Pronunciation issues

My family did the same to me, actually. I’d been taught All through childhood that there’s a ‘right’ and a ‘wrong’ way to speak, so it’s hard not to freak out a little when you can’t work out the ‘right’ pronunciation.

It can be tough - but Wales doesn’t have an equivalent of ‘Queen’s English’ - and I think the idea that there is one right way to speak even English has died off in the last twenty or thirty years (and good riddance!). So although it means rewriting some scripts, you’ll benefit hugely from getting more casual about it :sunny:

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That’s true. I guess the challenge is just rewiring my brain so that I don’t think of language in terms of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. It’s being rather stubborn to change in that respect!

Ohoh, I dunno about that. Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen on the net, people still complain about really small grammatical differences and different dialects (eg. AAVE, Indian English).

My problem in all this pronunciation thingy I’ve (newly) just faced doing my video is that “f” will always be “f” and not “v”. As concerns gramatical thingys - I don’t really bother too much especially now when I’m on Clecs and can see all sorts of clecs being published … I just go with the flow at least when I’m writing things down.

But that “f” … This should be my brainshift obviously.

I suppose some products of Eton and Oxford may, but I thought the fact that the BBC now has major newsreaders from Llanelli, Glasgow, and a lot of other places on main news on the main channel shows that ideas have changed since I was a child!!! I notice what would have been seen as grammatical errors all the time!!! I don’t complain. Words are changing their meaning and I mutter under my breath at the use of “arguably” to mean “certainly”!!! The main news programmes now come from Salford!!! Good for the BBC!! But we need more programmes made in English in Cymru and more Scottish programming in Scotland!!

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I mean Americans, if not anyone English. Most of the what people call “grammar nazis” I come across in the net are Americans, as far as I know.

Besides that, I think there are still problems in perception of dialects in England that need solving and improving on, especially towards dialects associated with working-class and country people (eg. Brummie, other West Country dialects, Scouse, others). There’s definitely good stuff going on: the overall attitude to Cockney for instance is much better than it has been in past decades, but there could be more going on.

I learned “ardderchog” from an old childrens game online (don’t know where it was or if it is still there) called “Snapdragon” where, every time you did something right, a dragon popped up and said “Ardde-e-e-e-er cog!” I just imitated him for a bit, and there it was.

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@Znex you might like this little snippet I just found from Gareth King’s “Basic Welsh - A Grammar and Workbook”, page 72, Unit 26:

He is talking about the “rule” that inflected verbs (verbs with endings, aka short forms) are normally unmutated in the statement form, take soft mutation (if possible) in the question form, and take aspirate mutation (if possible) in the negative.

It has to be said, however, that this pattern, neat though it is, is rarely found in the spoken language.
[…]
So you are just as likely, if not more likely, to hear in speech welodd e, welodd e? and welodd e ddim, and equally dalodd e, dalodd e?, and dalodd e ddim. This is a sore point with traditionalists. Then again, tradition, by its nature, is a thing of the past, and meanwhile the language moves on.

(Gareth seems to be that apparent contradiction: a strong supporter of grammar, but not of prescriptive grammar).

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Oh aye, I love his approach to spoken Welsh in his Colloquial Welsh book. Such things aren’t wrong, it’s just how it is.

I didn’t really mean that no-one complains about anything (I suppose that day will never come!), more (as Jackie says) that the days of RP presenters and no-one else are long gone… :sunny:

I had a good number of local Welsh speakers laughing in the pub in Tresaith: introduced to a gentleman, in the course of the conversation it was mentioned he sang low bass with the Chalky male voice choir and had sang throughout the world…It led to a pronunciation problem
“O!” I say, “Ble mae Chalky?” He tells me it’s in the Rhondda valleys. I shake my head…
Someone says - Kim, Mae Chalky yn enwog o gwmpas y byd…
Me: “Dwi erioed wedi glywed o Chalky…Ble, yn Cwm Rhondda?”
The conversation went on a little longer until, Steve blurts out to much laughter: “Dim Chalky, Kim! Côr Meibion Treorci…”

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:laughing: :sunny: I loved that!!!