Insular towns and villages

[Cactus1982]

Has anyone else ever lived or worked on of these places? By insular I mean fearful, mistrustful and in some cases down right hostile to ‘outsiders’? There’s a large village about fifteen minutes outside of the town I live in that has always had a reputation for being like this. Apparently, in non Covid times if you as an outsider walked into a pub there it would go quiet and everyone would stare at you. I always took this with a pinch of salt until I started working there this last week. I swear that as I walk from my car down the street people slow down and stare intently at me as though I’ve got three heads. I know we are living in strange times, but this is very unnerving. I was also asked by someone how far I’d traveled to get there and when I told them they said ‘oooooh that’s a long way’ as though I’d come from Mars or somewhere. It’s not a long way, it’s a fifteen minute drive! I’d never actually have believed it had it not experienced it with my own eyes!

Are there any other places like this in the UK?

@Thisbastardcomputer

I went to Wales and it was like this, started speaking in Welsh when they realised I was English

I walked into a cafe in N Wales with my brother about 20 years ago and exactly the same happened. They were taken aback when he replied to them in Welsh! (He is English, but a fluent Welsh speaker).

Gwenhwyfar "mewkins
Happened to me in Bala too!"

"Bala's very Welsh speaking and the people you meet speaking Welsh there are likely to be native speakers who speak English as a second language. Why the hell would they be speaking English to each other and keep their Welsh only for the occasional moments a tourist comes in?
Welsh is not Latin. We do actually speak it in real life. It's not there just to puzzle you."

You seem to be taking all this extremely personally. No one is suggesting the Welsh shouldn't speak Welsh!

But going into a tailspin of basically accusing people of lying, when several clearly state that the conversation switched from English to Welsh as soon as an English person was clocked, does seem a little extreme.

This is actually what has happened to people! In the spirit of dozens of others saying they've experienced 'the pub silence' and joking about Royston Vasey, and the language switch, why not see it as another manifestation of that not-just-British thing of 'You're not from 'round 'ere, are 'ee?.....

Unless you're the Welsh Tourist Board Mumsnet Attaché.... 😂

Well, I don't know how you can know what language people are speaking before you get there. Unless you sneak into a shop without being seen and then duck behind shelves.

But it's the same with a certain type of English person in Spain, Italy or France - they think they are being talked about when if you know the language, you know it's innocuous chitter-chatter about nothing very much.

Regarding outback Australian towns; they have three pubs.

One is for the locals, white blokes, off the (sheep/cattle) stations, local hardware store, supermarket, road-house etc.

One for the Aboriginal population.

One for the government workers on contract; police, teachers, nurses, agricultural scientists, weathermen.

The three don't mix!

Considering that Welsh people are also British, thus immersed in British culture, and also fluent English speakers and used to switching between the two; and that Welsh is a very old language with a great many loan-words, especially for more modern items and concepts from - as you'd probably expect - English.... are people positive that the folk they hear reportedly suddenly switching to Welsh positive that they were previously speaking exclusively English?

Might it not possibly be that, as you were entering through the door and not yet actively listening, you subconsciously caught a few familiar English words (or loan-words/words that sounded like English words); and then, once you're there and actively listening to them, you hear words that you don't recognise and thus assume that they were speaking purely English as you approached and then that they are now speaking purely Welsh - partly buoyed by the fact they have a distinctively Welsh accent?

@mermaisaeriel..close!

@Peregrina

There is a definite pattern here. Most villages are insular.

If Welsh villages then the locals who normally talk Welsh decide to talk English when they see a stranger in the distance, so that they can revert back to Welsh as soon as the stranger speaks to them.

English villages lack the advantage of another language, so they have to content themselves with silent stares when a stranger hovers into view. In this case, a stranger comes from a village three miles away.

The trouble is that a lot of villages and small market towns don't have a lot for people to do, so that the people with a bit of get up and go leave, and don't go back. Making the village they left behind even more insular.

This is a huge issue in Eastern Europe. The better educated and more ambitious leave for broader pastures, leaving behind.... the young men. Who then become more insular and extreme in their views. Hence the rise of The Right. And narrow-minded, insular views, fed back at them in their social groups.

I know small village in Cornwall like this. Have friends who love there. Have had farmers back step in the shop to look down an aisle at me. Tractors slowing and lins go silent. Mind you the sea fret can linger there for weeks sometimes driving everyone mad so
I think they have bigger problems than one frequent ‘stranger’.

Pubs not lins

West Cornwall?

North Cornwall miljea but know of somewhere near Penzance which everyone says is similar. Further west ?

@Miljea
I never once saw any of the following two groups in an outback pub, very few women too unless they worked in it!
That's the really tiny one horse towns though, only slightly better in the bigger places.
I had great fun in most, and moved to a relatively big mining town.

Second two groups, not following.
Im tired!

I genuinely didn't think this was a thing until I experienced it first hand a few years ago in Cornwall. Following a gentle hike and finding some dried out Hollyhocks on the ground of country lane, I thought oh they'll be an excellent addition to the living-room. Nice addition of some au naturale decor!

Popped into a village public house on the route back and wow - really odd atmosphere. Drawn out looks and muttering, by who I assume were locals. After ordering a beverage at the bar, one of them turned to me and bellowed in a strong Cornish accent 'Ave you been PICKING!' At that moment I was transported back to feeling like a child and mumbled something like 'so sorry they were on the floor so I didn't pick them!' whilst retreating. After that experience the idea of living in a chocolate box picturesque village was crushed.

I’m about to move back to the UK after a decade overseas... the place we’ll likely go has not been mentioned thankfully! However, I obviously need to consider the wording for an introductory fb post very carefully

If the next door town 10 minutes drive is ‘moving away’ and London is too far away to contemplate, then how to frame having lived in Asia?!

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll - I'm neither deaf nor stupid. I know what I experienced and why would I lie about it?

We lived in a little village in Worcestershire Years ago. We had a neighbour who was elderly and had lived in the area all his life. Initially he seemed friendly, but it soon became apparent he was obsessed with cutting down trees. We oblidged with some of the trees, but then he wanted more cut down. Things became very frosty over a fence... anyway he had evidently bad mouthed us to the whole village because every time we went in the pub a hostile silence would descend and everyone would turn and stare. Never experienced anything like it. He was an absolute nightmare neighbour for years and made our lives a misery.

@ShangPie

I’m about to move back to the UK after a decade overseas... the place we’ll likely go has not been mentioned thankfully! However, I obviously need to consider the wording for an introductory fb post very carefully

If the next door town 10 minutes drive is ‘moving away’ and London is too far away to contemplate, then how to frame having lived in Asia?!

@ShangPie, as a dire warning, I was written off as a ‘snob’ before I even arrived in the village in the removal van with a small baby. My crime? Having sent a polite text message to the organiser of the local baby group (number on the village website — I was asking if there was another meeting this side of Christmas) that used a capital letter at the start of the sentence and a question mark at the end. And said thanks. Apparently that signalled I was ‘up myself’.

And no, I have no idea what I should have written instead.

Cloisters that'll learn ye.

@WakeUpSchmakeUp

Cloisters that'll learn ye.

I know. That was me put very firmly in my place.

I moved to a village as a teenager after living in a city. People knew me as 'oh you're the girl who drives a red car' before they even knew my name which was creepy!

I’m Welsh and had always hoped the “switching to Welsh from English” thing was an urban myth. So I asked a good friend who speaks Welsh as her first language but grew up in England. She said she’s seen it happen herself.

The only village I’ve felt uncomfortable in is Nassington. Odd place.

I'm neither deaf nor stupid. I know what I experienced and why would I lie about it?

I never suggested you were (not that there's any shame in being deaf) - I was just wondering if there might be the potential for misunderstanding amongst some of the people who state they've experienced this - especially those who seem to perfectly hear and acknowledge people speaking in a language that they themselves don't know, before they've even entered the premises.

I know there are some bilingual people who use it to their advantage for rude/unkind purposes when they think/hope the person they're discussing doesn't also understand. It's just that some people in some of these threads have the tendency to suggest that ALL Welsh people speaking Welsh amongst themselves are only doing so out of rudeness and nastiness.

For all we know, if the people are indeed speaking English and then switch when a stranger comes in, it could be that they see an unknown person come in, know that they're in Wales and so lead with/revert to their national language as a courtesy.

If they lead in Welsh and then see that the newcomer doesn't understand, they will then switch to English; however, because all Welsh speakers do also speak English and can thus respond in kind if addressed in the dominant UK language, it's very common for English to then become the default and for Welsh to end up suppressed - even when it happens that the two hitherto-unknown-to-each-other people are FL Welsh speakers.

To be fair, I'm guessing that many of those of us who only/mainly speak English would use it more for deliberately 'secretive' purposes when in other countries - were it not for the fact that it's so widely known and/or understood!

At Eurovision, the entrants from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Israel, Latvia, Serbia etc. could for all we know (I'm sure they don't) be slagging off the other performers' songs and clothes in front of everybody until they're blue in the face; whereas those of us with English (or possibly French) as a native tongue simply wouldn't dare

I think we can put the 'revert to Welsh' thing to bed, maybe? Plenty of people have concurred. Including Welsh speakers.