Social Media | Steve Woods

Welsh Not still alive and well

22/02/2021 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Politics, Social Media

In the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, Welsh children who used their native tongue in schools were subject to a particular form of punishment and humiliation – the Welsh Not.

The Welsh Not (also Welsh Knot, Welsh Note, Welsh Stick, Welsh Lead or Cwstom) was an item used in Welsh schools in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries to stigmatise and punish children using the Welsh language, according to Wikipedia.

Typically “The Not” was a piece of wood, a ruler or a stick, often inscribed with “WN“. On any schoolday, it was given to be worn round the neck to the first pupil to be heard speaking Welsh. When another child was heard using Welsh, “The Not” was passed to the new offender: and on it went. Pupils were encouraged to inform on their classmates. The pupil in possession of “The Not” at the end of the lesson, school day or week – depending on the school – received additional punishment besides the initial shaming and humiliation.

In recent times the Welsh Not seems to have transformed from being a physical object to a mental one, but one that is nevertheless still used to stigmatise speakers of one of the country’s oldest languages – one that was already old when Old English (which some call Anglo-Saxon. Ed.) first became established as England’s common tongue.

The persistence of stigmatisation is just one matter covered in a Metro opinion piece by Lowri Llewelyn entitled Why the Welsh language deserves respect not ridicule.

Looking specifically at stigmatisation, Lowri, who learned Welsh as a child and grew up in a bilingual household, writes:

I can’t count how many times English folk have jeered about my ‘dead language’.

At least it wasn’t referred to as “gibberish“, Lowri!

To reinforce her point, she continues:

Fuelled by anti-Welsh sentiment from England, the Welsh even came to oppress and disrespect themselves.

She then goes on to point out how, as a teenager she would only speak English to friends and be dismissive of her native culture, before going on to point out how she has since changed her attitude and welcomes efforts to increase the presence of Welsh.

Lowri concludes by pointing out some of the encouraging signs of a renewed interest in Welsh.

For instance, in recent times Welsh has become the fastest growing language in the UK on the Duolingo language learning platform. One explanation might be a renewed interest in the cultures and history of the nations that make up Great Britain, given the severe restrictions on foreign travel imposed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Ambiguity

21/02/2021 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Social Media

in my first job after graduation (translator and marketing analyst for Imperial Tobacco in Bedminster, Bristol), part of my employer’s house style I had to absorb was an avoidance of all and any ambiguity.

I well remember my chagrin at being admonished for it by my line manager, who had left school at 14 with no qualifications, started out as a messenger boy in the post room and worked his way up to senior middle management.

Collins Dictionary defines ambiguity as “the possibility of interpreting an expression in two or more distinct ways” and “vagueness or uncertainty of meaning“.

This is a lesson that the employees of the Bristol Post/BristolLive (also known by some locals as the Temple Way Ministry of Truth. Ed.) have yet learn, as shown by the latest example below.

Who was interviewed: Mr Beresford or the trolls?
Iceland reviews bilingual signage policy in Welsh stores

20/02/2021 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Social Media

Following hot on the heels of the sacking of its Director of Corporate Affairs for insulting the Welsh (posts passim), comes news that frozen food giant Iceland is reviewing approach’ to bilingual signage in its Welsh stores.

The company had previously been criticised for its lack of provision of Welsh and English signage in stores, even attracting protests, such as one in Rhyl in 2018 reported by The Grocer.

At that time, Iceland was not exactly amenable to bilingual signage in its Welsh stores and even went so far as to issue a statement asserting its monoglot stance: “We do not currently provide signage in any language other than English in any of our stores in any part of the UK or Ireland.“

However, the company, which is based in Glannau Dyfrdwy (English: Deeside), had now announced this is changing, stating:

“We are currently reviewing our approach to providing Welsh signage in stores across Wales and updating this wherever possible. All new stores and those which are refitted have Welsh signage installed as standard, and this is also in place across all of our The Food Warehouse stores across Wales.”

The move has received support from Aled Roberts, the Welsh Language Commissioner, who has issued the following statement:

Research conducted by The Welsh Language Commissioner shows that customers in Wales want to see, hear and use the Welsh language in supermarkets in Wales. We have worked with a number of large supermarkets to develop their Welsh language services, supermarkets such as Coop and Lidl have responded brilliantly to develop a bilingual service. We would like to applaud their approach in working with us. We have contacted Iceland to inspire them to use Welsh, and encourage them to use bilingual signs, and we hope that they will respond to our request.
Gibberish? You’re fired!

18/02/2021 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Social Media

Keith Hann, director of corporate affairs for frozen food retailer Iceland has been dismissed with immediate effect after he was found to have made disparaging remarks about both the Welsh language and Wales itself.

The supermarket, which has its corporate headquarters on Deeside (Welsh: Glannau Dyfrdwy) in North Wales, was forced to apologise on Wednesday after reports emerged of Hann describing Welsh as “gibberish”

It also stated that Hann’s remarks did not reflect the company’s views and added it was a proud Welsh company.

Many Welsh customers contacted Iceland on Twitter stating they would be boycotting the company’s stores as a result of Hann’s crass insensitivity.

In addition to calling Welsh gibberish, Hann wrote on his blog that the Welsh language sounded “like someone with bad catarrh clearing his throat”.

Furthermore, in a tweet which has since been deleted, Hann wrote that the “inhabitants of the UK’s Celtic fringe loathe all visitors“.

Read the full story in the Daily Post.
The pleasuring of St Valentine’s Day

15/02/2021 Steve WoodsLanguage, Social Media

February 14th is St Valentine’s Day, a day normally devoted in non-pandemic times to the enrichment of florists and restaurateurs, and generally associated with the pleasures of romance and love.

However, the North Wales Police Rural Crime Unit had matters of countryside damage on its mind that day, when it tweeted the following.

Pleasure themselves? Surely not!

Take a close look at the second paragraph of the tweet and Mr/Ms Plod clearly meant something completely different.

The person in charge of the force Twitter account clearly spent yesterday in a state of confusion between love and lust. 😀

I do hope they got their vocabulary sorted out by the time they came off shift and headed home to spend time with their significant other.
Premises, premises

15/02/2021 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics, Social Media

When related to property, the noun premises is defined by Collins Dictionary as:

a piece of land together with its buildings, esp considered as a place of business.

When related to property, premises has since time immemorial (or even longer. Ed.) been a plural noun.

However, it is a source of constant surprise how many people these days regard premises as a singular noun, as shown by this recent example, courtesy of Manchester City Council.

A singular example

However, it should be remembered that premise does exist as a singular noun, in which instance it takes the following definition:

something that is supposed to be true and is used as a basis for developing an idea.

Local authorities are not the only people to get confused about premises and premise as regards use of the plural and singular.

Take this example on Twitter courtesy of the constabulary in Shrewsbury.

A singular licence

That’s right. Why have a premises licence when a premise licence will do just as well? I’m sure Mr Plod meant the former, but having a licence for a premise raises many new questions indeed.

Professor Paul Brains of Washington State University has included the confusing of premises and premise in his book, Common Errors in English Usage. Read his simple, eloquent distinction.

Premises are also quite particular about where any action takes place too. Anything that happens always, always takes place on them, not in them.

The introduction of a blanket ban on smoking indoors gave rise to a wave of illiteracy, as exemplified by this typical example.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

It does feel as though those of use who are held to higher standards of language use and/or were taught proper English (Ahem! Ed.) are fighting a losing battle. Will premises become increasingly singular? Will actions take place in them ( or it? Ed.) in future?

For the answers to such questions, one must wait and see.

Only time can tell as language always has been dynamic, i.e. a moving target: and what is regarded as proper usage will always be subject to change, just like language itself.
Welsh traffic news

24/02/2019 Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media

After Wales’ 21-13 decisive victory in yesterday’s Six Nations rugby fixture in Cardiff, Traffig Cymru, the Welsh Government’s traffic information service, couldn’t resist having a bit of fun on Twitter at the expense of the England squad and English rugby fans.

Swing low…

I wonder if the chariot had been rescued by a band of angels before Mr Plod had a chance to find it… 😀
An algorithm with a sense of humour?

20/02/2019 Steve WoodsLanguage, Open Source, Social Media, Tech

Google’s developers evidently have a sense of humour, as the search below shows.

Not all humour from techies is quite so obvious to ordinary mortals and is normally deeply buried in comments in code, mark-up and the like.

Tip of the hat: Kevin Mills
Telegraph exclusive: Brits using ducks to negotiate Brexit

30/01/2019 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Social Media

The right-wing Telegraph newspaper has enjoyed a long and close relationship with the Conservative Party. So close indeed that it is often referred to as the Torygraph.

This close relationship means that developments within the Tory Party are frequently reported first in the Telegraph.

It is therefore no surprise that the latest developments on the state of the UK’s Brexit negotiations popped into my Twitter feed this morning with the following Telegraph headline and abstract.

Yes, that’s why the negotiations have been so disastrous. They’ve been handled by ducks, or more specifically a Eurasian teal, a male specimen of which is shown below.

A top international negotiator according to the Telegraph. Photograph courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

How a duck or ducks actually managed to deal with the question of the Irish backstop remains a mystery and is probably why the Tory right wing is so obsessed with it. And quite what a revamped negotiating teal is, one could indulge in conjecture. Was it taken to some backstreet ornithologist and given the plumage of, say, an Arctic skua, together with a bit of beak remodelling?

Please Torygraph, tell me it’s not a typo! 😀
Northampton or Novosibirsk?

27/01/2019 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Social Media

Via Twitter, the following image arrived in my timeline this morning. It’s a below the piece comment, ostensibly from someone called DAZ21, from the mobile version of the Daily Mail website.

As you can see, at the top of the comment DAZ21 would like us all to think he’s from the fair English county town of Northampton.

However, there are a couple of problems with locating dear ole DAZ21 there if one examines the text of the comment closely; and the vowels in particular.

Look first near the bottom of the comment. Is that a letter “a” with diaresis (ä), I see before me?

The letter “a” with diaresis is quite common in German (as in Käse – cheese. Ed.), but not in English.

However, there’s a real clincher in the text that shows DAZ21 is more likely to hail from Novosibirsk than Northampton: and once again it’s a vowel that gives the game away, namely the “i” with diaresis “ï“).

According to Wikipedia, “Yi (Ї ї; italics: Ї ї) is a letter appearing the Cyrillic script, as used by Russian, amongst other languages.

In English this is a very uncommon character and is used when ⟨i⟩ follows another vowel and indicates hiatus (diaeresis) in the pronunciation of such a word.

There have been questions about the reliability of the the Daily Mail for decades. Last year it was banned as a source by Wikipedia due to its “reputation for poor fact checking and sensationalism“.

One wonders how much further that reputation has slumped if its below the piece comments are now full of bots or actual Russians pretending to be Brits posting provocative and/or misleading content.

By the way, Novosibirsk is Russia’s third most populous city after Moscow and St Petersburg.

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