If you're in the UK then speak English!

I love hearing tinies say six ( chwech ) when first learning to count

Urdu jbf. They used to beat the children who spoke Welsh at school in my Granny's day. Fancy trying to beat a child's mother tongue out of them. .

My Grandfather was beaten for speaking Welsh in school,

Didn't stop her using Welsh. She tried to teach us on moving to London. No luck sadly. Just the odd phrase and word, counting etc. Shut the door, cheese, be quiet things like that. She had quite a colourful phrase for weak tea I remember.

My post was joking......hence the emoji grin.

When I go to Wales I buy what I want in English, they understand that.

Jalima that presenter muttering nos da was probably being subversive!

but we shouldn't judge people from other countries by our low standards.

Ohdear, where are we going with this thread, man the borders.

We sometimes get calls from Scotland and have to get them to repeat who they are( the company name) several times.We have no trouble with Welsh accents though ( when talking to DVLA for instance) no trouble either with Eire accents, but find NI sometimes hard to grasp.
Do any grans from these places have trouble with the English accent if phoned out of the blue?

GoNosuch accents are fascinating things.

Of course it will depend on where in England the person is from........accents vary wildly.

Probably a re-make of the one I heard some time ago on Facebook.

About 2 women talking in a café in Arizona and a man approached them and said 'you are not in Mexico here, you should speak English not Spanish' and one of the women replied 'We are speaking in Navaho Indian- you are in our land maybe you should learn'.

Last week we had guests from California and we watched the great film, by Ken Loach, the Angel's Share' - they didn't undersrtand a word (strong Glawegian)- funny.

DH and I were out walking in West Wales, near Nevern, during one holiday and we got lost. We called at a farm house and a man came to the door, and when we asked him if he could put us on the right road, he turned away, shouted something in Welsh and along came his wife. I said something to the effect that we were sorry but we didn't speak Welsh and she said, quite brightly, "Oh, he speaks English - he just chooses not to!" Fair enough! His country, his rules! Thank goodness for his missus or we would still have been wandering round there now! DH kept shtum - he is Welsh, but the only Welsh he knows is a song he learned at school!

So funny Greyduster

I don't know what's funny about someone being rude and inhospitable to visitors needing help!

I am also bilingual after 40 years in Germany although I spoke German well after 2 years here and German is our family language. A Muslim woman does not have to have been born in Wales to speak Welsh she just has to have been a child in Wales where Welsh is spoken.

In the German part of Switzerland, there are several quite distinct Swiss German dialects- very gutteral and not easy on the ears of those who are not born there- a bit like Dutch or Afrikaans but much worse. Bernese will hardly understand someone from Zurich- or sometimes pretend to- and vice-versa.

Children are taught in Swiss German at primary school, then in high German at secondary school and beyond- and for many it feels like dialect and high German are 2 distinct foreign languages.

A couple of examples

Guten Morgen in High German
Gruezi Mittenand in Bernese
Grüss Gott in other parts (not sure about Zurich)

Or a soft

Küchenshrank for kitche cupboard in high German

and RURIRASCHLI in Bernese (with 3 + throat scrapings à la Scouse - as in 'I am storrr on a rorrr and I want to get barrr'

I'm stuck on a rock and I want to get back.

Perhaps learning the language of a country one is visiting is polite riverwalk

AB I think many people do brush-up on the basics when visiting another country - I'm not a linguist but do my best with good mornings/hello/thank you/white wine please.

However I would be hard-pressed to explain that I'm lost and need help!

For older people it's not so easy learning a new language, unless you learnt the basics at school. We have some friends who have been here (France) for 25 years and still haven't learnt. They often get into difficulties with the public companies etc because of misunderstandings.
My french is ok but I'll never be fluent. Husband has tried but depends on me mostly.
I think it's important to try and learn the basics in the language of your adopted country.
It's such a relief to get back to the UK and be able to communicate in a relaxed way. Especially with Geordies.

Riverwalk is it fair to declare anyone rude for choosing to speak in their own language ? You didn't have to fight to have your language recognised, to be allowed to speak it . The man called his wife to assist did he not? Greyduster was the one in need of help yet she accepted it was the man's choice to spesk his own language in his own country . Wish there were more like Greyduster , tolerant and respectful of freedom to speak one's own language in one's own country

LullyDully, that happened all over the world, tragically. native Indian children were torn away from their families to be put in insitutions, dressed in uniform and beaten if they didn't speak English- same for aborigines children. Same in SW France for children who spoke Catalan instead of French, etc, etc. Tragic.

We have now come full circle and from the sublime to the ridiculous. I know some families where both parents speak a different language to the children (eg their respective mother tongues- fair enough) and speak English as a common language- but the children learn Swiss German with their friends and High German at school. So far, so good- for many children who are very able- others become totally confused and non-linguists, eg can't speak or write any of the languages well. Some do in the end sort it all, and become fabulous and talented linguists. Some don't and fail all along the line.

However, some of the above families now insist on their little geniuses learning other languages to which the children have no direct familial or cultural links at all- so 5 languages so far- and then decide that they should also learn Mandarin- very popular at the moment. Enough - this is just too much! As Pink Floyd said so well 'leave those kids alone!!!' (and they do ballet, violin, kung-fu, football and chess too, + a few more, after school)!!!

We have lived in five different countries during our marriage. Apart from Brunei and Singapore where Malay and Chinese were quite beyond me, I have always managed to learn a bit of the spoken language; thus I had a decent amount of French, enough Dutch to hold a basic conversation, and a smattering of German. Welsh, however, was a bridge too far. I bought a 'Teach Yourself Welsh' book, as DH said his grandmother, who we were going to visit, spoke it when at home in Llanwrtydd Wells. (I gave up with the book before I started). She was ancient and confined to bed when I met her, and the only thing she said to me was "Do you go to chapel?" When I said "I'm afraid not" and continued to make conversation about my family and where I came from, she suddenly slumped, eyes closed, and I thought "oh my God, she's dead!" She wasn't, she was asleep, but it is the nearest I have got to actually thinking I'd bored someone to death . While I am in full flow, we had another faux pas of sorts with the Welsh language while driving along the Pembrokeshire coast road. I was map reading, we didn't quite know where we were when DH said "I just passed a sign back there that said Tato newi; see if you can find it on the map." Of course, I couldn't. It means 'new potatoes'! We picked a bag up at the nearby farm, where they kindly gave us directions.

It's not rude to speak one's own language AB I didn't declare any such thing, but it is rude to refuse to speak English to a visitor who has asked for help.

I wonder if the man's wife was not at home he would have just closed the door - would that also be OK because he prefers to only speak his own language?

on the Tato newi!