excuse my ignorance - can any welsh/welsh speaking mners help me out please

[meemar]

Hi - I'm going to a wedding in a small town in North Wales next month. We have been sent the invite with hotel list. Obviously place names/hotel names are all in Welsh language.

Here's my dilemma. When I phone up to book a room, do I assume they speak English, and talk away without making the effort to at least say 'hello' in Welsh (like a bad Brit abroad).

Or do I say 'Do you speak English?' and sound really patronising.

I really have no idea

Thanks

They will speak English and would expect an English person to say hello and carry out the booking in English.

But bless you for being so thoughtful.

BTW that is if they are not seasonal workers from Eastern Europe of course!!

They will all speak english. But not all will want to. If you get one that doesn't wish to speak english don't bother booking with them as they won't treat you well.

This is from a welsh person who speaks a smattering of welsh only.

If they hotel is anything like a around here, the person you speak to will be aussie/polish/south african....

But if you do get a welsh person, the odd greeting would be nice:

Bore da - good morning
diolch - thank you

Anyone who runs a hotel in North Wales will be able - and more than happy - to deal with you in fluent English. I think it's really nice that you are asking the question and not taking the 'oh those horrid Welsh people deliberately talking Welsh to each other to exclude me' line that English people sometimes go in for. Have a lovely time!

Thanks for replies - I do think it's important to at least make a gesture to other languages, even if you can only say hello and thank you. It helped out loads when I travelled in Asia!

Now all I need to worry about is my outfit -Snowdonia in October might be a tad chilly for my usual wedding flimsy frocks

Have a look here for pronunciation (don't jump out of your skin like I did - the page does have some bizarre background music). Hope this helps - Welsh can seem pretty impenetrable sometimes...