Talk:Welsh language/Archive 3

message: Is this word spelled correctly? I didn't think Welsh had the digraph "sh"... FilipeS 15:04, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I am hesitant to comment on proper spelling so I'll just look for sources :) A search for "dishgled -wikipedia" (to exclude mirrors of this page) gets a smallish bunch of hits: everything from the BBC's Welsh pages to blogs written in Welsh, so obviously people are happy to spell it that way. Geiriadur yr Academi says, when I look up "cup": "...(=cupful) [standard and northern bits deleted] S dysglaid (dysgleidiau) f (usu pronounded dishgled), SW occ dished (disheidiau)." So it obviously thinks that sh can happen. The Welsh Learner's Dictionary certainly spells it dishgled, (and includes not only 12 words beginning with j but 2 beginning with k, which I suspect will cause some to blink.) Telsa (talk) 17:08, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Being a northerner, I don't really use the word, but I think I'd spell it disgled; on the other hand, I have no problem with 'dishgled'.  The sound 'sh' is a bit funny in Welsh - originally it only ever occurred as an allophone of [s] next to high front vowels, so the normal way to spell it in modern Welsh is 'si' (as in Sian).  The problem is that when there's no other vowel following, such a spelling seems to imply that the 'i' is to be pronounced (think of 'disigled').  One solution is to write just 's' (think of 'wats') and let the reader make the decision - English spelling does this all the time. But I don't think we should shun 'sh' - it seems an elegant and immediately recognisable way to write the sound in 'dis(h)gled'.  When it comes to representing foreign placenames in Welsh, especially where tranliteration is necessary, a spelling like 'sh' seems eminently sensible.  With reference to Russia for example, I'm very much in favour of writing 'Fladifostoc' and Raspwtin in Welsh, rather than borrowing transliterations from English that don't work in Welsh; in this context Bashcir seems preferable to both Bashkir and Bascir.  I have more of an issue with 'k', which I think is redundant.  I write 'cilo-' for example. garik 13:47, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

text: But don't southerners pronounce "s" as [sh] by default, before consonants? Then it would be redundant to add an "h"... FilipeS 15:21, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Do they though?garik 13:38, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

text: The article says they do. Search for the word "lisp". FilipeS 14:53, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The article says it's a tendency to change 's' to 'sh'. Thus it only happens in some words. Nobody would pronounce cysgu (to sleep) as 'cyshgu'. Gareth 19:05, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

text: In that case, the article needs to be made clearer. FilipeS 10:15, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  A good example of the southern 'lisp' is the pronunciation of, for instance, "sir" (county) as "shir"   Hogyn Lleol 19:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But of course that's not before a consonant, but an [i].  I can't think offhand of a good example of a Southern lisp before a consonant - as Gareth says, no one would say 'cyshgu'. garik 14:08, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Wouldn't dis(h)gled be one such example? :-)  FilipeS 18:03, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, but that's the word in question, and I think it's a special case for two reasons: first, it's related to English 'dish' - and if the pronunciation is not borrowed from that, then there's a very good chance it's heavily influenced by it; second, it's got an [i] in it (before the 's', granted, but still...) garik 09:50, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Dishgled

message: I was putting the equivalents/transliterations of Christopher in different languages into alphabetical order at the Christopher article. The Welsh equivalent was listed as Llcrhifers, however when I Googled it there were only two hits both from the same article. Could anyone give the correct one, if any?  Thanks. --Chris S. 22:56, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know what it is, but I know it isn't Llcrhifers. Welsh has some weird phonology, but it certainly doesn't have the consonant cluster  at the beginnings of words. Angr 23:35, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Here's a webpage in Welsh showing a painting of "Sant Cristoffer", so I guess Cristoffer is the name you're going for. Angr 23:38, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Christopher in Welsh 

message: It seems to have been archived away, but User:Garik raised some problems with the Welsh in IT section: the stuff about frequencies according to search engines has no source and looks like WP:OR. I tried to find out where it might have come from and failed. Does anyone see a reason to keep it? Telsa (talk) 16:28, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I'd scrap that paragraph. Gareth 18:47, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Welsh in IT

message: Hello! I seek advise. When did the contraction map become ap? Someone suggested the whole line of Welsh leaders need to be changed... thus Llywelyn Map Gruffudd. I am weary of this idea but have no sources to say that it is incorrect useage for a 12th cenutry Welsh patronomic. Any assistance will be appreciated!
Thanks!Drachenfyre 14:29, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know when the loss of the initial consonant took place, but it was certainly a [v], not an [m], that was lost, since nouns in apposition undergo Soft Mutation in Welsh. —Angr 14:33, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  ap/map 

message: This is in regard to the use of "Cymraeg Byw" as a Welsh gloss for "Colloquial Welsh" both in this article and Welsh morphology. Every time I've encountered the term Cymraeg Byw it's in reference to the specific form of (somewhat) colloquial, standardized Welsh created and promoted in the '60s and '70s for adult learners and the like. The first few pages of Google results for Cymraeg Byw (including cy:Cymraeg ysgrifenedig) use the term to describe this form of Welsh. Is Cymraeg Byw really used to mean simply "Colloquial Welsh" among Welsh speakers? And if so, should some note be made about the two possible meanings? Strad 00:39, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've certainly never heard it used to mean colloquial Welsh, only that sort of somewhat artificial Welsh promoted in the 60s and 70s.  To be honest though, I've never really heard the term used much at all. garik 09:15, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Colloquial Welsh = Cymraeg Byw? 

message: Can anyone explain why Welsh is classed as a Celtic language, when its vocabulary (at least) is so obviously derived from Latin? Why is this not mentioned in the article? TharkunColl 12:54, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Welsh has a large number of loanwords from Latin, but its most basic vocabulary is native Celtic. Its morphology and syntax are purely Celtic. —Angr 13:04, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, exactly.  I would add that several scholars would be happy to define English as Romano-Germanic, since its structures and vocabulary have been so heavily influenced by Latin (both directly and via French) - I believe somewhere in the region of 75% of native Germanic vocabulary has been lost (just try reading Beowulf).  But the same is only true of Welsh insofar as it's true of almost all European languages.   I think there's a case for acknowledging two parents of English, but taken too far, we'd be forced to class most languages with preposterously long prefixes, probably beginning "anglo-"...  garik 13:19, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, the number of Latin loanwords in Welsh is probably much greater than in most other non-Romance languages (another example being Albanian, and English if you count French words of Latin origin). And English structure (morphology and syntax) isn't particularly Romance; in English too it's really only the vocabulary that's been heavily influenced. —Angr 13:28, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes OK,  Welsh is somewhat more heavily influenced than many - but don't forget there are a surprising number of Latin loans even in several of the Slavonic languages; and let's not forget how many basic German words are Latin in origin (Kaese, Mauer etc).  But yes, the influence has been heavier on Welsh and English.  I'd disagree with you that there's not much Romance influence on English morphology and syntax, although this is probably not the place for such a discussion.  With regard to Welsh, I'm often surprised (and, I have to admit, quite pleased) to see how many native words Welsh has kept, and devised, for certain concepts that for so may other languages seem to accept as 'international' (though some, granted, have distant Latin forbears) e.g. cyfalafiaeth, rhyngrwyd, awyren, athro (for professor), not to mention military ranks like cadfridog. garik 14:06, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, the "window of opportunity" for Welsh to borrow words from Latin ended much sooner than with other languages. Words for concepts that arose in the Renaissance are more likely to be native calques (like the ones you mentioned above), while Latin loanwords tend to be for surprisingly mundane objects and basic concepts (saeth "arrow", llaeth "milk", nifer "number"). —Angr 14:17, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

text: True - English is rather a special case here (I probably wouldn't go so far as some in thinking of it as a creole, however).  And it's interesting how some languages seem happy to leave these windows of opportunity open, while others seem to try to shut it firm.  Angr, do you happen to know anything about the origins of llefrith?  I've often wondered if it and llaeth were both developments from the same Latin source, or whether llefrith was a Celtic cognate. garik 14:29, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not off the top of my head. I'm at work right now, but I can look it up in the GPC when I get home. —Angr 14:38, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Okay, according to GPC, llefrith (originally meaning "new/fresh milk" more specifically than just "milk") is dissimilated from *lleflith, which is a compound of *llef "soft" (cf. Old Irish lem) and blith "milking". Old Irish has a similar compound lemlacht with the same first element, which also underwent dissimilation to lemnacht. Both forms leamhnacht and leamhlacht "new milk" are around in Modern Irish. According to the Dictionary of the Irish Language the second element of lemlacht is the Latin loanword lacht, but I think that it (like the Welsh) could also come from *lemo-mlixti-, in which case the entire compound would go back at least to Proto-Insular Celtic. —Angr 18:49, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Hmm... ffenest "window" is a loanword from Latin, but windows are relatively new technology in human history (and German Fenster is borrowed from the same source). Cach "shit" isn't a loanword from Latin; it's from *kakka, and calling shit kakka or kaka is almost as universal as calling your mother mamma or mama. Duw "God" isn't a loanword from Latin either; it's cognate to Deus but not derived from it. Ceffyl "horse" is a loanword from Latin, but for some reason European languages are fond of replacing that word with others (practically no single modern European language's word for horse is derived from *h1ekwos). The idea of a 7-day week with each day having a name spread throughout Europe with the Romans; even in the Germanic languages the names are simply translations of the Latin. I don't think it's true that the vast majority of words used in everyday Welsh are of Latin origin, though a hefty chunk of them are. —Angr 15:05, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So Latin has influenced Welsh in a similar matter to English? Interesting. Makes sense though. Angr, excuse my ignorance but is *h1ekwos the ancestor of Latin equus?Cameron Nedland 15:01, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd say Latin has influenced Welsh in a similar manner to how French has influenced English. Yes, *h1ekwos is the ancestor of Latin equus, and a bunch of other words for horse in other early IE languages, almost all of which have since been replaced by unrelated words. —Angr 15:11, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the info bro.Cameron Nedland 20:42, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Welsh: Romance or Celtic?

message: Some examples of sentences with roughly the same meaning written in the two registers would be very informative TheVenerableBede 10:49, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done.  I hope people approve of the examples chosen. garik 12:03, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Diglossia: Literary vs. Colloquial Welsh 

message: Since Welsh 'c' is always hard like a 'k', are Latin loanwords with a 'c' always 'hard'?  Is 'centre' pronounced something like 'kentro'?Cameron Nedland 15:03, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, c is always /k/, even in Latin loanwords, but the Welsh word for "centre" is canol and isn't borrowed from Latin. —Angr 15:09, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I mean are there any Latin words where we have an 's' sound that is orthographically a 'c' that Welsh pronounces 'k'?Cameron Nedland 20:44, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The factoid I have heard about Latin words in Welsh is that sometimes 's' changes to 'h': sal (salt) becomes halen and Sabrina (the Severn) becomes the Hafren. (with a b->v sound too, I suppose).  Erm. Well. I have heard it about those two words, at least. :) Telsa (talk) 23:42, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

text: True, although these aren't loanwords as such, but cognates - haul/sol, hen/senex are other examples.  It's interesting to compare Greek, which has Helios for sun and (I think) halas for salt.    Though I think I'm right in saying that the /h/ is no longer pronounced in modern Greek.  The other one I've always found interesting with regard to Welsh is Greek agora - an open space.  Hafren/Sabrina, on the other hand, is thought to come from a pre-Celtic name.  On the other side of things, Latin borrowed a Celtic word for beer cervisia, represented in Welsh by cwrw.  The word car is also ultimately of Celtic origin, though I've never been able to discover if Welsh borrowed the modern word from English (which got it from Latin via French) or inherited it from its own ancestors.  The plural form implies to me that it inherited it, but I'm still not so sure. garik 00:49, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ancient Greek 'h' often co-incides with Latin 's', look at 'hyper' and 'super'.  'Halas' for salt makes sense, considering Halogen.  However, the 'h' is not pronounced in Greek anymore.01:42, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Precisely. garik 02:08, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But back to my original question, are there Latin roots in Welsh with a hard 'c' where most other languages have softened them?Cameron Nedland 14:21, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

text: How about cell "cell", which is pronounced /kɛɬ/?  There's also cinio "dinner" (/kɪnjɔ/), which is presumably from Latin cena, and cedr "cedars" (/kɛdɛr/).  I can't come up with any other Latin borrowings that have -ce- or -ci- offhand.  However, the only words I can think of in Welsh where "c" does not always represent /k/ are centimedr/centimetr and centilitr.  Most people I know tend to pronounce these with /s/, but some do say /k/ (and mutate it where necessary).  On the other hand, I've also seen sentimedr/sentimedr written, though this is fairly rare.  Of course these are French, not Latin, words, so the French (and English) influence is still strong. garik 15:06, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks cell is interesting.  Cedr reminds me of Russian Kedr which also means Cedar.  I also have a bad tendency to lump French, Norman, and Latin words into one group (Latinish?), sorry about that.Cameron Nedland 20:55, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vocab Question 

message: Does this belong in the article anywhere?  I personally like the phrase.  (A country without a language is a country without a heart.)Cameron Nedland 16:14, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cenedl heb 
raith
 iaith, cenedl heb galon 

message: A simple question - What is the easiest way to insert letters with circumflexes when editing?  (i.e. â, ê, î, ô, û, ŵ, ŷ)    Up till now I've just copied/pasted characters from another page (as I did here!), but I assume there is an easier way of inserting characters.  Hogyn Lleol 09:36, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: They're all in the character insertion box below where it says Do not copy text from other websites without permission. It will be deleted below the edit box. Just click on the character you want to insert. —Angr 10:31, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Excellent, thanks.  Yes, I must have seen that a thousand times, of course, yet successfully seem to ignore it!  Hogyn Lleol 11:17, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Circumflexes 

message: After I made that edit, my wife pointed out that "fenest" is not so different from the German "fenster", and therefore not a good example.
However, I'm pretty sure I'm right, Welsh is a long way from English, and much closer to French. Both in vocabulary and grammar.
And it's important to make this distinction, since some people assume Welsh is rather like "Scouse" or "Geordie".
PS - it may be that my contributions belong in a different place, but I couldn't see a better place for it to go.
PPS - "Loan words" are another facet of the discussion that must be introduced somewhere, since there are so many and some people assume that the Welsh copy the English, when it's the other way round!
TomRawlinson 12:21, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Both ffenest and Fenster are loan words from Latin fenestra. Welsh isn't close to French or English, because it's a Celtic language. It has many loanwords from Latin, many loanwords from English, and probably several from French, but that doesn't make it "close" in any linguistically meaningful sense to any of those languages. When linguists speak of languages being "close", they mean that the languages descended from a common ancestor. In this sense, Welsh is closest to Breton and Cornish, and then not quite so close to the Goidelic languages, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx. It is important to discuss loanwords when discussing a language's vocabulary, but it is also important not to be confused by loanwords into thinking a language is closely related to another when in fact it has only borrowed from the other. Navajo has borrowed words from English and Spanish, but it isn't "close" to either of them. And incidentally, "vicar" isn't a loanword from Welsh either; it's from Latin vicarius. —Angr 13:54, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Unless you've got in the back of your mind the Italo-Celtic hypothesis? Were that correct, then Welsh (and other Celtic languages) and French (and other Romance languages) would be descended from a common branch less far back up the evolutionary Indo-European tree than the branching off of the Germanic languages. But since it probably isn't correct, they probably aren't. Man vyi 14:29, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

text: As Angr pointed out, Welsh isn't particularly close to French or English; it's closest to the other Brythonic languages with which it shares a myriad of grammatical features. Strad 17:00, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would add that not all linguists see closeness purely as a matter of descent - language family trees are much messier than is normally pretended.  English, for example, has been more heavily influenced by French than Swedish.  It would therefore be quite reasonable to say that English is in some respects closer to French than Swedish is.  Of course, this depends on what aspects of the language we're talking about, and reasons may be found to argue that Swedish is closer.  The point is that a language can be close in some sense to another language not in the same family, owing to contact (think Sprachbuende).  The other problem is how to measure relatively closeness in any dimension - though there is a highly interesting project underway at Edinburgh concerned with quantifying phonetic closeness. garik 21:24, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

text: The nicest way to describe the situation is that Welsh is a sister language of Breton and Cornish, and a cousin of Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic. It has borrowed heavily from French and Latin, not unlike English, which is still a Germanic language. --MacRusgail 20:46, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Welsh a lot closer to French than  to English 

message: Quick question on the table in the Diglossia section. It seems to indicate that the subjunctive is used in literary Welsh, but is not used in colloquial Welsh except in fixed expressions. Is that correct? It seems to me that that's a major point, perhaps worthy of a sentence later in the grammar section. | Mr. Darcy talk 20:07, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I am confident at least in saying that in colloquial Welsh the subjunctive only pops up in fixed expressions like da boch chi [may you be well = goodbye]. Literary Welsh grammar books talk about a subjunctive and give conjugated forms for it, but as to how frequently it's used I'm not sure. Strad 00:09, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you. If someone has a good grammar of modern Welsh that addresses the subject, it would be great to get a cited sentence or two in this article on how common that mood's use is in the language today. Since the subjunctive barely exists as a distinct mood in English (it may be there but rarely requires any change to the verb), it's often a big stumbling block for native English speakers looking to learn languages that employ it. | Mr. Darcy talk 17:02, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, this is all correct, namely that in spoken Welsh the use of the subj. is restricted to set phrases & proverbs, and most common is the subjunctive form of 'bod' (to be) 
Examples include-
*Hidiwch be' fo!  (never mind!)
*Lle bo angen  (where need be)
*Pan fo angen  (as and when needed)
*Lle bynnag y bo  (wherever it may be)
*Gorau po gyntaf  (the sooner the better)
*Pawb at y peth y bo  (each to hisown)
*Cyn bo hir  (before long)
*A fo ben, bid bont  ("He who would be a leader, let him be a bridge")
*Doed a ddelo  (come what may)
*Costied a gostio  (at all costs)
Hogyn Lleol 17:37, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Subjunctive?

message: I've moved orthography and the counting system out of the grammar section - they're not really a part of grammar.  Ideally we'd have a vocabulary section under which the numerals would form a subsection.  This would also be a valuable addition to the article in general. garik 00:48, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I notice phonology's been moved out too.  Now, in modern linguistics, phonology is considered an area of grammar.  But I suppose it depends how you look at it; and in the traditional sense of grammar as being syntax and morphology, phonology is clearly something different.  I do think we should set up a vocab section though; apart from putting the numerals there, we could have a section on borrowing and other such things.  I'll see what I can do later. garik 22:52, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, phonology is definitely part of grammar. I've moved it back. —Angr 06:07, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orthography and numerals - vocab section needed 

message: I'm afraid I disagree with Puellanivis's edit summary that standardised language does not show variation 'by definition'.  What about English?  Of course there is much less variation than in the colloquial language.  This is to be expected, and one of the aims of standardisation is to reduce variation, but this seldom succeeds, and variation certainly exists in standard English: think of differences between American and British standards.  Or the Scottish use of 'outwith' for 'outside'.  This obviously raises issues of what constitutes a language or a dialect or a speech community etc etc, but that's just as much a problem for colloquial forms.  
Admittedly I can't think of an example of variation in literary Welsh, but I'll have a think! garik 00:10, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I suppose efe vs efô might be an example, but the second is rare. In any case, pronunciation varies when reading literary Welsh.  Sorry, I'm getting obsessive now, trying to think of an example...  garik 00:18, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No need to feel bad about disagreeing with me.  You raise a good point, there are two forms of standardized English.  I much prefer your charactarization of the statement over mine.  :)  Good work! --Puellanivis 02:25, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks! :)  If anyone can think of a nice example of variation in literary Welsh, I'd be very pleased.  It would be nice to put it in. garik 11:21, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Standard forms and variation 

message: The article "Little England beyond Wales" is a bit one sided, and I have added my own comments on the talk page of it. I would be grateful if some clued up Welsh language experts would look at this and the article on the Landsker Line.
Diolch yn fawr. --MacRusgail 20:49, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pembrokeshire and Welsh 

message: Just noticed this Welsh language#Welsh in popular culture section when the Doctor Who stuff was added to it. Is it just me, or is this a really weird subsection to have? What's popular culture? English-language television? That's the way it looks at the moment. Do we really want a "list of occasions when Welsh was used on television other than S4C"? Telsa (talk) 08:18, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm inclined to agree.  If we wanted to we could list hundreds of them, like the newspaper salesman who says Nadolig Llawen in the third episode of the new Doctor Who, or that episode of Neighbours where one of the characters offers another a cup of tea in Welsh....  Besides, as you imply, what about the constant use of the Welsh language in... er... Welsh popular culture? garik 10:49, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I must admit that I dislike nearly all the "...in popular culture" sections across Wikipedia. I really don't see that Chestnut#In popular culture, Titus Andronicus#References in popular culture, Medea#Medea in popular culture or Monoliths in popular culture add that much to the encyclopaedia. (If you doubt, just look at them.) But yes, it's the idea that it's only notable because it's mentioned in English that got me.Telsa (talk) 16:41, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Welsh in popular culture?

message: The notion that Welsh has official status in Wales, as maintained by this article, has been thrown into doubt.  Plaid Cymru's 2007 election manifesto ( http://www.plaidcymru.org/uploads/publications/264.pdf ) states that "A Plaid government will... give official status to Welsh" (p32).  The Conservative manifesto ( http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=wales.news.story.page&obj_id=136067 ) states "Welsh Conservatives believe that Welsh should be given official langiage status" (p27). -86.134.12.250 22:04, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Under the Welsh Language Act 1993, it has equal status with English. This is not the same thing as having official status, since English itself has no official status. The Wednesday Island 00:01, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand that there is a subtlety between explicit "official status" and Welsh's status as a working language of the Welsh Government, in official use, equal in status to English. Despite this, I think it should be mentioned in the article that Welsh is officially-recognised in Wales. Ronline ✉ 10:01, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Official status 

message: :The North Walian term "cont" (which translates as "mate", rather than anything more Anglo-Saxon) is catching on among teenagers and twentysomethings.
Ha ha ha ha ha. :) Marnanel 20:13, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The ''Guardian'' article 

message: I'm removing the following statement as it has been tagged as unsourced since February:
*During the 1982 Falklands War between Argentina and the United Kingdom, there were stories of British soldiers speaking Welsh with captured Argentinian soldiers who were descendants of Welsh immigrants to the Chubut Valley in Patagonia.
If anyone can find and cite a source, feel free to re-add it. —Angr 16:26, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unsourced statement removed