Whacky Signs.

[Hibelroad]

I seem to remember that there was a Co-op store in South Wales a couple of years ago which had new aisle signage made up in English and Scottish Gaelic. 

[Hroth]

1 minute ago, Hibelroad said:

I seem to remember that there was a Co-op store in South Wales a couple of years ago which had new aisle signage made up in English and Scottish Gaelic. 

 

There are Aldi shops in England that got dual English/Welsh aisle signs even though they are at least 25 miles from any Welsh border by road.  The problem was that as the crow flies they were within an easy 3 or 4 mile shopping distance from Wales. Across a broad and muddy tidal estuary....

 

[PhilJ W]

[PhilJ W]

[The Johnster]

TTBOMK 'official' jobs in Wales do not require knowledge of the Welsh language unless they are for posts that specifically require such knowledge; a councl highways dept. official in Swansea would not be required to speak Welsh and most of them probably don't.  I can't see Welsh ever being required for job applicants in Wales for any job that does not specifically require it as part of the job description, despite what some people in BBC Wales would like to happen!  A librarian in Caernarfon or Aberystwyth who couldn't speak it wouldn't be much use, but in Cardiff it's fine so long as there is a Welsh speaker avaialble (in Cardiff Central library you'll find Arabic, Vietnamese, Urdu, and Hindu speakers available.

 

The huge majority of Welsh people are monoglot English speakers; I am myself.  Wales is somewhat unbalanced in that the bulk of the population lives in the industrial south east and around Wrexham which has been effectively Anglicised in urban areas for over 150 years, but the Welsh is still there on farms and in remoter communities.  Wrexham is sort of semi-scouse, but is closely hemmed in on all sides by some very prominently Welsh-speaking villages.  Even in industrialised and urban west Glamorgan and east Carmarthenshire, Welsh is in common use.  By and large, the further north and west you go the more prevalent the use of Welsh is, and there are still areas where children do not formally encounter English until they go to school (though tv and the internet ensure that they are pretty proficient by that time) and where Welsh is the dominant tongue spoken by natural first-language speakers who learned it at their mothers' knees'. 

 

But the rural areas, which are those where Welsh is most generally spoken, are sparsely populated, especially if they are mountainous which many are.  There are more Welsh speakers in the urban south than the rest of the country put together, but it is this area that has the lowest proportion of Welsh speakers; things are a bit unbalanced when Cardiff, the capital, has the lowest proportion of Welsh speakers of any town or city in Wales, while it has the numerically highest Welsh-speaking population (and proportionally the youngest) of those same towns and cities! 

 

Bucking the 'more Welsh the futher west you go' trend is South Pembrokeshire, historically English-speaking since the Pembroke Normans kicked the locals out and imported Flemish farmers and their families, who were made to speak English.  It was known as 'Little England beyond Wales'.  A border,  known as the Lansker, between the Flemings and the Welsh is traceable in town and village names and the amount of Welsh spoken, roughly but not exactly along the line of the A40 road, though that is coincidental.

[Chris M]

1 hour ago, KeithMacdonald said:

 

Is it safe to assume there was nobody in the Swansea council office who spoke Welsh?

At least on that day.

Can @The Johnster confirm (or not)?

Nah - all the Welsh speakers were in Abertawe.

[KeithMacdonald]

28 minutes ago, Hroth said:

I don't think that its been mandated (yet) that applications for official jobs in Wales must be completed in Welsh and that interviews must be conducted in the language too....

 

AFAIK, it's not happened in Cornwall yet either.  That does have some dual-language signs. Although (I'm told) there's a bit of an academic bun-fight over what is "correct" Cornish.  Ironically, the best translations into "classical" Cornish might be done about 130 miles further south, in Britanny.

 

https://bernarddeacon.com/2020/08/29/has-the-standard-written-form-of-cornish-failed/

[CameronL]

[The Johnster]

Kernoweck's problem is, apparently, correct pronunciation as well as vocabulary.  The last speaker, Dolly Pentreath of St.Ives, died in the 18th century, and the modern revival of the language is mostlly down to her and to the local clergyman who wrote it down under her direction in order to preserve some memory of it.  Dolly, an uneducated and illiterate woman, was aware of academic rigour sufficiently to be at pains to point out possible issues with her rendition of the language, as it was (at least in it's later centuries) very much the language of the isolated north coast fishing villages.  These had little or no road connections between them and travel was by sea, which in that part of the world meant that it didn't happen for much of the year, which meant that words and grammar differed between individual villages, though there were common core words that everyone used.

 

And of course Dolly's information is transcribed into written form, so we can only guess as to how it sounded, or whether she was pronouncing it 'correctly'.  The result is something that appears (I mean no disrespect to speakers of it) as if somebody were trying to speak Welsh with a strong Cornish accent.

[PhilJ W]

[PhilJ W]

[PhilJ W]

Apologies if this has been posted before.

[PhilJ W]

[jbqfc]

[Compound2632]

A new meaning to taking a shot at goal? Was the ball on target?

[Titan]

14 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

20/20 Heinz sight?

[Dunsignalling]

On 09/10/2023 at 21:13, The Johnster said:

Kernoweck's problem is, apparently, correct pronunciation as well as vocabulary.  The last speaker, Dolly Pentreath of St.Ives, died in the 18th century, and the modern revival of the language is mostlly down to her and to the local clergyman who wrote it down under her direction in order to preserve some memory of it.  Dolly, an uneducated and illiterate woman, was aware of academic rigour sufficiently to be at pains to point out possible issues with her rendition of the language, as it was (at least in it's later centuries) very much the language of the isolated north coast fishing villages.  These had little or no road connections between them and travel was by sea, which in that part of the world meant that it didn't happen for much of the year, which meant that words and grammar differed between individual villages, though there were common core words that everyone used.

 

And of course Dolly's information is transcribed into written form, so we can only guess as to how it sounded, or whether she was pronouncing it 'correctly'.  The result is something that appears (I mean no disrespect to speakers of it) as if somebody were trying to speak Welsh with a strong Cornish accent.

 

Shouldn't that be 'creckly' (like 'dreckly') ?  😉

 

[jbqfc]

[phil_sutters]

Another lazy pub sign - Railway = Flying Scotsman. I don't know whether it visited Lancing on its recent trip south, but this was well before that.

 

[CameronL]

On 10/10/2023 at 23:14, PhilJ W said:

(John 11:26); “Jesus Christ is the sauce of all life.”

[PaulRhB]

2 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

Another lazy pub sign - Railway = Flying Scotsman. I don't know whether it visited Lancing on its recent trip south, but this was well before that.

 

Appears to be a recent picture . . . of it backing up at speed by the exhaust . . .

[Hroth]

2 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

Another lazy pub sign - Railway = Flying Scotsman. I don't know whether it visited Lancing on its recent trip south, but this was well before that.

 

 

Not only, but also...

 

I'll bet it was originally called something like "The Railway Inn" and was shortened to "The Railway" to make it sound more "contemporary", like a local one here suffered...

 

[Steamport Southport]

3 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

Another lazy pub sign - Railway = Flying Scotsman. I don't know whether it visited Lancing on its recent trip south, but this was well before that.

 

 

Is Brighton close enough?  🙂

 

Brighton September 1966 as 4472

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/70607220@N04/6420500459

 

 

 

Jason

Edited October 12, 2023 by Steamport Southport

[F-UnitMad]

10 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

Another lazy pub sign - Railway = Flying Scotsman. I don't know whether it visited Lancing on its recent trip south, but this was well before that.

 

Wasn't there a 'Railway' pub sign where the painting of the 'steam' engine was complete with tension-lock coupler...??

[ardbealach]

10 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

Another lazy pub sign - Railway = Flying Scotsman. I don't know whether it visited Lancing on its recent trip south, but this was well before tha

10 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

Another lazy pub sign - Railway = Flying Scotsman. I don't know whether it visited Lancing on its recent trip south, but this was well before that.

 

 

But is the pub painted in the correct shade of green? (Alisdair)