks for the info' - the "Knights" pronunciation is quite a tricky one...
@@davecooper5951 Dim problem,Dave😊
What I should've added is that the 'ch' sound isn't the same as that in English - it's more of a gutteral sound -like clearing your throat 😄
🏴👍
Jokes aside, is the difference between north and south Welsh languages/dialects much different to that in historic west Wales (Cornwall)?
Y is sometimes a vowel in English, Jason.
It's not that bad
Mate
'r
It means "the" but only in the middle of a sentence
It's pronounced "hoffynyded"
R means the in the middle of a sentence what the fuck have you been smoking you twat
Pretty much all of the criticism about Welsh is from the English, who are notoriously monolingual and lack the ability to think outside their own particular linguisic box. The closest most of them have ever got to communicating with someone else who doesn't speak English is to speak slowly and loudly, with a genuine disbelief about why the non English speaker can't understand them.
The 2 dislikes are from Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock
😂😂😂
No, one of them's from Jimmy Carr.
I think that when Boris told his story about "Twll du, bob Sais" over the door of a Welsh pub in Westminster, he knew perfectly well that it was self-deprecating. His sense of humour is often mischievous and sometimes outrageous, and he takes an interest in languages. He hasn't exactly won you over, though, has he?
I watch S4C
I really don't understand the reason English people seem to think y is not a vowel.
My my, why slyly cry lying myths?
Mae Cymraeg yn wych. Diolch I chi am eich flog. Croeso o Loegr.
Sutmae Jason Shepherd!!! Diolch yn fawr.
While I agree that mapping Welsh spelling to Welsh pronunciation is much easier than the same task in English, there's a very low likelihood that anyone watching this video has every produced the double-L vocalization, as it only appears in languages that aren't widely spoken (Greenlandic and Navajo in addition to Welsh). And putting five of these in a town name that's 58 letters long is extraordinarily intimidating.
Dyma fideo'n ddiddorol!
Nee, as inNo in no problem
Gan, Go
Divvin't, Don't
Toon, Newcastle
Owa, Over as in owa there
Neet, Tidy or night
but does anyone speak old welsh??
Yes
The sound called "post-vocalic R", R sounded as a consonant at a syllable's end when it is not leading into a vowel, does not flow well in the Welsh accent. As we know it is a sound standardly not made in English, but can be made in accents whose flow it goes with. In most Welsh accents, these R's are not sounded when speaking English.
Like in all south British accents, the speech likes a fast easy flow between successive letters, that needs their sayability to match well. R naturally tries to roll into a vowel, so it collides painfully with another consonant or as a last sound, and trips up the mouth. The common sense of not using it, that English dropped the sound at some historical time, is a nice people-driven virtue of every language that does not require it
So it follows fhat it is unnatural to its own people's speech flow for Welsh to require this R sound. But instructors always say it does,, and it occurs horribly frequently. You can never go more than a few words without hitting this R, and often twice in a word. Though many languages have this R, usually it's because it fits in how their formative accents flow. Welsh stands out astoundingly for having it, and very frequently, in total jarring ugly collision with its own accent, making itself harder to say, and having that fact evidenced by not making the sound in another language !
The sound often sounds forced + strained. They make newsreaders sound it in Welsh placenames even when speaking English, so that serious reports get spoiled when they have to stumble ridiculously and lose all narrative momentum as they impossibly force their mouths to say "MeRRthyRR" or "AbeRRpoRRth".
Yet sharing this view can make fans of the language take ethnic offence. Yet logically the ethnic offence is that difference to English for its own sake is the only possible apparent reason for enforcing a painfully jarring hard sound instead of allowing the local natural ease of speech. Welsh has very different syntax and sound systems to English, so its pride does not need this difference too !
Another sound some of them are miltant on is the CH: they say it has to have a throaty cackle in it. Again makes it harder to say. At Charter 88's Welsh/Scottish pre-devolution conference in Caernarfon 1999, a language activist in the Welsh hosts insisted to the Scottish visitors that it's wrong to say the Welsh CH just softly like Scottish or German, that it's a different sound and prompted them demandingly that they must add the cackle.
It is because of those 2 unnecessary illogical hard sounds that Welsh has a tongue twisting reputation. Look how they make -ERCH + -YRCH sound like vomiting and collide embarrassingly with all dutiful efforts to read musicality into the language. But take them out and you can. Take them out and it becomes perfectly easy to pronounce.
I can speak more fluent Welsh than a bloke who lived there for 40 years. Hmmm
The difference between north and south wales Welsh is prob similar to British and American English.
Edit: dwi n gwybod am be dwi n siarad achos Cymraeg ydwyf fi!
I usually tend to liken it to the difference between, say, Yorkshire English and London English. Some different words to describe the same things, and possibly some slightly different grammar rules, but a person from London can understand a person from Yorkshire and vice versa.
The Gogs use G instead of C in Cymru/ Gymru and Coch/ Goch for red
No they don't, it's done all over Wales - it's called mutation.
Croeso i Cymru ❌
Croeso i Gymru ✔️
Y siaced Coch❌
Y siaced Goch ✔️
jejejejeje Don't be worry Teacher! The reason is quite simple 😮...
The Sound of vowells in English are "Normal - Usual" a, e, I, o, u 😊
But, in Welsh, the same vowells "Sound Different" Is Just Because "Celtic Influencie" By the way, Teacher..."The language of British Speak" Is Not
English 😮😊😢😅
Permettez moi, le explanier.. 😮
The language Name English, is not English
Because: 29% of the words are Latín words!
Another 29% are French words! Another 26% are
Germanic words! Another 10% are Greek Words! 4% Spanish words! And Only 2%
Are British words😅
So? Why are They so proud? 🤣🙃😂🤣😅
Romans , French & Germans, Greeks, Spaniers.. 😅😊😂 Are daily in their mouths😅
So, why that comedian
Is Laughing? 😊 We are laughing at them 😅😂
English? Ma, di che cosa stiamo parlando?
Ici du Le Mexique😇🇲🇽😎
Are you sure you're Welsh?
You said 'heard' instead of 'hyeard'.
That word gets pronounced so many different ways. Some Welsh people even pronounce it as ‘eard’. Shocking isn’t it. 😀
1 - it's difficult to learn.
2 - even Welsh people don't bother speaking or learning it.
3 - Welsh belongs only to Welsh nationalists.
...
Speak it as my first language and it isn’t difficult it’s the other way around english is far more difficult than welsh
@BEHOLD!! I think he's just listing 3 more common myths about the language.
1 - Those who say it's difficult to learn (or pronounce) are generally trying to learn it through the framework of their understanding of English and are unable to switch that off.
2 - Welsh is mandatory in schools up to (I think) age 16 now. The problem is that it has been stigmatised, and is so often listed as "useless" that many people don't want to carry on using it. IMO, it's much the same as mathematics - it's "fashionable" in school to not like maths or to find it difficult, so that pre-judges it in people's minds before they even begin. Of course they're going to dislike the subject with that prevailing mindset.
3 - Perhaps someone should tell Mark Drakeford that he's a nationalist after all...
1. Ask Steve Backshall and other English born people who are currently learning the language: program called iaith ar daith.
2. I disagree with you there mate, as would most my family, friends and colleagues, don’t prove yourself to be stupid by saying this stuff
3. Welsh is available to be learnt on duolingo and SaysomethinginWelsh
@@bujin1977 "Those who say it's difficult to learn (or pronounce) are generally trying to learn it through the framework of their understanding of English and are unable to switch that off."
That's a great point. I've learned Spanish since moving from Wales to Spain, and found that a lot of native English speakers struggle to learn Spanish at first, because of this. Once people realise it's not a 1-to-1 correlation between languages, and different tongues have different ways of expressing things, it makes things a lot easier.