“Do you speak Welsh as a hobby?”

[syme]

I think this is a ridiculous question, bordering offensive. I was at a smart dinner with a friend who was brought up speaking Welsh as his first language in a very Welsh speaking area.

We got put to sit near a friend of his and her acquaintance. For background, this girl openly admitted that the only time she had left London for Wales was to visit her friend’s holiday cottage in West Wales. She is very bright too, and studied... languages.

Anyhow conversation is moving on, and she turns to him and asks him about his upbringing etc, and after him explaining the above, she asked

“So, you speak Welsh as a hobby?”

Do French people speak French as a hobby? Is your hobby to speak the language you think in?

Ugh - that should be a collague educated in a majority Welsh speaking area who didn't like being told to talk about Hamlet in English during Literature lessons. Sorry for confusion.

Welsh speakers have declined 2% in the last census. This isn't a criticism of Welsh, this is just the general trend as English becomes more dominant as the lingua franca and around the world.

@syme

consolidated. Please do fuck off. You can't read or write your mother tongue? You sound a bit thick, so don't chastise me for poor grammar.

You're seriously calling me thick for not being able to read or write a language I haven't read or written for 30 years? 🤣

Off you fuck, cuntychops. And your grammar is shit. 'We got put to sit* 😂
@syme

consolidated. Please do fuck off. You can't read or write your mother tongue? You sound a bit thick, so don't chastise me for poor grammar.

You're seriously criticising me for not being able to read or write a language I haven't read or written for 30 years?

Off you fuck, cuntychops. And your grammar is shot. 'We got put to sit* 😂

I actually thought the number of Welsh speakers was on the increase.

Satsumaeater That's my understanding too.

Slight red herring but many years ago when I was in Germany, a friend of a friend asked me 'Is Welsh really much different from English?'

I'm sure they heard the clanging of my jaw in Cardiff! TBF, I think the guy asking me thought that Welsh was a dialect of English in the way that there are two versions of German but one is definitely in the minority.

Welsh speakers have declined 2% in the last census. This isn't a criticism of Welsh, this is just the general trend as English becomes more dominant as the lingua franca and around the world.

0n the other hand the Annual Population Survey conducted by the ONS in June 2018 suggested that 29.7 per cent of the population of Wales aged 3 and over were able to speak the language, implying a possible increase in the prevalence of the Welsh language since the 2011 census. You will appreciate that it is not a simple question of either being able to speak Welsh or not, there are degrees.

I teach Welsh swear words to anyone who listens 😂 First language Welsh here. Not as a hobby of course 🤔

I politely answered your questions @AndhowcouldIeverrefuse. Would you like to answer me?

Hi limited. Catching up with the thread.

I didn't understand your story hence my questions. Monoglots are not impossible to find but they are very unusual - I thought you might be a nurse dealing with a person with dementia, or someone with learning disabilities for example. I think linguists would have wanted to interview the person you describe as I understand it was widely accepted that save the very elderly there were no monolingual Welsh speakers after the 60s. So yes it is remarkable, for me the most remarkable aspect of your story!

I wouldn't describe using an interpreter to communicate with someone as speaking to them, certainly not in the context of this thread, although I can see how you would in journalism. The use of an interpreter is an important and crucial detail, so much so that you were unable to communicate with this person due to the lack of an interpreter.

My point about people minding their own business is that when most people speak Welsh it is not a political statement, just everyday life. They are not thinking about the plight of the Catalans or the percentage of homes owned by outsiders in the nearest tourist resort. Just asking what you want for dinner, helping the kids with homework, texting a friend, reading an obituary etc.

Slight de-rail but am interested to note the criticisms of “we got put to sit” in the OP. Like many another turn of phrase this is fairly widely used insome parts of Wales and I suspect stems from the direct literal translation from Welsh of “we were seated”. The evolution of languages and their relationships with each other is truly fascinating imo.

Very odd comment, I'm guessing she meant was it a first language or a secondary language, but describing it as a hobby is pretty offensive. My old flatmate was welsh speaking as his mother tongue and spoke to his parents on the phone in Welsh, otherwise he spoke English of course so few people knew. It's really common to speak another language at home here (Indian languages mostly or Swahili).

I think the acquaintance version of LTB would be appropriate

I'm so sorry, I confess I do.
My ds(3) loves fireman Sam and so I'm exposed to it daily.
It's a gorgeous accent. I can't help myself. I'm not Welsh even vaguely. My daughter lives in Cardiff. Goes to Cardiff uni. When I'm there it's just like music to my ears.
When fireman Sam is on, I can't help but spk (attempt) to spk in a Welsh accent.
No offence what so ever intended to the welsh. I genuinely love it.
Do agree though with op. I think person who asked is clearly very dizzy.

Nid oedd unrhyw bethau gwell i’w wneud

Well, of course I think her question was ridiculous, and probably her wording “hobby” was not quite how she intended it (hopefully!)
OP you have described it as “bordering on offensive” and yes, I think this is exactly what it is...not quite offensive, you can give her ignorance the benefit of the doubt...but it does feel quite irritating when someone belittles something important to you as a “hobby”.
I have lived in Wales all my life but both parents only speak English, so I was one of those children described upthread who was forced to learn Welsh immersively and to speak it in school. I did every one of my subjects through Welsh except English, including science and modern languages. It almost certainly helped me learn other languages, and I also did A levels in French and German (so it wasn’t at the expense of other languages as a pp suggested, but rather the opposite).
I went to uni in England but returned to Wales, married a Welsh speaker. My children are in welsh medium ed, and both my husband and I work in almost entirely welsh speaking workplaces. Our village (outskirts of Cardiff) is more or less 50% Welsh speaking with lots of adult learners.
It’s annoying when people don’t know or understand, but as long as they’re not intentionally dismissive or rude I try and brush it off.

Ozziewozzie what do you do? “Speak Welsh as a hobby”? Are you watching Fireman Sam in actual Welsh and trying to mimic it, or do you just mean “doing the accent”?
Just curious.

Just discussed this with DP who has Welsh as a first language, having grown up in a predominantly Welsh-speaking area. What irritates him are people who fail to even acknowledge that Welsh is spoken and make crass remarks about it.

I have learnt some Welsh so that I can talk to his family and friends and speak it in local shops and pubs but sometimes I can't think of the Welsh word and have to resort to English. But everyone is fine about it and seems to appreciate that I have at least made some effort.

DP says that he doesn't know anyone over the age of 6 who is completely monoglot in Welsh. Teenagers in his family speak a weird hybrid language in which a sentence uses some Welsh, some English and usually ends with 'Whatever!'

Some people are not as comfortable speaking English but nearly all in his circle can understand spoken English perfectly well. As he says, they don't sit glued to S4C exclusively - his family like crap English soaps as much as the rest of the country. Welsh-speaking grannie loves Emmerdale. I have trouble with the Yorkshire accents but she doesn't apparently.

ChickPeaPie

Cornish has undergone a revival in the last 20 odd years and there are now quite a few speakers, including some people for whom it is their first language.

It is not dissimilar to Welsh and Breton - DP was fascinated to realise that he could understand Cornish as a native Welsh speaker!

Poutysprout....I'm using ssiw:). Its ace.

When we've been to Brittany we can speak Welsh there and be understood as the Breton language has some similarities...there's a huge InterCeltic festival there every summer embracing the culture and language of Celtic nations....shame we can't recognise the importance of these cultures in the U.K. more widely
My dcs were educated in a Welsh speaking medium from nursery age, my dh was also educated in Welsh at primary level. However all 3 dcs have chosen to study at Universities outside of Wales as where we live ( rural N Wales) there are few job opportunities which is such a shame as it's a beautiful part of the world and they speak of Hiraeth when away from home
Hiraeth (pronounced [hiraɪ̯θ]) is a Welsh concept of longing for home, which can be loosely translated as 'nostalgia', or, more commonly, 'homesickness'. Many Welsh people claim 'hiraeth' is a word which cannot be translated, meaning more than solely "missing something" or "missing home."

I'm Scottish and only speak English. I do joke that music is my second language. I know some words in French and I should make more of an effort to learn another language. However, at the moment, I tend to go on holiday to another English-speaking country.

I am slightly surprised that nobody has brought up history to explain the way that Wales is thought of. When Edward I conquered Wales and murdered Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, he set out to destroy the Welsh language and make Welsh people a lower subset of being English. This view persisted for a long, long, time.

When I was a child at school in about 71/72, there was a Welsh girl who moved to my school. At home, she spoke Welsh, but at school, she was severely punished if she dared to speak a single word. She had been belted for doing so. The absolute oldest we were at that point was 6. I often wonder if my interest in Welsh history stems from my friendship with her. I even spelled DD2's name in the Welsh way, and she spends her life correcting people who think she has spelled it incorrectly!

Sadly, casual - an not so casual - racism is alive and well in the UK. Just ask anyone who has Polish ancestors. But that is apparently 'different' as you 'can't be racist towards someone who is white'. Err, yes, you can and people frequently are. I'm sure there are many Welsh who know this.

Because everyone I know that has learnt or speaks Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic, Cornish or Scots ARE hobbyists, proud of their culture and background and keen to keep tradition alive, but with as much pre-study exposure to the language as I would have had to say Danish.

What a total load of sharn. As someone whose mother was English and who was educated at an English public school, I grew up understanding Scots from my father's family. My father could switch easily and my mother could not understand him. I also don't know any Scots who don't have some knowledge and use of Scots vocabulary or grammar, even if they think they are speaking pure English. I had no idea that I was using a Scots word (as my mother had picked up some) when I asked her cousin where she kept her ashets. Likewise anyone who uses 'do you not think' etc is using Scots grammar (and historically it was rather fluid around the Border). We have words from Scots in English - raid/rode were the same until raid was taken into English to mean something different. I have absolutely no problem reading Scots from childhood and, like all Scots, move up and down the line from Scots to English, depending on to whom I'm speaking. I also understand Middle Scots, having studied both English and Scots language and literature as my degree - perhaps a hobby, then? My father's private school had one day each week in the 1930s where they were taught in their local dialect of Scots so that they didn't lose it and were proud of it. This is a school that turned out the doctors, lawyers and CEOs of the area and was, rather embarrassingly, to where Michael Gove won a scholarship. He didn't get his ridiculous voice until he went to Oxford and got snobby. The late Lord Lieutenant of Aberdeenshire, Sir Maitland Mackie, was proud to say that he spoke as complete Scots as his farm employees. And if anyone doubts Scots with separate grammar etc, read Sunset Song where Grassic Gibbon used pure English vocabulary but the grammar and sound of Scots.

I also know people who have Gaidhlig as their first language; it's really not uncommon. Even those who speak it as a second language often have other speakers in their family.

Just gonnae no dae thaat, OK?

there is a school of thought that English's days as the global hegemonic language are numbered and that it is splintering like Latin did into various Romance languages. there will soon be more native speakers of Hinglish in India than of English worldwide.

I teach Welsh swear words to anyone who listens
@PentreBachCymraeg, please can you teach me some? My Welsh classes have been decidedly lacking in this regard. Far too much focus on mutations and stuff like that!

I am not sure if English will go quite the same way as Latin, because these days, we have far higher levels of literacy globally, and instant global communication with the Internet. I do think it will/is changing, but I'm not sure it will break into completely separate languages. It's a different world in terms of communication now, so we will have to wait and see.

There was an article on the BBC news website last week, about unexpected Welsh, and all the places people have heard it being spoken where you wouldn't expect it.

On holiday a few years back we went in a Welsh tearoom. The waiting staff spoke Welsh, they served us bara brith from a huge Welsh dresser, all round the walls were photos of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Afterwards all the staff stood in a group and sang in Welsh...

...we were in Patagonia, Argentina at the time