Say: No to Wales!

Oh YES!!! That is a brilliant reaction!! N’in yma o hyd!!!

Yes indeed - a very good point robbruce. Somehow I DON’T think applying the same principles the other way round will be quite so popular, do you? :smile:

How bonkers this all is - what, so we’re not allowed (for example) to call Hungary ‘Hungary’, as that is in some way an insult to the Hungarians, because they call it ‘Magyarország’, so we should as well? ‘I’m going to Magyarország for my holidays’. (Oh yeah?)
And then of course the other way round as well - how DARE the Hungarians call our country ‘Anglia’ - the name is England! So instead of saying ‘élnek Angliában’ for ‘they live in England’, the Hungarians must henceforth be required to say ‘élnek Englandban’.

And then further afield - we mustn’t say ‘China’ any more (disrespectful) - we must refer to it as Zhōngguó, and we must get the tones right as well, of course. Good luck with that.

And don’t get me started on ‘Vietnam’ and ‘Vietnamese’ - pardon me, but I for one am taking a holiday in Cộng hòa Xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam so that I can brush up my tiếng Việt.

The day I hear someone on Heno say ‘Dan ni’n bwriadu mynd i Cộng hòa Xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam am ddeufis’ is the day I will start saying ‘I’m planning on having a short holiday in Gogledd-orllewin Cymru.’

Can I just warn people that if this is going to get political we have rules about being nice. No one has come near to breaking them yet, thank heavens, but please bear this in mind. :smiley:

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Wasn’t really meaning to be political., but to be on the safe side, I have deleted my post.
:slight_smile:

That’s why I stopped to post here. The line inbetween policy and pure discussion tends to be very thin …

OK Gareth, we get the point. The bee in my bonnet was about us having to say ‘Wales’, like people in Zimbabwe having to say they were from Rhodesia back when, because our country is a colony! If we simply say “Cymru, that’s ‘Wales’ in English” maybe that is the answer? In France, I think I’d say, “Payes se Galles, which we call Cymru!”

Jackie, just to emphasise what Rob said, this bit I’ve quoted from you is an example of the kind of interaction we don’t allow here - read it later on, and you’ll see clearly that it is anything but friendly.

I know our zero tolerance approach can seem restrictive - and it is restrictive - but we’ve found over the years that it is necessary in order to keep the remarkably positive atmosphere we have on the forum :sunny:

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I’ve kind of decided that I rather like all the different names by which countries are known to other people. I asked a few people in work in Scotland if they knew where Cymru was, and only one of them knew and then only on accout of rugby. It would be nice if I could say to someone that I’m going to Cymru, and they’d seamlessly reply hey, you always go to Wales don’t you? Like we are both talking about the same place, and no one’s getting offended.

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I always try to use the local names for places where I both know what they are and how to pronounce them, however, for some reason I always use the word Wales when talking or writing to people - even though I tend to think of it in my head as Cymru.

Having read all this I’ll certainly try using the word Cymru - and see how people react! (I live in England and don’t know any Welsh people) - anyone know whether Cymraeg is used both for the language and the people? We tend to use the same words for both in English - but I am aware that many languages don’t always.

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Cymry is the word for the welsh people (pronounced just like Cymru). Y Cymry Cymraeg are the Welsh-speaking welsh. A welshman is Cymro and a weshwoman Cymraes. :smile:

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I entirely agree with this!! I was trying to say that in my last post, but it came out wrong!! If ever anyone reads a post from me and thinks “Rude old bat!”, please believe I didn’t mean it that way!!
Sorry if I sounded rude, Gareth! To be honest, I started typing unmeant rude things in about 1973 when first let loose on a computer!! You’d think I’d have learned by now, but no!!
p.s. I’m even worse with my big mouth!!!

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I think the essential point at issue here is that Welsh people are calling themselves by a word: Wales/Welsh, which means foreigners, to describe themselves in their own country. It is appropriate for English people to call it Wales (since it is foreign to them) and it is appropriate for us to call England Lloegr. It is appropriate for us to call Hungary by that name and for the French to call Wales, Pays de Galles. But, it is surely most appropriate for Wales to be known as Cymru to Welsh people. As I said in an earlier message, just because we say Spain or Sbaen, doesn’t mean that the Spanish are obliged to do the same.

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A very sensible summary, Nic
All the best summaries come at the end (dw i’n byw mewn gobaith :smile: )

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