#Cymreig

[llyfrenfys]

So quick post since I just woke up- but this is a psa to everyone really (but especially to people outside Wales) to be careful about how you express support for Welsh language preservation. I've censored the name of the reblogger here (this is a screenshot of a reblog of my post about the petition to use only Ynys Môn for the island instead of Anglesey) and I will say, while I (and many others in Wales) appreciate the support from overseas, its important not to accidentally use white nationalist slogans in doing so!

No animosity directed at the commenter, I feel like it was an innocent mistake. But "Keep Wales Welsh" is a white nationalist slogan and we don't do that here.

I can see where the mistake has happened. In English there are no separate words for Welsh (language) and Welsh (person) while there is in Welsh- 'Cymreig' means Welsh in the sense of being of Wales (e.g. 'llaeth Cymreig' is Welsh milk), while 'Cymraeg' means Welsh in the sense of the Welsh language (e.g. 'Ydych chi'n siarad Cymraeg?' means do you speak Welsh?). The commenter probably intended to mean 'Keep Wales Welsh' in the sense of 'Keep Wales Welsh language'. However, white nationalists use that slogan to mean 'Keep Wales ethnically* Welsh'. Which is a big nono around here and on this blog. We don't do that here.

[* There is no such thing as ethnically Welsh either, but it's a line trotted out by white nationalists in Wales to justify their ethnonationalism.]

There are many non-white Welsh people and also many non-white Welsh speakers. Being Welsh and the ability to speak Welsh are not in any way connected to race or ethnicity. Welsh nationalism ≠ white nationalism - there's no justification for using racist, white nationalist arguments to secure Welsh independence. An independent Wales should be a diverse independent Wales - an independent Wales inclusive of all races, nationalities, disabilities, sexualities and genders.

Annibyniaeth Wrthffasgiaid.

[escxelle]

WE DID IT !!!! NOT A SINGLE TORY OR REFORM SEAT IN THE WHOLE COUNTRY !!! CYMRU AM BYTH 💪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 RAHHHH 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🫶

we will worry about the labour majority later but for now we ride !!!!

(fyi the green seats are plaid cymru not the green party)

[lymphomalass]

Hi! Hope you’ve had a great week!

I’ve had an exhausting but inspiring Welsh language summer school at Bangor University this week (diolch yn fawr iawn/thank you very much, www.DysguCymraeg.cymru !), so today I just wanted to show you the lambs I saw and sketched last month, while Steve and I were on holiday hiking up Tre’r Ceiri in Pen Llŷn/ the Llŷn Peninsula.

The A5 unframed original is available from me (via private message) for £25, or it’s available printed on lots of lovely things at:

Thanks!

Sam aka LymphomaLass xx

[mariocki]

Ymddiheuriadau am y dolennau tabloid (Express, ych a fi) ond nid yw hyn yn cael llawer o sylw. Hollol ffiaidd. Landlordiaid Seisnig yn camddefnyddio tenantiaid Cymreig heb ail feddwl. Creulon, barus, contiau

[nastyvulture]

(via Pan Wales / Cymru)

[world-of-wales]

Proud to be Colonel and Colonel-in-Chief of the Welsh Guards and 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards. Happy St David’s Day! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Yn falch o fod yn Gyrnol ac yn Brif Gyrnol y Gwarchodlu Cymreig a Gwarchodlu Dragŵn 1af Y Frenhines. Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus!

- The Prince and Princess of Wales

[slobozan-shitposting]

🇺🇦 Чи знали ви, що Донецьк і Донбас як промисловий регіон було засновано валлійським підприємцем?

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Oeddech chi'n gwybod bod Donetsk a Donbas fel rhanbarth diwydiannol wedi'u canfod gan entrepreneur o Gymru?

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Did you know that Donetsk and Donbas as an industrial region were found by a Welsh entrepreneur?

🇺🇦 Джон Юз (Г'юз) приїхав у Дикий Степ в 1870х та відкрив кільках металургійних мануфактур, навколо яких виросло місто Юзівка, яке зараз ми знаємо як Донецьк.

Металургійний завод був доволі успішним, туди з Уельсу приїздили працювати висококваліфіковані фахівці разом зі своїми родинами. Однак після більшовицької революції завод було націоналізовано, а більшість валлійських робітників повернулися назад до Уельсу.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 John Hughes came to the Wild Steppe in the 1870s and established metal works, later Hughesovka (Yuzovka), now known as Donetsk, was formed around the ironworks. 

The ironworks used to be quite successful, highly qualified engineers with their families had been coming from Wales to work here. But after Bolshevik revolution the manufacture was nationalized and many Welsh workers had to come back to Wales. 

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Daeth John Hughes i'r Paith Gwyllt yn y 1870au a sefydlwyd gweithfeydd metel, yn ddiweddarach Hughesofka (Iwsofka), a adwaenir bellach fel Donetsk, o amgylch y gwaith haearn.

Roedd y gwaith haearn yn arfer bod yn eithaf llwyddiannus, roedd peirianwyr tra chymwys gyda’u teuluoedd wedi bod yn dod o Gymru i weithio yma.  Ond ar ôl chwyldro'r Bolsieficiaid gwladolwyd y gweithgynhyrchu a bu'n rhaid i lawer o weithwyr Cymreig ddychwelyd i Gymru.

Source of photos: Glamorgan archives

A girl on the last picture - John Hughes'granddaughter wearing supposedly russian peasant costume. It doesn't look like any russian folk costume and I don't know to which culture it actually belongs. Looks like the Chuvash one, but Chuvash in Eastern Ukraine?? I'm confused 😬

[interstellarghosts]

camlann is really making me understand the concept of men who love footy, except for me its like if the premier league was made up of creaduriaid cymreig

[charlotte-of-wales]

princeandprincessofwales: Honoured and delighted to be the new Colonel of the Welsh Guards and to join friends, families and loved ones for the #StDavidsDay parade at Combermere Barracks this lunchtime.

Our friends in the 5th Royal Australian Regiment are here too and it was great chatting to them about their role training Ukrainian Armed Forces in the UK.

Wishing a very Happy St David's Day to everyone celebrating today! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Falch iawn o'r anrhydedd o fod yn Gyrnol newydd y Gwarchodlu Cymreig ac i ymuno à ffrindiau a theuluoedd ar gyfer gorymdaith #StDavidsDay yn Combermere Barracks heddiw.

Mae'n ffrindiau o'r 5th Royal Australian Regiment yma heddiw a braf oedd cael sgwrsio gyda nhw am eu Gwaith yn hyfforddi Lluoedd Arfog Iwcrain yn y DU

Dyma ddymuno Dydd GWyl Dewi Hapus i bawb sy'n dathlu heddiw! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

[strawberrybyers]

TAYLOR SWIFT YN EI CYFNOD CYMREIG!!!

SHE SPOKE WELSH AT HER CARDIFF SHOW OMFG! LETS GO CYMRU 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

[llyfrenfys]

Bad Takes in the Welsh tag vol. II- this reblog on a post about the number of Welsh speakers. (I have cropped out the username of OP and as ever, I only focus on the sentiment, not the person. If you know OP's url kindly do not send them anon hate etc.).

So I saw this take a few days ago in a reblog on a post in the Welsh tag and wanted to address this sentiment as well, since it does the opposite of that other bad take that I saw and made a post about the other day. To be clear, I don't disagree entirely with OP, but there's an element of wishful thinking that I sometimes see when it comes to Welsh / other minoritised languages which can end up doing more harm than good.

This screenshot was also discussed in the LGBTQIA+ Welsh Discord I run and the broad consensus from those of us in there who live in Wales is that OP is painting a very inaccurate picture of the status of Welsh, particularly of Welsh in North Wales. It is frustrating when you have people who value Welsh, but don't value Welsh enough to bother with accuracy in their promotion of the language. This post is intended as a gentle reminder that we can fight for the Welsh language without misrepresenting the situation on the ground so to speak.

The post itself has a 'fuck yeah, Welsh!' attitude which I personally love. But sadly this particular post is riddled with misinformation. First of all, we have "Welsh law is that all signs must have We[l]sh text on them but there is nothing in the law that says signs must also have English on them". Now the wording is kinda vague here- but I'm going out on a limb and saying that the OP is likely referencing The Welsh Language Standards Guidelines (which have been updated several times over the years). The guidance has a number of Standards relating to signs in the Welsh language, such as Standard 32, Standards 47-52, Standard 66 and Standards 111-113. The section of Interpreting the Standards also contains relevant text, such as in Part 3- Interpreting the Standards article 15:

Plain text: "For the purposes of the standards a requirement to publish, provide or display any written material in Welsh does not mean that material should be published, provided or, displayed in Welsh only, nor does it mean that the material should be produced in Welsh first (unless that is specifically stated in the standard)"

Of the Standards listed above, Standards 47-52 are specifically designated as Standards relating to signs and notices displayed or published by a body. Which state things like "... if the same text is displayed in Welsh and in English, you must not treat the Welsh language text less favourably than the English language text" - Standard 47 and "You must ensure that the Welsh language text on signs and notices is accurate in terms of meaning and expression" - Standard 49.

Anyway, back to the point. OP is incorrect in stating that there is a loophole by which the Welsh Law forgot to specify that the signs had to have English as well as Welsh and that public bodies can get away with monolingual Welsh signs. This just isn't true. Important to note is that the law is intended for public bodies- so big companies, road signage makers etc. This guidance isn't for random farms in North Wales which have signs that say "wyau <-" pointing up the lane with no English translation.

Now, the next sentence is a little loaded, well-meant, but a little loaded nonetheless. "The Welsh nationalist dominated rural authorities in the North"- it's loadedness comes down to its vagueness I think. While it isn't wrong per se that Welsh Nationalist parties like Plaid Cymru do well in the North West, it is a little skewed to ascribe Welsh speaking status to whichever party is doing the best in a given area. It isn't that clear cut, unfortunately. To get into this issue, we have to talk maps.

So those Welsh speaker maps that have nice gradients and have the West of Wales coloured in dark, gradually getting lighter as you move East? Unfortunately, these maps can be very misleading (especially if, like in the map OP was commenting on, the source of the data was left off). But the long and short of it is- these maps tend to imply that Welsh is exclusively spoken in the NW and that everywhere East of Bangor has had it. But the data presentation is very flawed, since it tends to erase Welsh language gains in places like Cardiff, Swansea and Monmouthshire.

You've all seen maps like this right? NW in the darkest colours and SE in the lightest?

Unfortunately when it comes to these kinds of maps, they can be very misleading from a language revitalisation point of view.

Here's some maps I actually studied at undergrad for this purpose

On the face of it, your eyes zip up to Gwynedd and Môn on the first map and then over to the second and- 'oh no!' you might say, there's been a -2.1 to -4.0 percent decline in Welsh speakers in those areas. And of course, this is something that language revitalisation wants to address. But look at the first map again. Look at, Monmouthshire, Caerphilly, Cardiff and Swansea. Then look at the second map.

Welsh speaking is actually being increased in these areas, between 2001 to 2011.

The misleading nature of a language map like this one is not its borders, its colour or key, but its omission of the sociopolitcal forces at play in language revitalisation. Large population centres like Cardiff, Caerphilly, Newport and Swansea are actively gaining more Welsh speakers. While Gwynedd and Môn are losing some. But Welsh speaking (despite a few wobbles) is on the increase. So where did those Welsh speakers from the North go?

South.

It isn't a hard-and-fast rule, but many rural Welsh speakers (especially those who live in areas with high amounts of holiday homes which drive up rent/cost of staying in villages in North Wales) actually end up moving to more urban areas in the South, meaning that some of the decline of Welsh speaking in North Wales is down to Welsh speakers just, moving to a different part of Wales- which in turn makes those areas see an increase in Welsh being spoken.

Of course, we actually have to address the cause of the exodus of Welsh speakers from rural areas holiday homes raising house prices making them unaffordable for locals and drives them away but the way that our data is represented is not as dire as it looks. Still not great, mind, but not apocalyptic either.

Then there's the other inaccuracies in this post. Small businesses like farm shops, high street businesses and houses can have Welsh-only signage because they are not local authorities and much of the guidance indirectly referenced by OP mostly only applies to local authorities. This is how you have farm shops advertising produce in Welsh only, or shop names in Welsh (such as Siop y Pethe and Broc-Môr in Aberystwyth) or the name of the house my flat is in. Businesses have different regulations for signage inside the shop in different situations. But the guidance indirectly referred to by OP in the screenshot mostly applies to road signage.

Big name brands such as Tesco are definitely not going to have monolingual Welsh stores and it is disinformation to suggest that they do- especially not when they've made gaffes such as "sboncen" to mean squash (the drink). "Sboncen" means squash (the sport), while they should have put "sgwash", meaning the drink.

Or my favourite instance of these "arwyddion gwael", in which instead of offering a free ATM service, this ATM on the Tesco Express in Aberystwyth offered "codiad am ddim" (free erections):

So I dread to think what a fully monolingual poorly translated Welsh Tesco would look like.

I don't disagree with OP on the final part, that we should celebrate Welsh's "punk ass attitude" in surviving despite attempts to eradicate it from existence. But spreading false information is definitely not the way we should be doing that.

Instead, we can celebrate things like the National Eisteddfod coming to places like Wrecsam in 2025, which aren't typically selected due to there being fewer speakers. But what bringing the National Eisteddfod to areas with low-speakers does is reestablish that yes, actually, Welsh deserves to be spoken all over Wales, not just in Y Fro Gymraeg (Welsh concept equivalent of the Gaeltacht in Ireland). It's an active, real reclamation of areas previously lost for Welsh and revitalising them by bringing the language back with the biggest Welsh language event anywhere.

[mountainside]

Y Brenin Siarl III,

Prif Gyrnol y Gwarchodlu Cymreig.

King Charles III,

Colonel-in-Chief, the Welsh Guards.

trwy’r / via BBC

[dankengine2005]

Morgan and Skarloey celebrating Saint David's Day

Dydd Dewi Sant Hapus Pawb! Rwy'n dod o Gymru, a heddiw yw Dydd Dewi Sant. Adeiladais fy OC Morgan, sy'n hanu o Gaerdydd, y capitol Cymreig, a Skarloey, am resymau amlwg.

Happy Saint David's Day, everyone! I'm from Wales, and today is St David's Day. For obvious reasons, I built my OC Morgan, who hails from Cardiff, the Welsh capital, and Skarloey.

[eurovision-facts]

Eurovision Fact #402:

In 1969, Wales tried to enter the Eurovision Song Contest, starting their own national selection competition called Cân i Gymru. However, since Wales is not an independent nation, they were not allowed to enter the competition.

Had they been allowed to compete, Margaret Williams would've represented Wales with her song 'Y Cwilt Cymreig.'

Cân i Gymru is still held annually in March.

[Sources]

'Lle oeddwn i: Margaret Williams, Cân i Gymru 1969,' BBC.com.

'Eurovision: How come Wales is not represented?' nation.cyrmu.

[wildbasil]

Dwi'n hapus iawn i weld arall ffan o'r fytholeg Cymreig.

dwi'n hapus hefyd! braf cwrdd â chi! ond ysywaeth… dyw fy nghymraeg i ddim yn dda 😞