18/07/2007

Y tren nesaf ... The next train...

The call for bilingual train announcements to be made in English first has caused some controversy. Not surprising, as controversy between the Red and the Green was its intention, a rather pathetic attempt by anti Welsh Labour to rub Plaid up the wrong way before the coalition has even taken root.

Good try but no cigar, as they say in the USA.

It may be because I am very hard of hearing, but I see no value in station announcements in any language. They are just part of the cacophony, an addition to background noise and of little practical value. The basic information is on the printed timetables, updates are available on screens, there is no need for tinny announcements over loudspeakers.

My compromise suggestion is to shut the buggers up in both languages.

6 comments:

  1. Which buggers do you want to silence?

    The railway announcers or the Labour MP's

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  2. A good compromise.

    What p*sses me if is how they pronounce Pontypridd. Wrong in both languagages, as far as I can tell.

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  3. Why is it that Chris Piss from RCT always has comments on our language.
    He is neither Welsh, interested in Wales or informed.
    I still muse on the fact that the Rhondda actually voted him in

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  4. These MPs should be chased back over the border, where they belong.

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  5. I saw a blind woman and her dog on the tube once. She would've been very hard done by without the announcements. Maybe it creates fuzz in your years but it gave her a life.

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  6. Really, if someone has lived in Wales, yes, that includes the Rhondda, Bryant (or Ronda if you prefere!) for years or all their life and are too stupid to understand that caerdydd is Cardiff, that Abertawe is Swansea and that Pontypridd ie, erm, Pontypridd, should they complain?

    It seems immigrants from god-frosaken villages in Afghanistan or Pakistan are expected to have enough sense to learn English, but what, people born and bred in Wales are too dull to learn some Welsh?

    Oh no, silly me. They're not stupid, just colonial. Some English speakers think they have the god given right not ever, ever to be for one second in Wales and have to put up with Welsh.

    Bilingualism - two languages for Welsh-speakiers, one for Chris Bryant and his Labour red-neck friends.

    If Welsh is such a problem Bryant, you've got a choice of dozens of coutnries in Africa where English is the only official language and you won't have to put up with silly little languages like Welsh.

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