“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?

I think the welsh language is lovely and wanted to study one of them, but can't find anywhere to learn it.
i sort of understand the comment about a hobby though.
Perhaps it should have been worded differently but wasn't the woman meaning if it was a first or second language, used everyday or more like a hobby, pt type of thing.

I find that when I go in a shop or pub or cafe in Wales, they immediately switch from English to Welsh, just so that I won't understand them.
Strangely, something similar happens in other countries too. When I went to Germany, as soon as I went into shop the staff switched immediately to German. In France, they switched to French.

Ignorant or what. Don't they realise that we know they normally peak to each other in English.

Regular Welsh speakers, do you actually have swear words? The reason I ask is that a few years ago I was in a pub in Caernarfon, when a group of young men came in after work. They all bought pints and settled down around a big table next to ours. They were all speaking Welsh, but after a few minutes I realised I did understand some of their words - fuck, fucking, shit and cunt were spattered about!

We have swearwords. Ffyc, shit, blydi hel, cachu etc

@MikeUniformMike I guess the etymology of some of those is Anglo-Saxon .

I love the way languages grow and develop, borrow words from one another and sometimes make something new and amazing!

It's clear that Welsh is continuing to change, which is proof that it's a living language, not a dead one.

We tend to blaspheme not swear. The examples are written phonetically apart from cachu, which is shit.
Blasphemes are Duw! Diawl! Uffern etc. (God, Devil, Hell etc)

Talking about evolving Welsh Language.
I want to learn the language spoken by The Kale in Wales and used up until the 1950's.
I'd love to meet someone who spoke it.

I remember people who could only speak welsh.
I'm from a community where you would speak Welsh at home, in school, in shops, at work ad so on, and would rarely need to speak English.
It was an issue, for example, if an elderly person was taken ill (e.g stroke, dementia), they would struggle to speak/be understood, which could be distressing for the patient.

Ohhh yes,we have lots of swear words. My Nain/Grandmother was hilarious after a sherry bach

Alpaca the C word is famously used very widely in the Caernarfon area, where "shw mae, cont?" is an acceptable greeting between friends.

For failsafe swearing and as said above you can add "uffernol" to anything. For example, one of my colleagues called another ast uffernol (f*ing bitch). Happy days