fdsafdsafds
Joined 3 years ago
Karma
14
Submissions
7
Member since
Aug 24
Recent submissions
Comment · 3 years ago
I have a friend, free_glamorgan. Sounds like you guys should meet up!
Comment · 3 years ago
Long and complex-looking terms in the de facto language of a particular area of research are quite different from long and complex-looking novel terms in a highly localised minority language which the speakers of that language would have difficulty parsing.
Comment · 3 years ago
>ahaha, no. welsh it has been killed "recently" by internal policies, about education etc. not because the Normans influence or whatever.
My point exactly. The onwards march of that awful mongrel language English, trampling all of our original Celtic languages, continues to this day!
Comment · 3 years ago
>Welsh is a post-child for the effectiveness of teaching it in schools and "forcing" it to be supported. Usefully.
You can say it's a good thing that an ancient language and corresponding culture is being saved (although I would also argue that draining Welsh speakers from their familial localities by proving strong financial incentives to move to Cardiff is ultimately doing huge damage to the cultural heartlands of Wales), but I can't agree with this statement. Census data shows that Welsh language usage has decreased slightly over the past 10 years, and Welsh-language schools (funded at extra cost to taxpayers as a parallel school system) do not perform as well academically as mainstream schools. Sure, everyone here has done a Welsh GCSE, but it's largely considered a joke and kids boast about how little they learned.
https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/welsh-medium-school-pupils-...
Comment · 3 years ago
>i really don't know what's the social makeup of Welsh speakers
There's a helpful map here:
https://datamap.gov.wales/maps/welsh-language-statistics/
Zooming in on Cardiff shows exactly what I described - Welsh is more common (although still rare) in affluent suburbs, and the central part of town along with the poorer suburban housing developments have the lowest level of Welsh.
Outside Cardiff, the effect is essentially reversed - rural areas with a (very) long farming heritage are among the few places where Welsh continues to be used as a daily language.
I think this scenario is quite easily explained due to the amount of funding given to the Welsh language and the corresponding jobs created centreing on Cardiff, as well as the requirement for members of the Welsh Government to speak Welsh.
Comment · 3 years ago
In fact, I would go further, and say that Welsh in Cardiff is spoken almost exclusively by an upper middle-class "elite". You can say that publishing in Welsh helps preserve the language, but you can't argue that it's good for making science accessible or useful.
Edit:
>because killed by English internal colonialism/centralism so to say
If we trace the origins of the languages currently spoken in the UK, it's much more correct to say that all of the original languages were pushed out by foreign influence from the continent.
Comment · 3 years ago
In this case, Welsh is not the local language of Cardiff, nor is it for large areas of Wales (judging by % of Welsh speakers).