"Who's coat is that jacket by there"**News Flash**Mae'r Cymry yn CERDDED YMLAEN ac wedi ehangu ar hyd CYMRU. Nid oes siawns cau nhw lan yn Machynlleth a Lleyn!

In my humble opinion the Welsh language is worth protecting and worth defending. I grew up with Welsh-speaking friends at Ysgol Ardudwy in Harlech, Gwynedd (Then Sir Feirionedd) and I treasure my Welsh friends and I embrace the Welsh culture. I have written on the North Wales web site that I do not believe we should offer translations for Welsh names and nameplaces (e.g., Yr Wyddfa and not Snowdon). Also, we should continue to insist that Welsh teachers and Welsh government should only hire Welsh speaking people where possible. It's a real treat to hear my father speak Welsh when I visit him and I believe the language is worth studying. There's a tremendous coupling between the spoken word and music, something quite unique.

Sorry that you feel insulted, sorry you feel defending the Welsh language a culture is such a pointless costly waste of time, I've spent the last year doing gigs and events to raise money for the National Eisteddfod in Bala as have many of the population up here, my much better half works for a Welsh television company up here and she's on 20,000 less a year than what her job pays in England the cash never gets from S4C to the small companies that make the programmes, however bbc wales who share the money out have massive bugets for English language programmes and often comission English companies under BBC Wales as not to upset funding in English regions, this was obvious at the Welsh baftas as small independants from Wales were in competition with English companies with twice the funding but comission by BBC Wales,I'm sorry that you have felt your identity is in question, I grew up in the North East, Wrecsam and Deeside before confidence in being Welsh exsisted, at home as my mother had come from Gwynedd I was always aware of my identity, the fellow Welsh who were ashamed of it's uncoolness would call me sheepshagger and make fun of my Welshness and when I returned to Gwynedd to see the family the local kids had a go for being English as my spoken welsh was not natural enough,yes people who champion Welsh language can be cruel but that comes from having their backs against the wall for so long and feeling second class it's a shame that such a backlash attitude is used on non welsh speakers who should be embracing the history and culture but instead are pushed away, yes this is a complicated country, but that's what makes it such a great producer of thinking people

I used to work for British Rail. The anecdotes I could relate would fill a book.There was one guy called Billy Lucas who had a hair lip. His intolerence of passengers was legendary; any excuse and he'd get he'd put them of the train.One day we were working the same train and we came across a guy who started to spin us a tale of woe because he didn't have a ticket." I've been to court today and was fined 800.00 after getting involved in a fight that cost me a fortune cos I lost a packet on the nags and got drunk. On top of that my mother died this afternoon so I'm trying to get 'ome and I'm skint."Billy looked at me and then at him. " Not your lucky day is it pal?OFF..

Democracy is tough. You have to want it real bad to put up with it's tedious implications. But that's what we do because it's right I M O.By the way what rank are you Gar? I see three stripes on your uniform but my knowledge of the military has lapsed. Colour Sergeant, Sergeant Major ?BestIan

I remember one glorious occasion when my ex-wife ( an Oregonian ) and I were waiting for a train to take us back to home on Taffs Well station. We had just returned from walking on the Garth and admiring the "panoramic vistas" of Cardiff and the Severn Estuary. The scheduled train was late and eventually a Rhondda train arrived and pulled up at the opposite platform. The driver leaned out of his cab window and explained:-"The train wont be coming coz ituvitabucket"This is a very complex Wenglish construction. For "bucket" read "dumpster" ( god knows what it was doing on the line ) and now let us proceed to an analysis of the rest of this intriguing syntactical formulation.The single Wenglish word "ituvita" translates as " it has hit a " in English. One can only admire the marvellous economy of effort which this transformation permits. All h's are dropped to enhance speed of delivery. Also the first person is adopted instead of the third in order to allow the phrase to roll off the tongue without impediment. Of course "have" is transmuted into the much more elegant "uv".Since the English forced us to use their language many years ago, the very least we can do by way of repayment is to butcher it.

Them dam German swimmers, they still here, swine. Ah well, if my plan to retake Mercia goes off well, Kent here we come. Hooray. Free ferry back to saxony chaps, bye bye

Hey man, the English have always manipulated the long mountain streak to their west, knowing dam well geography and the A470 has been unkind to the true Britons. Divide and conquer. And a thousand years later we still seem to be doing their work for them.Ah well

HWYL

I was simply replying to the point made by Wendy Owen - Temple that " ... North Wales has a much higher percentage of true welsh language speakers . "All my family up until my father's generation were monoglot Welsh. Today the generation after myself are now bi lingual - thank the stars.I'm sorry if some Americans of Welsh descent can only see a rose tinted view of Wales but this country of ours has been is and will be far more complex than misty eyed romanticism. It's our duty to keep them up to date with events and remind them that along with the stunning beauty here this land is still occupied by real people.BestIan

We're in the middle of the National Eisteddfod this week where inevitably the issue of the Welsh and English languages arise.The 22 unitary authorities in Wales where the vast majority are English speaking Welsh now subsidise the Eisteddfod because the Welsh speakers couldn't make it pay. However the Welsh speakers who run the thing still maintain that ony Welsh speakers are really Welsh and they want to keep all competitions and ceremonies in Welsh.I think this is absolute nonsense. If the majority who pay for the event are English speakers then the very least that could be done is to make the Eisteddfod totally bi lingual. Unfortunately there's still that attitude that only Welsh speakers are really Welsh. This causes a certain enmity between the various factions.The alternative is to let the Welsh speaking minority pay for the whole event again and keep it totally Welsh speaking.On another point S4C - the Welsh language channel is the most subsidised in the world. It gets 100,000,000 a year to run a channel that rarely had an audience of more than 80,000. Wales has a population of over 3,000,000 fifteen percent of which speak Welsh. When it became obvious that the Welsh language viewing figures were consistently low they weren,t published anymore.The arguement for maintaining and increasing further funding for a channel that would long ago have died in a market economy is that, no matter how low the viewing figures the demographic the channel is aimed at is looked at as 100% of its posssible audience Therefore if only 60,000 Welsh speakers out of a Welsh speaking population of 600,000 ( THEIR FIGURES NOT MINE ) watch a programme it is deemed to have been a riotous success. Some two million nine hundred and forty thousand Welsh people of both languages DIDN'T watch the programme. Can you imagine if that kind of logic were applied to all broadcasters. The ironic thing is that English production companies are paid to make programmes for S4C - none of which have any knowledge or interest in the Welsh language whatsoever.If I had my way I'd create an independant State around Machynlleth and the Lleyn Peninsula and let the Welsh speaking self professed elite get on with it. The rest of us so called false Welsh - all of whom are from generations born in Wales can then get on with the 21st Century.

www.talktidy.com is another site worth looking at.

I have lost my Wenglish over the years ,,,I used to speak it tidy when I lived in Pontypool but since then it uv faded away inni....heres a link to an essential Wenglish learning resource for anyone who wants to learn to speak proper SHWMAE BUTT GETS ITS OWN DICTIONARY DEFINITION

How about "over by" as in: It's over by there. Also "mun" as in: It's over by there mun!

I do but it is usually a mix of colloquial Welsh and English swear words...

It's a cross between Welsh and English." I do go to go? It's chronic? Aggravated beyond I am. Dull as a brush and there's no grain on her washin".Some examples above . Verbs,nouns adjectives and adverbs all get mixed up in a mix between Celt and Saxon.Now talk tidy.
updated by @ian-price: 12/04/15 03:57:45PM