I think I've just experienced what it's like in England..

[Builtthiscityonsausagerolls]

To not be a native English speaker.

My natural first language is Welsh. I went to an English university and obviously have a native proficiency in English but when chatting im more comfortable in Welsh.

So... I'm on a train in the Midlands with a friend. Had a chatty conversation with the conducter in English, guy sitting across from us very friendly. The we switched to Welsh and the difference in attitude was immediate. Felt very hostile. Very hard to explain, but as soon as we switched languages it became almost threatening?

I'm used to speaking Welsh in maybe more border towns (mainly chester) where its quite common, but thinking about it not in 'deep' England :) 😀

We keep going over it, but the change in attitude was definitely when we changed language. Is this really the experienced of non-English speakers? The hostility really was quite overt

Tasech chi wedi treiglo yn gywir yn eich post, fuaswn i ddim wedi ymateb.

Llongyfarchiadau ar y radd uwch on mae'n biti eich bod yn camdreiglo pan yn siarad a phostio.

If you had mutated correctly in your post, I would not have reacted.

Congratulations on your higher degree in Welsh but it's a pity that you mutate incorrectly when speaking and posting.

@FiHefyd & @GogLais

Awesome as your language skills are, & much as I've enjoyed all your posts, os gwelwch yn dda, stop with the grammar assassinations already

It is so hard for us monoglots to learn Welsh in our dotage that it's a bit dispiriting to see experts showing us how it only gets bloody harder, the more you learn ... not conducive to either confidence or promoting uptake of classes!

Ahem. As you were

To be honest, Welsh is not the most er, sonorous language to the ear and it can be quite a shock to the uninitiated. I had to phone the Eduqas exam board recently and you get a recorded message in Welsh that sounds like full-on shouting. It is quite a shock if you’re not used to it.

Blimey - funny how we hear things differently, but it would be a dull world if we were all the same.

I don't experience Welsh as sounding harsh or guttural, as does PP, & hear it as literally sonorous - musical, lyrical ... the language of bards!

Welsh is a lovely language. I speak Spanish, English, Italian and French, and am currently trying to teach myself Welsh. Wondering why I’m bothering though after reading some of the grammar assassinations upthread! Surely it’s good that people are trying?

I don’t experience Welsh as harsh or guttural either. It’s sonorous and musical sounding to me. In Wales we call it iaith y nefoedd - the language of heaven!

@pilar3 isn’t that way more likely to be that particular speaker’s style?!

I think Welsh sounds beautiful. Carys is such a beautiful sounding name and meaning. Bach also and Seren. I know very few words but can’t see any grounds for saying it’s an unappealing sound.

I heard someone once describe hearing Welsh as hearing the ancient winds of time and I love how poetic that is.

@dropitlikeitsloth what a lovely phrase

[quote Helpstopthepain]@HesterShaw1 I know a few who speak Cornish, they definitely will hunt you down and kill you dreckly (after their pint).[/quote]
😁🍻

@pilar3

To be honest, Welsh is not the most er, sonorous language to the ear and it can be quite a shock to the uninitiated. I had to phone the Eduqas exam board recently and you get a recorded message in Welsh that sounds like full-on shouting. It is quite a shock if you’re not used to it.

I think the Welsh I’ve heard sounds lovely.

Yes it could have been that particular speaker’s style of Welsh that sounded very harsh. That’s true.

[quote MissHavershamReturns]@dropitlikeitsloth what a lovely phrase[/quote]
It is isn’t it, so nice and I know what they mean 😊

@ChargingBuck

I remember being in Wales on holiday when the kids were very little and they had a hour's lead rein ride. The girls that worked at the yard spoke perfect English to us initially - were pleasant enough personally but the entire hour whilst they were leading the kids on their ride, they chatted to each other in Welsh completely throwing us a blank unless we specifically spoke to them.

Aww come on @PinniGig that's not to do with language preference, it's to do with lead rein work being the most-dreaded job for yard girls in riding stables everywhere, & girls/very young women being totally disinterested in engaging outside the fascination of their own social grouping & shared interests.

If they'd been speaking english, they'd still have been completely uninterested in you, no matter how lovely your family is!

So true!! I know the girls on our yard very well, one is my own child and believe me they don’t care about you because you aren’t a horse.

[quote Purplebunnie]@Stellaroses

It happened to me in Blaenau Ffestiniog 30+ years ago. The lady in the shop and her assistant were speaking English and when we spoke and they heard our accents they changed to Welsh. It 100% did happen. Why would I lie about it? What do I gain?[/quote]
Welsh people often flip back and fore. There is a dialect known as Wenglish which is a blend of both languages that many people use. It’s very common to start a conversation in English then throw in a Welsh word which then initiates flipping into Welsh. I suspect that is responsible for the majority of these ‘they started speaking Welsh when we walked in’ conversations.

As a teenager in England 40 years ago I was sitting on a train pretentiously attempting to read Jean de floret in french when two teenagers got on and settled down opposite me and started chatting away in Welsh in a pretty unfriendly way about me, saying eg ‘I bet she can’t understand a word of that” etc. I was quite weedy and quiet as a teenager and didn’t tell them I was a fluent welsh speaker (they were actually quite accurate in their assessment of my understanding of the book itself) and just listened to them instead. It was a weird experience.

Actually China is proportionately less diverse as various empires through the centuries have insisted on rooting out previous / regional versions
And then of course the people’s republic !

For such a big populous country - the diversity is actually not so much
The country example is India - which has historically and in modern times retained a federal view of the geography , regardless of ruler . Yes there were court / strays languages ( British empire ) but ther was never any attempt to stamp down on diversity

The official count is well over 100,000 languages . Not dialects or variants - but languages .

On the other hand - the last century saw a language die , somewhere on earth , every single day

No cause for celebration when we all try and understand each other in the language of power

OP

Re the hostility, I have experienced people being rude and paranoid when others speak in a launguage other than English

The most memorable occasion was when I was in a sauna and was late for the women only session that I usually attended and some Asian men entered the sauna.

I was talking to a woman in English and the Asian men briefly conversed in English said "hello" or something before chatting in Arabic to each other. The woman I had been speaking to started to scream at the men that they were being rude and making fun of us and that they should speak English as they were in an English sauna.

I had met the woman before at the women's pond in Hampstead and knew that she was eccentric, maybe with some mental health problems but I was really shocked and embarrassed at her outburst.

I speak a little Arabic, not enough to know what the men were talking about, but I have no doubt that the woman shouting at them was being paranoid and entitled. I asked her later about her level of Arabic language and she speaks no Arabic at all.

I apologised to the men and encouraged the woman to leave and to join me in the steam room instead.

It is my understanding that people speaking in languages we do not understand can invoke primitive feelings of paranoia in many people. I believe this is rooted in early / pre-verbal childhood experiences when children feel excluded and anxious about not being able to understand the world of adults.

in the case of the sauna it was intensified by the fact that what me and the woman I was with thought was a women only session had crossed over into a mixed session and we possibly (unreasonably) felt intruded on by men.

Humans are not really very rational at the best of times IMO

My DB many years ago was in a restaurant in Cardiff with a group of friends all Welsh speakers. A man passing their table was very rude about them “speaking a foreign language”. My DB said “with respect you’re the one doing that”.

There was also the story of the man who berated a woman “speaking a foreign language” to her child on the Cardiff to Newport replacement bus service. Another passenger on the bus said “actually she’s speaking Welsh”.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-36580448

@ChargingBuck, if you read something that is incorrect, you might learn something that is not right.

The correction was because the meaning of the post was not what was intended.

@MissHavershamReturns, bach is a term of endearment or an adjective not a Welsh name

I know! I just think it’s a beautiful word

Thank you to those who have referenced Wenglish - every day is a school day . & had I known that , that may have informed my first post .I stand corrected .

It is my understanding that people speaking in languages we do not understand can invoke primitive feelings of paranoia in many people. I believe this is rooted in early / pre-verbal childhood experiences when children feel excluded and anxious about not being able to understand the world of adults.

Oh! Cheers for a 'lightbulb moment' @hoodathunkit :)

I had my own armchair theories, but am abandoning them as over-complicated now - & besides, this 'early experience theory' really informs a lot of what I believe about the nature of social conditioning, desire for conformity, & fear of difference.

Wenglish is very definitely real. I work in a shop in a North Wales touristy area. There are lots of Welsh speakers around, some more fluent than others. I have learned enough to get the gist of what people are saying but (as is so often the way) I'm not very confident about replying.

I would say that about 1/4 to 1/3 of the people who come in to my shop with at least one other person are speaking Welsh. Some only speak in Welsh but most bounce back and forth between Welsh and English, either a whole sentence in each language or random words from the other language thrown in. If some one else started listening at the "wrong" moment, it could easily sound like they were changing from English to Welsh, when in reality they are just having a chat.