Low self-esteem is really a crippling problem faced across humanity…it really holds back our potential
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And closely related, lack of confidence.
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What about not wishing to be different and being overly conscious of social norms - people with high self esteem and confidence can still be held back by a reluctance to swim against the tide.
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ha, human psychology is a complex beast
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It certainly is and I think we all change a lot over time and confidence and self esteem are not necessarily completely intrinisic things, but greatly affected by the company we keep, the sorts of cards that life throws our way and no doubt other things like stress and general health.
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Sorry to bring up my little grandson again (of course, I’m not really sorry, but I say that for form’s sake 
), but this complexity of human psychology, I think you can even see in very young children
(he’s around 14 months).
Obviously he’s not speaking clearly yet, but there is plenty of what we pass off as “baby talk”.
He obviously means something by it, and is trying to communicate with us.
He also does this by expressions and gestures, etc.
Sometimes, just looking at this face, you can see there are complicated thought processes going on, which he probably doesn’t understand himself, and we can’t fully understand, but sometimes we can guess. For example, he will quite often apparently “know” that he is picking something up (or considering doing so) that he isn’t really allowed to have (and which we have forgotten to move out of his way - slap on the wrist grandparents!). He will look at us in a slightly - “guilty” is too strong a word - “knowing” perhaps - and seeing if it’s ok to go ahead. If we say “no” firmly enough, he will stop, but not always.
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Any place that starts with “Croeso” should be Welsh, surely?
CROESOswallt Croesoswallt CROESOswallt
Not sure if it looks best with the “CROESO” in CAPITALS, bold, or BOTH?
Anyway, a nifty way to market the town, IMHO, that works nicely yn Y Gymraeg, but not at all in English.
In Welsh, the place literally starts with a welcome
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They’ve miss-spelt it on the sign above the entrance to Morrissons in Oswestry - Croesowallt if I remember correctly. I check each time I go in to see if it’s been changed, but no, years pass and it stays the same.
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There was a Welsh chapel near Porthywaen, close to Oswestry and also in England, that preached through the medium of Welsh. They started a Sunday school for local children in English as non of us were taught Welsh. I still have my Sunday school certificate in Cymraeg, I was so proud of it, also a Oswestry Advertiser photo of us at a Christmas party. It seems very inclusive of a chapel in those days, It was demolished later and housing built.
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There’s a small village - hamlet, really - just a few miles south of Oswestry called Ball. Although the surname Ball can have it’s origin in the descriptive “bald” i.e. one of my ancestors could have been bald, it could also be “that guy who comes from Ball”. So if the Oswestry area was once part of Wales, then I may have Welsh ancestry on my father’s side. There’s a Cornish village called Ball, interestingly, which adds weight to this.
Moreover, my mother’s maiden name was Wales, which was the Anglo-Saxon for foreigner, so there’s a reasonable chance that I have Welsh ancestry on my mother’s side. Interestingly, there’s a place near Sheffield called Wales, and it’s believed that the Celts held on there for longer than the average time after the Anglo-Saxons arrived.
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Ball is near the village of Maesbury Marsh and the Montgomery canal runs through village and meanders it way about 35 miles ithrough the borderland.
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This sounds like it’s linked to that old observation about dialects and “correct” languages. I like the approach that I read in a book about Italian: the local version that wins out politically is the Language, and the losers are the Dialects. But all dialects in fact are inherently equal, and none are more equal than others…
One of the things that I’m finding interesting with SSiW is that it exposes me to more than one dialect of a living language. English seems to have more or less snuffed out its none-South East dialects, and is probably poorer off for it.
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I take your point about English dialects (inside and outside England), up to a point, in that they have become somewhat diluted. However, they do still exist, as can be noticed on Slack when we occasionally need to revert to a sentence in our respective English accents, even if they are toned down so that we understand each other. In my humble opinion, the revival in Celtic languages is also helping the English dialects to be respected again.
Anyway, back to Welsh - Yes, I suppose that what I meant was that all of the Cymreag dialects are, and should be, held in high esteem. Also that the more proud and confident that first language Welsh speakers can be of their dialects, the greater will be the benefit to us learners.
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Weirdly, the town on the outermost tip of Alaska, just a few miles from Russia, is also called Wales. (I’d have expected WHales but there)
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Named after one of the English princes of Wales. Eldest son of Victoria, I think, later Edward VII.
I work in Oswestry and am lucky enough to be able to speak Welsh every day. I feel quite privileged, especially as it is in England.
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Oh no, it’s Welsh that sounds like strange Cornish to Cornish speakers. 
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As well as a considerable number of Welsh speakers in and around Oswestry, there are some Welsh idioms and words in the Shropshire English dialect of the area. Melvyn Bragg discusses this in episode three of his Radio 4 series ‘Routes of English’.
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Yes. I remember hearing that. But I got the impression that he was expecting rather more Welsh influence than he actually found when he arrived.
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Call out for interest in a Ti a Fi group in Croesoswallt:
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