Brother texts greetings in Welsh

Glad you recognise - nine months after the original post - that your knee-jerk response is unreasonable. I think I can speak for Welsh speakers in Wales when I say that people who move here who embrace the culture - which includes the language - are exactly the kind of people we are happy to call new neighbours. Our language was nearly wiped out and to have people other than those born here and native speakers actually care about it is truly ffantastig.

Rydych chi'n bod yn chwerthinllyd!

I'm a bit late to the party, but found this thread by searching for the word 'Welsh,' because I love languages and Welsh is one of them.

However, I really understand where you are (unreasonably) coming from. I have a brother and sister-in-law whose every birthday and Christmas card to any of us is in Welsh. They are not Welsh, but they live there.

Honestly? It's really annoying. Every card is perfectly nice, but still, weirdly irritating! But the really silly thing is that I am literally learning Welsh by CHOICE as an adult, yet it still annoys me an unreasonable amount. Humans are weird things!!! 😁

I think it’s sweet. He just trying to share a bit of where he lives.

It sounds like then your issue is more with your brothers lack of communication than the fact he texts in Welsh. That changes things somewhat and shifts the focus from Welsh to his rubbishness.

Ok, so how will you take the information you've received on this thread forward into your life?

And it's a bit of a new information that you and your brother aren't usually in contact.

But lovely, if you are pro Welsh and you like the land and the people as you state, then you would never have posted your original message.

We've worked so hard to get our language back and the fact that your brother uses it does not diminish you in any way.

Maybe you could have embraced his new life this side of the bridge and celebrated with him?

Well said 👏

Welsh should be classed as my second language, because I was born in England and moved to Wales and grew up in a household that spoke zero Welsh - however, I learned Welsh so well from the age of 4 that I ended up taking the first language GCSEs (and doing pretty well!), so I consider myself first language no matter what people say.

I've taught in a Welsh medium-school and run a Welsh-language business. I'd love for anyone to tell me I shouldn't use incidental Welsh because I wasn't born here.

I fully agree @Arlanymor I very much doubt this post would exist if it was about French or Chinese or whatever. But Welsh seems fair game to continually be put down.

(dwi’n dwli ar dy enw di! Dwi’n caru’r gân ❤️)

So interesting how this panned out. I speak English, Welsh (only second because not my mother tongue because of aggressive English Parliament attitudes towards Welsh), French and German.

Some people are absolute tits aren’t they?

I’ve never in my whole life told anyone they are/aren’t allowed to converse in a language that they didn’t learn at their mother’s knee. Who the hell has the right to do that? And the continued ‘putting down’ of Welsh language is a way of putting down Wales. And anyone who claims otherwise is either abundantly dumb or deliberately evil. Choose your camp. And how fucking DARE you?

There are no parts of wales that are not Welsh speaking. Some have more Welsh speakers than others of course, but Welsh speakers are everywhere.
as a linguist you probably know that bilingualism has massive benefits for the brain whatever the languages are, so it would make sense from that perspective to raise a child bilingually in the local language even if there are relatively few Welsh speakers in that area. Every part of wales has Welsh medium schools.

I remember suggesting this once on AIBU very many years ago and people reacted like I’d suggest they teach children how to goose step. It was crazy how angry people got!

Welsh is not dying. Far from it, if you look at the number of speakers by age bracket, 50% of under 25s are Welsh speakers. That’s a very heartening number. Welsh suddenly is cool to young people in a way it never was when I was a teenager. Ni yma o hyd!

🤣🤣
thanks for that - I put the phrase into google translate to see what the poster was saying and it also gave me ‘get over yourself’ so very useful to know it doesn’t actually mean that!

Believe me, if you'd met my BIL, you'd be irritated as well.

I think she's flipping amazing for making that choice. How else will those "non-Welsh-speaking areas" (no such thing btw, Welsh is spoken all over Wales but to varying degrees of popularity) become Welsh speaking?

I’ve understood perfectly. Wherever you live in Wales it is not odd to want to learn the language. That is the only way to get more speaking it.

And stopped us wearing green !

I don't think you've understood. Where she lives is not an area renowned for speaking Welsh. If she were west or north then yes, of course, it's far more prevelant. Her area (where I used to live) is not Welsh speaking. However, as I said, fair play to her. I think having a bilingual child is enormously helpful for their future.

A lot of English people in Wales use those phrases as it’s just what’s around. Ditto things like ‘dim probs’ on texts etc for ‘no problem’. It’s a bilingual country, he’ll absorb it and I don’t really see why hs should check himself when communicating with you when you know what it means? He’s trying to include you in his life I think.

I think it’s extremely odd to think it’s odd that someone wants to learn the language of the country they are living in and bringing up their child to do the same!

I think this comes down to brothers being very annoying.
everything my brother does irritates me.

I find it reasonable but I’m a linguist who lived in Wales. I did find it odd that a colleague insisted on learning Welsh then raising her child to speak Welsh when it wasn’t either parents’ native language and the area wasn’t Welsh speaking, but fair play.