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Wales itself was pretty heavily suppressed militarily from Edward I on though.
600+ castles tho.
Come to Wales. We've got castles out of the kazoo! 😀
Coed means wood, and betws means like a clearing
Does it, weird.. thwaite means clearing in a wood or meadow as well, from old Norse I believe. That's why so many places the Vikings settled in the uplands have that name. Most Vikings settled peacefully and the only land available was the uplands.
Norman French was the language of government here for quite some time. Still spoken in the UK parliament, and by the Crown, when making and passing laws.
But it was still "out of order" to use Cymraeg in the House of Commons until 2017
Brecon Beacons: Park to use Welsh name Bannau Brycheiniog
But Why?
It's the proper name.
It means I can have even more fun hearing my English friends trying to say it correctly 🤣
I'll still call it what I've called it all my life though: Home.
Re hill names tending to the literal, I do wonder if to a speaker of the language they’re all named in, life’s a bit less poetic?
Always reminds me of anyone in the motoring world saying Ferrari has a certain Ring to it and being poetic. Like hell it does, it's the Italian equivalent of Jones, Williams and Davies. Common as muck!
Davies
It's surprising how many can't say that right and it's their own bloody name!
Surely the ultimate in pretentiousness is claiming your own personal pronunciation of your surname?
It’s surprising how many can’t say that right and it’s their own bloody name!
see my post earlier in the thread. Who has the right to tell someone else that their way of saying their name/place of origin is being pronounced wrongly.
Does it
Apparently not I was wrong.
Newton le Willows
For clarity, it's pronounced "bit of a dump"
I think it’s a great idea but laughed when I heard someone say it was better for the environment to drop the name beacon. That just makes no sense at all. Who would’ve thought solving the climate crisis would be so simple! All this panicking and we just need to change some names 😀
Who has the right to tell someone else that their way of saying their name/place of origin is being pronounced wrongly.
No one but I can still give an internal chuckle!
Its like when Austin Healey or some such other twerp English rugby pundit can't get Jonathan Davies name right despite him having over 100 international caps or not being able to understand that Alun Wyn Jones surname is Jones despite him having 150 caps or whatever.
Anyway I'll leave it at that as I simply cannot get my head round why anyone cares what other people call the Beacon Beacons
Who would’ve thought solving the climate crisis would be so simple!
It isn't, they haven't yet managed to ditch the beacon in Ditchling Beacon.
Presumably they desperately searching for an appropriate South Saxon word.
W makes a sound like oo in book (unless you’re from wherever it is that makes book rhyme with look).
When doesn't one word ending in 'ook' rhyme with another? Book, look, spook, took, sook, nook etc.
Or does someone pronounce it as 'unk' sometimes??
When doesn’t one word ending in ‘ook’ rhyme with another? Book, look, spook
Book, look, cook, crook all rhyme. Spook does not.
It did according to most of the older Mancunians in my family!
How are you pronouncing spook so it doesn't rhyme with book?
Must admit, I like the sound of Brycheiniog more than Yr Wyddfa,
How are you pronouncing spook so it doesn’t rhyme with book?
With a long oo as in poo
Would you go to France and expect a map with crappy anglophone approximations under every town and village? Would you actually want that?
it would help if you were heading to Troyes
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With a long oo as in poo
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same as book then in some accents 🙂
Book, look, cook, crook all rhyme. Spook does not.
How are you pronouncing spook so it doesn’t rhyme with book?
With a long oo as in poo
Do you pronounce water as wootah? I know it's at the end of the M4 but I didn't think it counted as home counties. Those words all rhyme without exception.
This is like the Craig/Greg thing with my Irish room mate all over again...
Her Majesty [Gawd rest her soul] would never have pronounced "book" the same as "spook". And she knew how speak proper English.
In case of "water" the correct pronunciation is "wah'er"
As in, "de wah'er in ma jorka dun taste like wha it oar eh"
Spose I’d better starting learning Welsh. In order to get along with the 17% in Wales who speak it.
A good friend retired to Eryri and learned Welsh after a working life spent in East Anglia. Very impressive watching him chatting in the cafe at Dolgellau.
I get some strange looks when ordering Pirelli tyres around here too!
Do you pronounce water as wootah?
No.
Something must be lost in text here as I've never heard anyone say spook with a short oo and I've been around the UK a fair bit! I have of course heard people say book with a long oo which would rhyme with how I say spook.
it would help if you were heading to Troyes
and avoid them being chucked out of the pram.
As for climate change, alot coal came out of a South Wales and they are claiming a brazier is a menance and warrants a hugely expensive branding change.
*sigh* Read the article again, there was never any real evidence that beacons were lit on the tops, and in any case, beacons were only lit in emergency or for certain specific occasions.
I think it’s a lot of ink just to make English people feel comfortable 🙂
The other way around, judging by many of the comments on here.
As far as costs are concerned, hasn’t it occurred to those whining about it, that printed products are reprinted on a regular basis, and amended every time, just because there are cost changes and other details happening all the damned time! Everything in Wales is bilingual, even raffle tickets for Welsh-based charities - this I know because I worked for a local company who dealt with national charities, and we printed a lot of literature and tickets in Welsh and English.
That’s the approach I’d prefer to see for Wales. Use the Welsh name, but “sub-titled” with an approximate English pronunciation. That would actually be educational for us who don’t speak Welsh.
All road signs as you enter Wales are bilingual, have been for many years, Christ, this isn’t anything new, it’s just formalising a place name that, up to now, hasn’t been officially updated.
Some here are really going to throw their toys out of their prams if the go to Cornwall and discover that not only has an English county got its own distinctive language, but their road signs are in Cornish as well.
As a non-Welsh person I try to pronounce things correctly but always fall foul of the Welsh language schisms
If you got to Rhayader the enjoy the Elan Valley, the Northern people pronounce it very differently to the South and if you go to Ceridigion they’ve got another set of rules. It’s really confusing!!
Tried speaking to someone from the Black Country, Newcastle, Glasgow… their dialects are very different and very difficult to understand. I don’t have a particularly strong accent, but I’ve had an American ask me to slow down because they couldn’t understand me!
My late partner spoke Welsh, she kept trying to teach me, and she said that there are noticeable differences between North and South Wales, but that’s hardly surprising, considering just how difficult it is to travel between the two, and it’s no different to what I’ve said above about local dialects around England and Scotland.
And by the way, Jo, my partner, was born over a pub on the Kings Road, in Chelsea - she learned Welsh to O-Level standard at school, starting at the age of nine.
These days you can go to jail for climbing Ayers Rock
Good example of how this works actually. I remember 15 years ago you still heard people call it that. Nowadays it's only ever called Uluru. The same is happening with many parts of Australia. What seems so radical at first just gets assimilated over time.
All the houses at my kids' school are named after nearby islands, the British names. I fully expect they will be changed soon to the Indigenous names - which are often quite beautiful rather than the name of some upper class alcoholic outcast that ended up floating around the world trying to get rich/er.
I prupose forfwiff that all forum members must tipe in their aksent like Irvin Welsh
Further to this, New Zealand is no longer called that, it’s officially Aotearoa. But why, I hear people asking.
In North America, a great many geographic features have had their names changed to the original First Nations aboriginal names, appropriate to the tribes who live there. Apparently they were upset with the use of names like Squaw Valley! I mean, how dare they take offence at names given to them by their white benefactors.
/s
These days you can go to jail for climbing Ayers Rock
Too bloody right! Why should people whose home that’s been for 40,000 years, and who have stories handed down of major events that have been proven to have taken place that long ago, have their sacred sites defiled and renamed by White colonists, who’ve done their absolute damndest to destroy the indigenous peoples entire culture.
Children literally stolen from their families and forced into slavery, not to put too fine a point on it, exactly the same as in North America; hundreds of abducted children died in those homes, and were just buried with nothing said to their families, who never knew what happened to their kids.
Frankly it’s downright shameful and obscene what White colonists, Europeans, have done to other cultures, they, just like other cultures of these islands of ours, deserve to keep and protect their languages, without English people criticising it. We have no right to do so.
I prupose forfwiff that all forum members must tipe in their aksent like Irvin Welsh
Be careful what tha wishes fer, owd lad.
Thing is, in France I will obv call their capital “Paree” but in here in Yorkshire it’s Paris.
Have you heard what those French buggers are calling that London? So disrespectful.
I can't get too exercised about English visitors getting Welsh pronunciations wrong, it's what foreigners do, and taking it as an insult is probably more revealing about the attitude of the local than the tourist. It's like getting wound up because US visitors can't say 'Edinburgh' or 'Stratford-upon-Avon' properly, or that a lot of English folk don't know how to pronounce 'Towcester', 'Mousehole', 'Alnwick' or 'Bicester'.
There are villages and towns around my way which I'm probably still not pronouncing 'properly'.
@tjagain “Should all the mountains in Scotland have their English names or the Gaelic ones? the english translations are pretty dull”
The Victorians were prudish nationalists who stripped the humour in their drive to bury the history and languages of Scotland. Gaelic place names are funny and rude. Generally referencing anatomy. Sometimes obliquely, sometimes directly.
I wrote a stern letter to the Indian government regarding changing the name of Bombay to Mumbai. How dare they disregard their colonial past!
Not bad @klunk! At least you didn't send it in German, you would have been in proper trouble then:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-65312915
🙂
Does this mean the Brecon point* will need renaming?
*Those that know, know.
All the mountains are still called the same names , their original Welsh names. Let the non-Welsh speakers call them the Beacons, let the Welsh speakers call them Y Bannau .
Just dont call them the Brecons.
Good idea but if they are why not change all dual language names to soley Welsh? It isn't as if we can't cope if we only speak English as we deal with plenty of Welsh names easily enough.
However I object strongly to cross order OS maps having Welsh names. Us Foresters have fought many a battle in the pubs on a Sunday to have mixed feelings about those across the Wye. There can be no Welsh for Forest of Dean.
Us Foresters have fought many a battle in the pubs
Could have stopped there. 😉
Seems reasonable, why was it ever given a Sais name?
If you have problems pronouncing it, OP, there are handy YT videos. This is the phonetic pronunciation:
"Twll din ydy Mecs coch" 😉
It really doesn't matter what they are called. When we Humans are long gone they will still be there 🙂
Do you think the mountain cares what we call them 😉
Seems reasonable, why was it ever given a Sais name?
Presumably for the same reason as you have a Sais username.
Because the Welsh were conquered?
I'm not Welsh though Ernie.
People getting outraged by the Welsh using their own language in their own country, but seemingly not offended by the dozens of Welsh placenames in England. Where's the campaign to rename Blencathra?
Hwyl,
Robert ap Hafau.