This is why we were always getting lost in Wales.
About Bad Astronomy
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
Bad Astronomy is a Wikio Top Blog! Clearly, Wikio has excellent taste. 
Bad Astronomy was chosen as one of Time.com's Best Blogs of 2009. Subscribe to BA using an RSS Feed
Death from the Skies!
Order a copy of Death from the Skies! from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Borders.
"If things worked the way I wanted them to, any reporter about to do another 'sensational' story on deadly meteors would consult this volume, and bang! common sense would find its way into the news. How strange would that world be?"
-- Adam Savage, Mythbusters"Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, but oddly exhilarating."
-- Daniel H. Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot UprisingSocial/Networking/Cool Stuff
DISCOVERmagazine.com: Latest Articles on Space- How to Become a Backyard Galileo (Minus the Church Trouble)
- Discover Interview: Space Is Getting Bigger, and It's Getting Bigger Faster
- Visual Science: The New View From Space
- Top 100 Stories of 2009: #50: Magnetic Mysteries of Sunspots Decoded
- Top 100 Stories of 2009: #2: NASA Braces for Course Correction
- DISCOVER Blogs: The Loom
October 8th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
You know, if you’d gone to some of the Elvish classes at DragonCon, that might have made more sense!
(BTW, should you need in in the future with the Younger BA, “listen to me!” is “lasto beth nin!”).
October 8th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
…I don’t get it.
Also, did you recieve the article I fowarded to you about the newly discovered ring of Saturn?
Could you please post something about it?
Please? *puppy dog eyes*
-Donutman_64
October 8th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Whats the problem?
Hospital and downtown ahead, field to the left and religious place to the right, isn’t that right?
October 8th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
All seems to make sense to me.
“City centre” is “City center”, “H” is Hospital, “A and E” is “ER”
BTW, Google does Welsh.
October 8th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Having a wale of a good time?
October 8th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Nothing to do with trying to enter the car through the wrong door? Or looking the wrong way when first attempting to cross the street? Those little details always messed me up at first.
Of course, then when I got back to the States, I was all backwards again!
October 8th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Yes, it’s so damn hilarious when funny little countries actually think they have the right to put their own language on a bilingual roadsign isn’t it?
October 8th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Was there one that said “PLEASE DRIVE CAERPHILLY”?
October 8th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Trevanon: I don’t remember calling Wales a funny little country. I do think I am pointing out that to a native English speaking person, their language is difficult to understand when written down. Things like this are the basis for a lot of humor. If you choose to think I am belittling an entire country and trying to enforce the American will on others, then feel free, but seriously, wow.
October 8th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Larian, I did twice try to enter a car on the wrong side, and today nearly jumped out of my skin when we turned left and I saw cars coming from that direction. Old habits… but I like it here. It’s beautiful terrain (it rained in Wales, but it was still lovely, and the old castle ruins were extremely cool), and I like the people here, too. But after ten days, I think I won’t mind going home. I miss my mutts!
October 8th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
You’d have more of a point if the signs weren’t bilingual.
…and Welsh is equally confusing when spoken, to these English-speaking ears. I’ve been told it’s properly phonetic – say what you see – but I don’t believe a word of it. And with placenames like Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (Llanfair PG on roadsigns, thankfully), I reckon they’re just having fun at our expense…!
October 8th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Every time I look at Welsh, my little uncultured American brain tries to do forced shut down.
October 8th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Good God, send those poor Welshpeople some vowels, quick! Maybe the Hawaiians can loan them some. English may be idosyncratic as hell and terribly difficult to learn, but Welsh seems to be actively antagonistic. It seems a case of a language being forced into an alphabet that it doesn’t want and refuses to work with. If one of those signs said “mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn”, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Is that enough Welsh-bashing?
Seriously, I think its clear Dr P is poking fun at non-Welsh speakers difficulty with the language, not saying anything derogatory.
October 8th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
I’d love to visit Wales. I’m trying to save some cash to do something fun for my 40th birthday and if I can I want to take a trip to the UK and if I manage that then perhaps we can take a little side trip to Wales. I’m glad you’re having a good time Phil. I wish I could have come to TAM!
October 8th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Brian Schlosser, I like the idea of Hawaii sending Wales its excess vowels; it’s a win-win situation for both of them.
Save the Wales! ;^D
(BTW: A significant part of my ancestry is Welsh, and my mother’s maiden name is the Welsh equivalent of the English surname “Fowler,” or bird handler. That said, however, I cannot get a handle on the language at all; German is much easier.)
~David D.G.
October 8th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Mr Plait, I trust that you didn’t *intend* to say anything negative about Wales or the Welsh at all, but I think that Trevanon does have a point. The intended humor of your post does seem to derive from “haha, they have an unfamiliar language on their roadsigns!” which just reeks of Americocentrism. If it had only been in Welsh then of course you wouldn’t be able to read it and you getting lost would be funny (well, after the fact anyway), but as has been pointed out the sign isn’t Welsh– it’s English/Welsh bilingual. It’s like a person who doesn’t like potatoes complaining about there being potatoes on a ham-soup-bread-and-potatoes all you can eat buffet. If you don’t like them, just don’t grab any!
October 8th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
By the way, guys, in Welsh the letters “w” and “y” are both vowels. Welsh has plenty of vowels. In fact if you look on the sign, the English part had 5 consonant clusters compared to Welsh’s 4, so in this example Welsh is even MORE vowelly than English.
EDIT: Oops, miscounted. It’s even 5-to-5.
October 8th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
If you think Welsh is difficult to read just try to pronounce it! It is a beautiful language to listen to though.
October 8th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Yes, that road sign’s shocking. They missed the definite articles off Y Mynydd Bychan and Yr Eglwys Newydd. Without the articles, they just mean “a small mountain” and “a new church”.
But Welsh really isn’t difficult. The spelling is basically phonetic. You should try learning it some time.
October 8th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
You got so drunk that even WE couldn’t read the signs? Wow.
October 8th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
We had the same problem with Dutch on our trip to Amsterdam a few months ago. Once you get used to it though, it’s amazing how much more logical and thorough the signage was compared to the US.
October 8th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
@C Murdock: Sheesh, you know how to kill a good joke, don’t you..
For the record, I know that “W” and “Y” are vowels in Welsh, but that ruins the humor…
And, this is just me, but I really don’t see the humor in the original post as being “Dur-hur, lookit them dumb furriners!” Welsh IS a strange and odd language to read/speak if you are a native English speaker. The fact that it uses the Roman alphabet is the root of the confusion, I think. When an English speaker looks at another language that uses the same letters, s/he tries to pronounce the words as if they were English. This isn’t so bad when you’re dealing with, say, Spanish, where the pronounciation is similar… Even if you don’t know what the word IS, you have a rough idea of how to say it… But with Welsh… you can’t process it, because it follows totally different pronounciation rules. So when you look at it, it looks like gobble-de-gook. Which is not a slur on the language, but the Anglocentric reader…
October 8th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
When I find my self at the wrong car door and there’s people looking, I just pretend to look for something in the glove compartment before going to the driver’s side. It still happens on occation even after 12 years, mostly after being back driving on the continent for a few days.
Lighten up guys, there’s nothing more fascinating than seeing roadsigns in a foreign country, it really make you feel far away from home.
October 8th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
@Brian Schlosser: Actually, it’s not only”an English speaker [who] looks at another language that uses the same letters” – the Latin alphabet is the “native” alphabet of most of Europe and a fair number of other places these days too. Your example would be exacly the same if you swapped the words “Spanish” and “English” around and replaced “Anglocentric” with “Hispanocentric”.
Though I got a little kick going “hey! I know that road sign!” – I have a very good friend just round the corner from there, he lives in Llanishen.
October 8th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Hey, no dissing my native tongue! Its a proud ancient language. It has vowels, just not quite the same ones ar that upstart, new-fangled English language. The Welsh alphabet is:
a, b, c, ch, d, dd, e, f, ff, g, ng, h, i, j, l, ll, m, n, o, p, ph, r, rh, s, t, th, u, v, y. And yes the double letters are considered one letter.
The signpost is in Cardiff. To the left are areas called Heath (Welsh name Mynydd Bychan), and Cyncoed and Llanishen – both areas of Cardiff known by the Welsh name so no English equivalent
To the right is Whitchurch (Welsh name Eglwys Newydd (”church new” or new church) another area in Cardiff.
A&E means Accident and Emmergency – which is the same as ER
October 8th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
@Brian Schlosser: If the people who frequent this board are allowed to have a brain hemorrhage anytime somebody uses the “meteoric rise” metaphor, then I think I’m within my rights to point out whenever someone else is being less-than-accurate with describing a foreign language. And maybe it’s just because I know how the Welsh orthography works, but Welsh pronunciation and phonology is not very difficult at all, compared with other possible languages. The only sounds it has that English doesn’t are “ch”, “ll”, and “rh”; it doesn’t have an aspiration or glottalization distinction that makes other languages difficult, it doesn’t have vowel tones like the eastern Asian languages, or pharyngeals like the Semitic languages, or clicks like the Bushman languages, its consonant clusters are nothing compared to Caucasian or Salishan languages, it doesn’t have many extremely long words like Dravidian or many North American languages, and so on and so forth…. It’s quite similar, parameter-wise, to English, which shouldn’t be much of a surprise as they’ve been sharing the same land mass for a millenium.
I’m not saying this just to point out how much weird-ER other languages are, as if that proves Welsh isn’t (that would be a logical fallacy). What I am trying to say is that people tend to look at these kinds of things and make an impresison at very first glance, and thence not really make an effort to try to figure these things out. There’s nothing wrong with not understanding mathematic integration if you’re willing to learn, but I think there *is* something wrong with ducking for cover and fleeing at first sight of an integration symbol, and later laughing with your friends about how incomprehensible calculus is. It’s the same thing here, I think: people seeing a language with a slightly different spelling convention than English, ducking for cover and fleeing to a weblog, and laughing with their fellow commenters about how incomprehensible Welsh is.
October 8th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
A great portion of this thread undoubtedly illustrates the hazards of telling a joke to an engineer. ….ducking…
October 8th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
I’d like to buy a vowel… make that lots of vowels!
Enjoy your time there. It is definitely a green and pleasant land. I was last there in ‘92. I’d like to take my kids – they want to move to Cardiff (Whovians)…
Welsh-American
October 8th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
When my British girlfriend was here in the states, I was a stoplight and she pointed to a street sign that said “Fourth Street Trfwy” and said “You have welsh names here?”. It took me a while to figure out what she meant. “No, Trfwy is short for Trafficway”. We both laughed, not making fun of welsh at all, but ourselves, and american sign makers.
Later I pointed out another sign “Prkwy” not welsh either, but short for Parkway.
You all taking Phil to task for making fun of welsh need to lighten up. He was making fun of himself. Jay Leno use to point out all the funny american signs.
I wanted to go to Cardiff too, because of Torchwood, but since Russel T blew up the Hub in his infinite wisdom, don’t really care anymore. (No not really; I’d love to see Wales)
Although I’m sure I’ll get the chance, I’m spending the next 3 months in England.
October 8th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
I like Wales, the signs weren’t a problem (The English part anyway). The narrow roads with high rock walls on either side and not much shoulder and high speed drivers and me trying to navigate caused some interersting times though.
Road signs in English can be humorous too. The first time I was in Yellowknife, NWT, I couldn’t believe there was a Ragged Ass Road until I saw the street sign. Then there’s Dildo Newfoundland.
October 8th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Actually, the centre of Cardiff does look a bit like the scenes in Children of Earth at the moment – it seems Russell T didn’t use SFX but really did blow it up!
I’m English but I know Eglwys is “Church” like the similar French word (Eglise?), I suppose they’re probably both celtic.
A lot of modern Welsh words are phonetic transliterations of English and it’s hard not to laugh out loud when you figure them out – I nearly sprayed coke over the windscreen when first saw an “Ambwlans” (Ambulance) with “w” being a vowel like our “u”, but no matter how used you are to it, it still looks like too many consonants to me!
October 8th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
@C. Murdock:
True, but how does it compare with other probable languages? (How’s that for politically incorrect, brain-hemorrhaging pedantry);-)
Phil, be carefull crossing the street. Winston Churchill was actually struck by a car while visiting the U.S. because he looked in the wrong direction.
October 8th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Did you happen to swing by the filming of the new Doctor Who whilst in Wales, Phil?
October 8th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
The real shame, however, is that english is first on the sign, followed by welsh.
Sigh – I remember growing up in Wales and visiting WHSmiths in Neath – the welsh language books were under foreign languages.
October 8th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
I believe that first one says “Beware of the Shoggoth”.
Apparently Northeastern Pennsylvania is an area of high Welsh immigration, and I am in fact 1/4 Welsh, though that part of my heritage never figured as much as the Polish, German, and Irish. Locally, we have Welsh festivals that include the Cynonfardd Eisteddfod (or “Cynonfardd” Eisteddfod – for some reason the first word is often given in quotes) and the Gymanfa Ganu (being held this Sunday, actually.) Seeing those words in the newspapers gave us no end of amusement as kids. (This was before video games.)
When I was on a bus tour of Dublin, the driver told us that a tourist once asked him what the “other language” was that was on all the street signs. “That other language is English,” he replied. (Irish is the “first official language” of the Republic of Ireland.)
Riding in the passenger’s seat of a car making a right turn in heavy traffic was one of the most unnerving experiences I had when I visited Ireland. I suppose it’s the same for many people who are experiencing a polarity reversal of road rules. I also experienced an uncomfortable period of reorientation when I came back to the U.S.
October 8th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Actually, all you need to do is hold the door open for your passenger. Then you get the added bonus of appearing to be a very polite, chivalrous person! (Or at least you will get to share a good laugh with them!)
As for British signposts, the funniest one I remember seeing was somewhere in Lake District. It was for a “Permissive Footpath” — and no, I didn’t check to see if there was anyone taking advantage of the permissiveness anywhere along it.
(In reality it’s a type of public footpath that’s not actually a public right of way.)
October 8th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
@C Murdock: yes, yes, fine. Duly noted! But you have to admit the Welsh do sorta leave themselves open to ribbing when they name a town Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyll-llantysiliogogogoch, specifically to draw in tourists!
@rather be fishin: As a native of Kentucky, i never thought of how outsiders must see our “Big Bone Lick” state park…. “Big Bone Lick, 10 miles” Now that I’ve grown up and I am much more immature, I appreciate the humor.
October 8th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
I am fluent in Welsh and we do have a funny little language. “ll”, “ng”, “ff”, “rh”, “th” and “ch” are so called letters of the alphabet – have a fun time pronouncing those. Others say the language lacks vowels but in Welsh the letter “y” and “w” and sometimes “h” ARE also considered vowels. So sometimes I am absolutely confused when people say we have no vowels, although I can see why they make such a claim.
I see the problem is most likely the Welsh translation under the English place names, we also have place names in English that are in Welsh, such as a street near me is called “Waungron” which translates literally into “round womb” which is just ludicrous.
Also, I wish I understood the humour for the picture, but it makes absolute sense to me, so I can’t
October 8th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
I was most amused by two very mundane signs when I was in Ireland. One informed persons entering a multi-level car park what the “MAX HEADROOM” was – how tall your vehicle could be without scraping or getting stuck in the entrance. The other was on a sidewalk construction project and said “We apologise for the inconvenience.” Suddenly a late-1980’s Matt Frewer science fiction show and God’s Final Message to His Creation from “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish” made a lot more sense.
October 8th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
“I’m English but I know Eglwys is “Church” like the similar French word (Eglise?), I suppose they’re probably both celtic.”
Giving someone a fish:
Other way around. The Welsh is probably borrowed from any one of the Romance languages (but probably French) who all have words for “church” more or less along those lines– all descended from Latin ecclesia (which was itself borrowed from Greek ekklesia, I think, but don’t quote me on that).
Teaching someone to fish:
You can find this and many other word origins on multiple etymology sites accessible via Google.
“You all taking Phil to task for making fun of welsh need to lighten up. He was making fun of himself. Jay Leno use to point out all the funny american signs.”
Except there’s nothing that could possibly be construed to be funny about this sign, other than if somebody inherently found Welsh humorous, which is to me (though I’m not Welsh) a bit offensive. Call me crazy, but I stopped finding languages inherently funny around the time I stopped giggling whenever somebody within earshot said “penis”. Think about it, it’s pretty much the exact same thing.
October 8th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
That’s Klingon…I’m sure of it..
October 8th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
Well call me Jonah and swallow me whole… I’m lost in Wales!
October 8th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
C Murdock (#40): I disagree. Part of finding humor in a situation are the differences (and the similarities) between people. In this case, the letters are the same as we use in English, but put together in unfamiliar ways, making the sign difficult for English speakers to read. It’s not derogatory or insulting, just different. I’ll add that part of the reason we found the signs difficult was how busy they were; parsing everything they said while going past at 50 km/hr made life difficult.
I actually find the language differences fascinating. I haven’t had time to look into it it yet, but I’m curious about some of the spellings and pronunciations. Why would “Caerdydd” be anglicized as “Cardiff”, for example? That sort of thing interests me.
October 8th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
What I really don’t get is why the Welsh community doesn’t create a spelling reform. It would make an otherwise difficult language far more accessible to just about everyone. It’s not really pragmatic to use the Latin alphabet, only to assign random sound values to letters with the same or similar sounds in dozens of other languages.
Though I might as well wait to be castigated for suggesting something so outrageous, I’ll ensure the castigation by pointing out that nearly all humor actually relies on creating or exposing something unexpected or out of normality. Denying that the speaker of one of two highly-divided languages wouldn’t find the other’s to have some sort of silliness or humor is just prissy.
October 8th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
>> Why would “Caerdydd” be anglicized as “Cardiff”, for example?
Well – clearly you have not heard a native of cardiff say cardiff – and the english seriously struggle with the dd.
October 8th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
On a related point –
Why is there no Astronomer Royal for Wales?
October 8th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
My best friend lives in Wales. I’d move there in a flash. Love the place!
I vote for Phil as the Royal Astronomer Welsh!
Darwin born in Shwrewsbury which is in spitting distance of Offas Dike!
nuff said?
dan
October 8th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
We have Cardiff for the same reason we have Peking, Bombay, Vienna, Cologne, Athens, Prague, and all the rest. Because English-speaking people were too bone idle to learn the real pronunciation of the places.
But then many of us still believe that talking louder and slower in English is the best way to make yourself understood to a foreigner.
October 8th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Dunno. Was there a major astronomical observatory in Wales when they were creating the posts in Scotland and Ireland? Also Wales has traditionally had fewer independent legal and administrative traditions than either Scotland or Ireland, perhaps because it’s been part of the British crown for over 700 years.
October 9th, 2009 at 3:00 am
The “dd” in Cardiff is pronounced like an English “th” like at the beginning of “the” so Caerdydd and Cardiff aren’t really that different after all.
I agree with Phil that there is humour in the situation where familiar letter are used in unfamiliar ways – and I can accept that a Spanish speaker for example would find all the redundant letters in English funny (like all the gh in through and other words).
October 9th, 2009 at 3:31 am
Some of the Welsh road signs might not say what you think:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7702913.stm
October 9th, 2009 at 4:19 am
@maehara: Not really, ll is a ‘cl’ sound, ‘ch’ is a ‘k’ sound and it’s already been pointed that dd is a ‘th’ sound.
@Cusp: Transliteration is very common in languages. Look at various Indian / Chinese / Japanese languages. How to you get from dharma to zen?
October 9th, 2009 at 5:13 am
Hey, this has proven to be ab interesting one (although I haven’t yet read all the comments).
For those interested in languages with difficult-looking consonant clusters, Czech can be quite challenging to the native-English-speaker (especially when you have r-hachek (r with the hachek accent, pronounced kinda “rzh”) between two other consonants, but I can’t get that accent on my Anglocentric keyboard).
And, although I know nothing of native American languages, German does tend to form quite long compound words (because it’s a language in which you are allowed to join multiple words together to make longer ones). The best example I’ve seen to date is:
Vierwaldstätteseedampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftsoberkapitänstellverträter (which I hope I spelled correctly), meaning “deputy senior captain of a Lake Lucerne steam-shipping company”.
October 9th, 2009 at 5:20 am
Bob (52) said:
But if you transliterate it directly as “cl” and try to pronounce that in Wales, you will be laughed at. “ll” is an aspirated sound and contains no glottal stop.
No, it absolutely is not. The Welsh “ch” is exactly the same as the “ch” in German or Gaelic – it is a hardened “h” sound (but still an aspirated sound) not a glottal stop like “k”.
The commonest example of people getting this wrong is the Scottish word “loch”, which is something completely different from what you stick a key into (or something used on a river or canal for moving a boat between two levels).
October 9th, 2009 at 7:03 am
@54, Welsh is not aspirated, it is a lateral alveolar fricative. Also, you meant velar stop, not glottal.
October 9th, 2009 at 7:04 am
sorry, that should have been “Welsh ‘ll’ is not…”. I was trying to use a linguistic notation involving angle brackets but the comment system chewed it up.
October 9th, 2009 at 7:32 am
@51, that is hillarious.
Then there is the Welsh town of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llanfairpwllgwyngyll
October 9th, 2009 at 7:40 am
I have never been able to figure out how America ended up driving on the French side of the road, when we were settled by predominantly English speaking people. That’s just weird.
I drove in the Bahamas and in England while on vacation. I think car rental places in these countries really should offer driving lessons before renting to us. I was at my most disadvantaged when trying to make a left turn onto a two way street,,,did you know drivers in England use the same one finger salute we do??? ,,,and I think arsehole means “Howdy there stranger”???
Gary 7
PS: Does “blooming idiot” really mean “Your intellectual development is coming along fine”?
October 9th, 2009 at 7:44 am
Huh? A coworker of mine just came ’round because he noticed smoke. It was coming out of my brain. I was trying to process what I’m learning here, and boy, it sure does hurt.
October 9th, 2009 at 8:45 am
The reason names like Caerdydd have been anglicised to Cardiff is down to politics, and attempts by the English over the years to suppress Welsh identity. At one time it was illegal to speak welsh or wear national dress.
October 9th, 2009 at 9:10 am
“I am fluent in Welsh and we do have a funny little language. “ll”, “ng”, “ff”, “rh”, “th” and “ch” …
Not funny at all. English had those letters, too, but Billy the Conqueror and his scribes only used the latin alphabet, so we got ‘th’ instead of the original ‘thorn’ character. Ditto ‘gh’ ’sh’ and ‘ch’ which all had their own letters in the Anglo-Saxon alphabet. ‘GH’ especially got mangled – there were three forms of it, all now mashed into 1. Imagine ‘bough’, cough’ and laugh’ having different letter endings to understand the confusion since caused.
As to ‘w’ being a vowel – it always has been! It’s a double-u, literally.
@cory: “What I really don’t get is why the Welsh community doesn’t create a spelling reform.”
That should be the other way around. Welsh is pronounced exactly as spelled. A welshman once gave me a 15 minute lesson. That’s all you need to pronounce Welsh passably. It’s English that needs reform. Give us our letters back!
October 9th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Wow! I know that sign! It’s about 3 roads away from my house! What were you doing in Cardiff?
I’m Welsh, and I had no problem with the joke. I laughed too. It’s not offensive in the slightest. If anyone’s been Welsh for any discernible length of time, they should be used to the jokes by now. It’s just one of our little quirks.
October 9th, 2009 at 9:51 am
@ 31
Ambulance comes from the Latin Ambulare (and goes back to when patients would be carried in stretchers), so really its not just the Welsh who have changed the spelling
Words like that have their own varients in pretty much every language that has apopted the technology/practice/service in question, never understood the different treatment people from England give to this custom when they encounter it in Welsh, especialy when English is literaly full of similar examples.
That said rather a large chunk of the Welsh vocabuary comes from French and Latin.
October 9th, 2009 at 10:04 am
@61 Rofl! “D” makes a similar sound in nearly every other language that uses the Latin alphabet, but in Welsh it can apparently be doubled to make a sound that would be notated as “th” in most languages with the sound.
The ol’ French Duke just properly Latinized the alphabet. Didn’t do a great job of it, sure, but he may have been the only Frenchman who was better at conquering than being prissy about language.
October 9th, 2009 at 11:06 am
46. Cusp @46:
> Why is there no Astronomer Royal for Wales? <
Possibly because Wales has never been a kingdom.
October 9th, 2009 at 11:42 am
It’s interesting discovering that so many of your readers know where that sign is – and I’m another one of them! My sister lives in Whitchurch, and I’ll be driving down there to see her tomorrow, and probably going right past that there sign.
(I hope you noticed the “SLOW” signs marked everywhere on the roads – I always keep my speed right down, I wouldn’t want to hit an “ARAF”!)
October 9th, 2009 at 11:45 am
Ah, yes! There is a place called Dildo, Newfoundland – where we call home. And from our dining room window we can see Spread Eagle, Dildo Head, South Dildo and we are only 40 minutes from Hearts Content, Hearts Delight, Cupids, Paradise and a whole host of others including Conception Bay, Placentia Bay and even Come By Chance. Signage, signage everywhere – you have to love the diversity in place names.
October 9th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
How to you get from dharma to zen?
You don’t. You do, however, go from dhyana to zen via the Chinese ch’an.
Zen is derived from the PIE base *dhya, “to see” while dharma is derived from PIE *dher “to hold”.
October 9th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Having lived in both North and South Wales (Bangor and Cardiff), I feel I have earned the right to slag off the Welsh road signs: Unlike the one depicted here, most signs have Welsh first, and English second (in the North especially). So when you’re driving, you will have past the sign by the time you realize that you should start reading halfway through. This wouldn’t be so bad if the dominant language in Wales were indeed Welsh. But it isn’t, it’s English (especially in the South).
The English effectively killed off the Welsh language over the past few centuries, and the resurrection of the past few decades is the result of a very focused effort of a small group of Welsh nationalists. I don’t necessarily have a problem with that, but when you miss an exit for the umpteenth time because of a badly designed road sign, the joke wears a little thin.
October 9th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
That’s the junction of Manor Way with the Philog isn’t it? Yes, you probably were lost.
October 9th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
>>Possibly because Wales has never been a kingdom.
But the astronomer royal for scotland was founded in 1834, long after the act of union.
October 9th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
@61
But the Welsh didn’t have ambulances until Wales was under English control, so they didn’t derive it directly from its root. The root of the English word ambulance is indeed ambulare but the welsh ambwlans is a straight transliteration of the English word.
October 10th, 2009 at 1:45 am
“As for British signposts, the funniest one I remember seeing was somewhere in Lake District. It was for a “Permissive Footpath” — and no, I didn’t check to see if there was anyone taking advantage of the permissiveness anywhere along it.”
The sexual connotation of the word permissive is relatively modern. Though we do tend to call them concessionary footpaths nowadays
October 10th, 2009 at 2:52 am
“But the astronomer royal for scotland was founded in 1834, long after the act of union.”
Your premise is wrong on two counts.
1. The Act of Union was a political union of Scotland and England to create Great Britain in 1707.
2. The Union of the Crowns a century earlier in 1603 was just that – a Union of Crowns. It was not that the Scottish Crown disappeared or dissolved into the English Crown, it was a Union of both. In fact the first King of that Union was the Scottish King James. Therefore the Scottish crown is still extant in exactly the same way as the English crown.
October 10th, 2009 at 9:12 am
That would be ‘ambiwlans’, BTW
October 11th, 2009 at 4:46 am
Wales has a different legal status within the UK than Scotland does; Scotland has far more sovereignty whereas for centuries Wales didn’t legally exist, it was just “west Britain”. It’s only in response to an emerging Welsh nationalist movement in the 20th century that there’s been any kind of devolution.
@cory: And from the perspective of the Romans who came up with our alphabet, both English and Welsh are awkwardly squeezed into Latin pronunciation. There’s no logical reason that “th” should represent the þ sound any more than “dd” should. It really comes down to which set of monks you got — if I recall correctly, the monks who transcribed Welsh were from Ireland whereas the monks who transcribed Anglo-Saxon were from Germany. You might as well accuse the supremely elegant orthography of Finnish of being irrational because y takes a sound more like English “u”.
On the topic of this blog, I will say that I’m damned proud of the astronomy & astrophysics research we do at Prifysgol Caerdydd (Cardiff University). In the time I’ve been here we’ve deciphered the Antikythera Device, discovered a dark-matter galaxy, laid excellent ground for gravitational-wave detection and I’m involved in some very exciting research about the nature of dark energy. I’m waiting for the day Torchwood starts asking us for advice…
October 12th, 2009 at 6:00 am
Ing(55) said:
OK, I stand corrected on the linguistic terminology.
But “ll” really isn’t pronounced “cl”.
October 13th, 2009 at 4:46 am
@72
And whats so unusual about transliteration? Most languages that adopt foriegn words for everyday things do this to some extent. Its arguably necessary as the Welsh vowel ‘w’ better represents the appropiate sound, and, as already pointed out here, Welsh is highly phonetic (unlike English). Incidently, its Ambiwlans.
November 17th, 2009 at 2:23 am
43. Phil Plait asked ” Why would “Caerdydd” be anglicized as “Cardiff”, for example?
I have wondered the same thing but apparently it wasn’t. “Cardiff” is nearer the original Welsh – “caer taff” – the fort on the Taff – but it has been re-welshified for polital reasons to the ridiculous Caer-deethe which means nothing whatsoever.
For those who don’t know – Welsh is being forcibly revived after almost dying out in most of Wales! And cardiff, although the capital of Wales, is virtually Welsh-free except on road signs and government documents where it served to double the amount of paper used