To think that Cardiff is essentially an English city?

[hirwaun]

Despite changes over recent years to "welshify" Cardiff... to me, it essentially feels like an English city. Barely any different to Bristol over the channel.

If you look at surnames of people living there, and exclude those who have moved more recently from other parts of Wales... the vast majority of families have roots in England.

Culturally Cardiff feels very different to other bits of Wales, even those 5 miles into the valleys feel so much more Welsh.

The Cardiff accent is mainly an english accent, especially in the nicer areas and the older generation sound almost RP.

I'm not really qualified to say , being Irish and all. But I've spent a lot of time in Wales and to me Cardiff seems a lot more Welsh than Pembrokeshire. Haverfordwest seems quite Middle England . Whereas I actually heard a good bit of Welsh spoken in Cardiff.

This charge is often levelled at Dublin by English people. Could be Bristol or Newcastle , just vastly more expensive etc. I think capitalism makes everything look a bit homogeneous . Same shops , same clothes , same beer 🍻

The valleys are more than 5 miles from Cardiff. It’s 10
miles to Pontypridd and 5 miles north is still in Cardiff county.

Cardiff is probably the only place in Wales where you can drive for 20 minutes and still be in town.

that’s because they’ve fucked it with pedestrianisation and out of sync traffic lights. Took me 35 mins to get from Park Place to the train station car park some months ago.

I'm very confused as to what your point is here.

You relate an experience of some (rude, or at least thoughtless) people making you feel that your kids somehow don't fully belong in Cardiff because you're not "Welsh enough". And from this you conclude that in fact Cardiff is not "Welsh enough" but really just an English city in Wales?

I can't see the logic, TBH.

For what it's worth, as an English parent living in Cardiff I've found it a very welcoming - and Welsh - city. But like any city it is a collage of overlapping communities. Many of the people I know in Cardiff I have met through my children's Welsh medium school, and they definitely don't have those in England!

I think I know what you mean. I lived in Edinburgh for twenty years and it was, I think, the most ‘English’ part of Scotland in that there were a lot of English people living there, hear English accents a lot, most Scottish accents are not terribly strong there. Probably due to it being a university town, and a great place to live, so lots of people stay in after studying.

Cardiff is nothing like Bristol though. Bristol is way superior. Cardiff is more like a town than a city, and not a particularly large or busy town at that. It doesn’t have the volume of people, diversity, culture or activities or wealth to rival Bristol or most other major English or Scottish cities.

Cardiff is friendlier though (generally).

Yes Cardiff is friendly, that's true. Even on the last train on the Valley line at night, people are absolutely rat-arsed but still really friendly! Never any bother!

Yeah, but I don't think anyone in Scotland would disagree about Edinburgh. The whole of Wales disagrees about Cardiff!

Yabu

in terms of culture and activities, I mean, I don't think bristol has a parliament, government, opera, or any particularly big arenas/stadium? (I know one is being built).
Literally in the last few weeks Beyonce, Coldplay and Harry Styles have played arena tours in Cardiff (along with lots of smaller bands)...again don't think any of them played Bristol!
Don't think Bristol has ever hosted the 6 nations or anything similar...

in terms of diversity, Cardiff was slightly more ethnically diverse than bristol as of the last census.

Not sure how you'd categorise wealth in terms of a city?

They both have things going for them, but although smaller Cardiff is obviously going to have more going on simply because it's the capital of a country, whereas bristol is just one of many english cities.

Not to say I don't like both, Bristol has a lot more history, for example (Cardiff was pretty much a village up until the industrial revolution). The airport is much bigger/better. It also has a lot more hills!