(no subject)

[raincitygirl]

I just heard the most remarkable assertion: that people who are born and raised in Wales but don’t speak Welsh aren’t *really* Welsh, they’re just English in disguise. I’m not Welsh myself, but I rather took offense at that on principle. By that logic, I pointed out, Scots who don’t speak Gaelic aren’t really Scots. But according to him, Gaelic is a dead language while Welsh is a living language, and that makes the difference. Whatevs. I decided not to argue any further but make a strategic withdrawal from the conversation instead. However, if I had argued further, I would have invited the guy to walk into a crowded pub in, say, Cardiff and proclaim his theory to the people there.

In other news, I got three hours sleep last night, so I’m feeling a little punchy. And in other, other news my brand-new CPAP machine seems to have something wrong with it. Hope I didn’t buy a lemon. Sigh. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

Comments

[legionseagle]

Cardiff would be an excellent choice for the experiment (see also Barry, where they'd probably just have a fight on the principle of the thing before the chap opened his mouth). This sounds like a classic clash of North Wales (which is the linguistic heartland) and South Wales (the industrial heartland), and the best comeback to it in my experience is to point out that if the Welsh had been able to stop arguing among themselves Edward I would never had annexed them back in the 13th century in the first place.

[raincitygirl]

Interesting. I hadn’t considered the division between the linguistic heartland and the industrial heartland. However, I’ve no idea if this guy even IS of Welsh background himself, or if he was just holding forth on a topic about which he knew nothing. He was being so dogmatic in his pronouncements that I just didn’t have the energy to argue with him.

[sollers]

I fall into the category and I definitely take offence. My home tongue was Wenglish. A lot of my mother's generation didn't speak Welsh because they or their parents were punished for doing so; if first we're compelled not to speak Welsh and then we're dissed for not being proper Welsh, that's putting the icing on it.

Applying that logic to Ireland, the vast majority of the population is not proper Irish. I'd like to be a fly on the wall when someone suggested that in person.

[raincitygirl]

Yeah, it’s quite the Catch 22, isn’t it? We won’t let you speak Welsh, but if you don’t speak it, you’re not really Welsh. I thought his criteria for inclusion in the Welsh nation were deeply screwed up, but on three hours sleep I just didn’t have the spoons to argue with him. There is a certain type of dogmatic person where you know in advance you won’t win the argument. Even if you happen to be right, they’ll never concede it. I prefer to change the subject and then passive-aggressively grumble about him on the internet.

[clanwilliam]

I'd love to have seen his face if you'd said that Scots who don't speak Scots aren't Scots since he probably thinks that doesn't exist at all.

And I'd pay to watch him walk into a crowded pub in Newport, for extra violence.

I'm not Welsh, and I am a (very badly) Irish-speaking Irishwomen.

And he's not going to be too popular in Scotland either. What the hell does he think this is? (The glossary is brilliant, both for certain words and for leaving you wondering what they've been reporting on.)