Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Missing vowels

I've just read this post over on The Cwtch. I read this story on the BBC website at the end of last week and it made me laugh today just like it did on Friday.

I went to uni at Aberystwyth and always liked that everything was dual language. (With the expection of the big long list of dos and don'ts at the beginning of every exam!) It is great to see a country that has implemented measures to ensure that its language lives on. I think I know more welsh words from my 3 years of living in Aber than I know gaelic ones and I have lived in Scotland for around 21 of my 26 years. I find it a little sad that Scotland could well lose gaelic completely within a few generations if we do not do more to promote it. Scotland has its own parliament and seems to be moving towards independence (eeek, scary thought)....wait, I'm starting to get political again and I didn't want to do that here. So I'm going to stop but I'm sure you get my point.

(I'm sure someone once told me that Welsh was the oldest language in the British Isles, true?)

1 comment:

The Cwtch said...

Diolch yn fawr for the mention CeeCee! As well as everything having to be duel language by law, all children have to learn Welsh in school up to the age of 14, which is brilliant I think!

I'm not sure if Welsh is the oldest language in Europe but it is definitely one of the oldest, which is why a lot of our words sound a bit English (like siop for shop, teledu for television) -these are modern additions to an ancient language.