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Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 2:24 pm

Gall �glaigh

I am reminded of that exchange between Manus and Owen in Brian Friel's wonderful play Translations:

Manus: What�s "incorrect" about the place-names we have here?
Owen: Nothing at all. They�re just going to be standardised.
Manus: You mean changed into English ...

A great play. I lhave a copy and loved reading it. A play of great meaning and insights. And it came to my mind when you all were taling about those "anachronistic" Welsh signs. I can assure you that if I got any sniff of anybody wanting to remove the "Welsh from Wales" I would walk into your police or motor vehcile departments and express my extreme dispelasure!!... Wink

I got lost a coupla times but so what!

Anyway, to Mr.Knight's book. I have not read it yet. However, from the previous posts there seems to me a fair bit of information both old and new in his workup. I'm just wondering that perhaps it may have been better to say split his work into really two publications, i.e. one dealing with completely covering the runup to hostilities prior to British invasion and then the other to focus on the battles themselves. Again, I don't have it yet but it seems there's alot of information to take in and go over especially if one wants to carefully examine Mr. Knight's theories of what went out on there in a battlefield constantly in flux over a few hours. For me, it will be very interesting to see how a foremost expert of the war approaches things in his new work especially whether he has come to any new conclsuions that has changed any of his views on the war. (I'm not sure where he was on Mangeni before the work). And by the way has Prof Laband chimed in at all on ZR?

Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 5:36 pm

Rich

John Laband is quoted on the reverse of the dust jacket in a fairly lengthy para or two: "magisterial but grippingly readable ...masterful[ly] ...compelling ... wide-ranging ... even-handed study which is now definitive in the field."

I think one volume is right for the ground covered by ZR. It is a lengthy work (over 700 pages including the prelims) but I doubt if it could be marketed so well in two vols.

Welsh road signs? The trouble is, Rich, it's not just the roadsigns. Every single piece of paper produced by the government, county council, district council (perhaps even parish council) as well as by major companies such as banks (cheque book, statement, letters, announcements etc) is produced in two languages. What the cost of this exercise is is anyone's guess. Is it to encourage existing Welsh speakers to keep their language going? Is it to tempt non-Welsh speakers to have a go? Is it to nurture the skills of the school children (who nowadays learn Welsh at school I think)? Who knows? I can see the idea behind it, presumably coming after all the pro-Welsh language campaigns in the 1960s & '70s - and I suppose if it were abolished it would be tantamount to giving up and admitting defeat.

Of course, it's none of our business over here in England, and there are plenty of countries, including in Europe, who use two or more languages routinely - and some government forms here can be had in a number of languages, especially of the sub-continent. And no-one, including me, would ever want to speed the demise of an ancient language, but I sometimes wonder what the people reckon on it all. My sister in law has lived and worked in Wales for 30 years, so all her friends and acquaintances are Welsh, but she doesn't know a single person who speaks Welsh (whereas her mother, who lives here in Kent, still has a smattering as a result of her 1940-44 evacuation to South Wales as a little girl).

I'll have to introduce my sister in law to Paul, just to break her duck!

Peter

P.S. All in all (honestly Paul!) I think it must be a good thing. I wonder if any of the numerous Welsh speaking soldiers of the 24th ever taught their English and Irish comrades any of their language?

PPS. Another thought, which Paul will be able to answer. I presume most or all of the young men of the 24th who were Welsh speakers were bi-lingual - or not? And if so, would this still have been the case a generation or so earlier?

Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 8:46 pm

Peter,

On the subject on your ps, sixty years after the Anglo-Zulu War my late father was transferred from his artillery battery to the 2nd Battalion, Monmouthshire Regiment. He certainly picked up a number of phrases and words from his Welsh/Monmouthshire colleagues some which were passed down to me, many of which can't be repeated in mixed company! Even towards the end of his life he would still mutter the odd "Duw, Duw, Duw..."

On the subject of the Welsh language should I mention your rendition of a fellow forum member's name at the N.A.M.?

Nos da
John Y.

Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 10:53 pm

PPS. Another thought, which Paul will be able to answer. I presume most or all of the young men of the 24th who were Welsh speakers were bi-lingual - or not?

Peter

At the risk of incurring Alan's wrath, I will go off-topic to attempt an answer. For obvious reasons, I find it hard to imagine that there would have been any monoglot Welsh speakers serving in the British Army in 1879. However, interestingly, in that same year a certain E. G. Ravenstein published a ground-breaking analysis, 'On the Celtic Languages in the British Isles, a Statistical Survey', Journal of the Royal Statistical Society XLII (1879), 579-636. This looked at the numbers of those speaking Irish (Gaeilge), Scottish Gaelic (G�idhlig), Manx (Gaelg) or Welsh (Cymraeg) in Ireland, Scotland and England (of which Wales was, juridically, a part).

For Wales, Ravenstein concluded that that while accurate statistics were not available, it was certain that there were then considerably in excess of a million native speakers of the Welsh language (some 65% of the population). Of those, perhaps half would have been monoglot. There was, of course, no way of assessing the numbers of Welsh-speakers who had settled in cities such as London, Liverpool and Manchester, let alone those who had emigrated; these, however, would have increased the actual number considerably.

The interest for students of the AZW, of course, is that there must at one stage have been a substantial amount of material in Welsh relating to the war, though much of that (letters, etc) has been lost: a case in point is a defender of Rorke's Drift, James Owen (25B/963 Pte 'David Lewis') who, it is said, kept diaries in Welsh, in copper-plate handwriting, throughout the entire Anglo-Zulu War. Sadly, this important document has not survived.

Paul

On the subject of the Welsh language should I mention your rendition of a fellow forum member's name at the N.A.M.?

Was it my name which was being taken in vain?

Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2010 11:29 am

Rich,

I 'have no gaelic' but nor do I suppose have you.

P B-Q

My several spies tell me that the more likely outcome on ZR is minor revisions for the purposes of a paperback second edition. Revisions being the correction of some minor typos etc.

And, in the interests of outrageous scurrility - and going even further off piste :

Q. Why are there now so many road signs in Welsh?
A. The Welsh are learning to read.

Quite appalling, and definititely 'signist' if you ask me.

G

Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2010 2:21 pm

Rich,

I 'have no gaelic' but nor do I suppose have you.

G: Yes you can say that, but to paraphrase Johnson having a "gaelic" wife concentrates the mind wonderfully. I can assure you.... Wink

And just in passing on this topic of language, here's something from a Dr. Charles Smith travelling through Kerry, Eire in 1751. he writes of some of the people in his book "The Last Colonel of the Irish Brigade", "Many of them speak Latin fluently and I accidentally arrived at a little hut in a very obscure part of this country where I saw some poor lads reading Homer, their master having been a mendicant at an English grammar school in Tralee". Ireland's lucky I guess that they don't have to worry about Latin being on some signs now too... Wink

.

Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2010 2:47 pm

Once described as:

"The people who can spell it can't pronounce it, and the people who can pronounce it can't spell it".

G

Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2010 4:56 pm

Rich,
You might like to read this then:

http://www.naval-military-press.com/military-history-of-the-Irish-nation-comprising-a-memoir-of-the-Irish-brigade-in-the-service-of-france.html

G

Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2010 6:46 pm

Paul

Thanks for the elaboration on the 24th soldiers. With regard to John's remark, I'm afraid he's right - but no, it was not your name taken in vain. As I come into the category mentioned by Galloglas on Welsh pronunciation/spelling, I pronounced Dewi's name wrongly when introduced to him in the pub that day, but - being a gentleman - he understood and forgave me.

Peter

Posted: Fri Nov 19, 2010 1:28 pm

G:

Thanks for that and it should be added to my history library. That press has some pretty good history books there.

oh and btw how is "Richard" pronounced in Welsh?????... Wink

Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2010 2:30 pm

Rich (and Peter)

It was (perhaps I should say 'twas) to Irish gaelic that I referred.

In which Riste�rd may be anglicised to 'Richard'.

G

Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2010 2:58 pm

G:

Diaduit ar maidin!

And diolch yn fawr for Risteard....I like those sounds.

Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2010 5:09 pm

In the Working Mens' Clubs of the West Riding we speak of little else......

G

Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2010 5:13 pm

Rich

"Dia dhuit" / "Dia duit" [... ar maidin], no?

Paul

PS Richard in Welsh was (and is) Rhisiart.

Posted: Thu Nov 25, 2010 5:38 pm

Wasn't it changed to that from CQB just before the Titanic foundered?

G