Mae Microsoft yn addysgu Swyddfa, Bing, siarad Cymraeg* Microsoft has added Welsh to the list of languages “spoken” by its Bing translation engine and Office products. Redmond's efforts were assisted by Rhodri Glyn Thomas, the commissioner of the National Assembly for Wales with responsibility for the Welsh language. Thomas and other staff worked with Microsoft on a Welsh language …
and having grown up in Wales, I can tell you that the jumble of letters you have published as welsh certainly looks like welsh, what with its Double Ds. Though I note that the double L and "welsh"ification of English words are notably absent, thereby rendering that short sentence as not welsh enough...
thank you for clearing things up!
Is El Reg joining Rob Brydon's list of "No!" people?
Pobol y cwm, cyw coleg y bala sianel pedwar Cymru.
Translation: I don't speak Welsh either, in fact I'm reduced to stringing together the few words I do know in an unconvincing attempt to appear that I do.
(*) Presenting the incredible learn-Welsh-by-observing-equivalent-road-markings method. This is ideal if the only word you want to learn is the Welsh for "slow". (Disclaimer; I had *assumed* for 25 years that this meant "slow" and only confirmed it via Google five minutes ago. It would have been amusing if it had actually meant "Kylie and Jason rule" all that time).
"Presenting the incredible learn-Welsh-by-observing-equivalent-road-markings method. This is ideal if the only word you want to learn is the Welsh for "slow". "
I started learning by that method many years ago... but I'm been waiting for them to move me onto the next module. I didn't realise the entire course ended at Araf/Slow.
As an Englishman who often visits Wales, I've had some success in convincing American tourists that the Slow Araf is in fact a land mammal related to the hedgehog, a shy and nervous creature which, like the Slow Loris, does not move quickly and is therefore in constant danger on busy roads. One particularly gullible specimen even swallowed the proposal that the penalty for squashing a Slow Araf is the amputation of a toe, which is why so many Welsh bus drivers limp.
Obviously, you never see a Fast Araf. Quicker than the human eye....
I consider myself a proud Welshman but from a native tax payers perspective it’s not at all encouraging to see that the Welsh Assembly Government is expending time, energy and money on ensuring their purchasing options become more focused on a single supplier.
As there are few if any monoglots in Wales, particularly of an age where they would likely rely on these products for translation, (with respect to the silver surfers, monolingualism if it still exists is going to be in the 80+ age category) this strikes me as a phenomenal waste of money, I am pretty certain Microsoft will not be doing this for free.
This canned statement regarding improved efficiency is quite frankly bollocks, if there is a weakness in their Welsh skills, ask a colleague. There has been a policy of positive discrimination regarding public service employment for years.
There is also another functional official language in Wales which, like it or not, is English.
> there are few if any monoglots in Wales
Careful. Ricky Gervais got into trouble for using that sort of language.
@Killing Time
As someone who's actively helping the revival of the Cornish language, it always saddens me to see people not supporting their own culture and language. The benefits of being bilingual are many and varied, not least staving off the onset of dementia, but your language is also part of who you are, your culture and your heritage. Not supporting it is like denying who you are and where you came from.
Many if not most other countries around the world embrace the various languages their population speaks, and people learn them and flip between them without a thought. Britain's blind spot towards its Celtic minority languages is a failing, and as the total yearly cost of supporting them is a fraction of a single mile of HS2, the actual financial burden is peanuts.
In many (most?) cases it has nothing to do with culture or "where you came from", it's purely political posturing. If the language is useful enough, and has sufficient interest, it will survive and grow on its own now that we're mostly past the era of official suppression of politically-undesirable languages.
If it can't survive on its own, let it die. There's no excuse for spending taxpayers money to keep it on life support.
A recent example is the discovery of "Ulster Scots" by the N. Irish unionist population. Nothing to do with the contrived rediscovering of a past, but entirely because "the other lot" get special treatment and subsidies for Irish, and that can't be allowed to go unchallenged.
@AC
Glad to hear you are doing your bit for the Cornish language, good for you. However the fact that I am asking who is actually going to benefit from this does not in any way suggest that I don’t support my native culture. Through extensive travel , time spent living abroad and adoption of the local language where I could (including Welsh when in that environment), I am also fully aware how other countries embrace their various languages.
Unfortunately HS2 in its current incarnation will not pass through Wales so the comparison in costs is irrelevant, perhaps you may wish to make your comparisons in public services with a more direct bearing such as school services where the languages are actually taught?
My question stands ‘who is actually going to benefit from this?’
@Killing Time
The comparison in costs isn't irrelevant, because we're all going to pay for the white elephant that is HS2, whether we live within 100 miles of it or not. If the cost of it was used to improve infrastructure across the UK, that would have a far greater impact on the economy, but I digress...
The people that will benefit from it are the present and future Welsh speakers. That should be reason enough to support it. The proportion of expenditure spent supporting the Welsh language is so small that if it was all cut tomorrow you wouldn't notice the slightest difference to any public services, so why shouldn't it be spent on something that is so important to many people in Wales?
@AC
I believe the comparison is completely irrelevant as by your argument we could compare any UK spend to a regional issue.
My beef is with WAG spending welsh taxpayers money and so a regional comparison is far more appropriate in my local taxpayers opinion.
Whether ‘The proportion of expenditure spent supporting the Welsh language is so small that if it was all cut tomorrow you wouldn't notice the slightest difference to any public services’ is true, is debatable in its own right but I suspect you would dismiss out of hand opposing points of view. Funnily enough the term ‘blind spot’ springs to mind.
The proportion of expenditure spent supporting the Welsh language is so small that if it was all cut tomorrow you wouldn't notice the slightest difference to any public services
That's a specious argument. If I stopped paying my taxes tomorrow you wouldn't notice the slightest difference to any public services. It doesn't follow that we can all stop paying taxes.
so why shouldn't it be spent on something that is so important to many people in Wales?
If it's that important to them, and such an insignificant sum, why shouldn't it be paid for out of taxation raised in Wales?
"who is actually going to benefit from this" : People who want the interface of the program in the language that they are working in, for example first language welsh students, there are quite a lot of them around and presumably at least some of them become first language Welsh graduates would would appreciate the ability to coninue working in their first language.
"As someone who's actively helping the revival of the Cornish language"
Sorry, but I just don't see the point. Unlike Welsh, the cornish language is dead and gone 300 years past. You might as well try and revive Anglo Saxon or Latin as a day to day language. An interesting intellectual exercise maybe but please stop pretending its in some kind of social or public interest. Just because you want to differential yourself from the crowd (yes, that is part of the reason, don't deny it) , don't assume everyone has the same opinion.
"Not supporting it is like denying who you are and where you came from."
ITYF the majority of people now living in cornwall have descendents from all over the UK and abroad who only moved there in the last century or so, so don't be so damn stupid. Modern transport and the itinerant nature of the population in the 20th and 21st centuries makes the whole "the people here go back X hundred years here arguments" old hat and essentially wrong.
@boltar "Sorry, but I just don't see the point. "
Maybe not, but plenty of people do.
Here is a recent map of genetic distribution across the UK. Note the distinct group in Cornwall?
The language never died out, and despite all the myths about who was the "last" speaker, there has never been a time when no-one in Cornwall could speak the language. The interest in the language is there, and it is growing, so there is a need for resources. There is a Cornish-language playgroup and some schools are teaching it. A recent survey showed that there is strong support for the language even from those who don't speak it, and even from those whose heritage isn't Cornish, so why not support it? We have dual-language street-name signage now (not road signs), and it doesn't cost the taxpayer a penny.
I don't see why people who have absolutely no links to Cornwall, and whom the language's success or failure won't affect in the slightest, should be able to dictate the future of an important part of Cornish culture. I wouldn't dream of telling you that some part of your local culture was pointless and should be allowed to die out, so do us the same courtesy and let us decide for ourselves about the future of our language.
"Here is a recent map of genetic distribution across the UK. Note the distinct group in Cornwall?"
Not interested. Unless they did DNA samples of everyone in the county - not just the ones who could be bothered to give a sample - then its worthless. The sort to give a sample are most likely to be the ones who believe they do have a strong link to the place.
"The language never died out, and despite all the myths about who was the "last" speaker, there has never been a time when no-one in Cornwall could speak the language"
And how do you define "speak"? Knowing a few phrases its not speaking it.
"The interest in the language is there, and it is growing, so there is a need for resources."
No there isn't. If people are interested in learning a language they should pay for it themselves, not expect the state to pay for their hobby. It can't even claim to have a practical use unlike french or spanish or mandarin so there is zero economic benefit apart for a few quid from language classes.
"We have dual-language street-name signage now (not road signs), and it doesn't cost the taxpayer a penny."
So you're saying the local council finds someone to do them for free do they? No council tax money is used to pay for them? Really?
"I don't see why people who have absolutely no links to Cornwall, and whom the language's success or failure won't affect in the slightest, should be able to dictate the future of an important part of Cornish culture"
Do what you like - but don't expect to use my fucking taxes to pay for your supposed linguistic identity just so you can claim to be a "minority" and kick off all the pathetic special pleading that usually accompanies it.
As a part genetic Cornishman I wholeheartedly agree with your valiant effort to preserve the Cornish language.
However as someone who grew up in wales, welsh is a pain in the arse.
Wasted an hour a week al through school. trying to learn an incomprehensible language from a man with a speech impediment (well that's what it sounded like)
Missed endless cool sounding TV programmes as a kid, cos the welsh news followed the English and pissed all over the early evening schedule.
Ever notice how the bits of wales with un gated level crossings are the bits of wales where welsh comes on the warning sign before English. And given that welsh predates technology such as houses with windows, you can imaging how complex it is to describe a railway, never mind a level crossing (that place where the new thing we don't have a word for crosses the other new thing we don't have a word for) never mind an un-gated level crossing (that place where the new thing we don't have a word for crosses the other new thing we don't have a word for that is unprotected by that other new thing we haven't got a word for) results in the massive casualty rates amongst the English visitors who year on year come to grief on the many
"y man lle y peth newydd nad oes gennym gair am croesau y peth newydd eraill nid oes gennym gair am hynny yw heb eu diogelu gan yr peth newydd eraill nad ydym wedi cael gair am"
(fucked if I know, I googled it!)
cos they only got halfway through the welsh bit before getting hit by a train!
as mentioned previously, in common with 99% of the rest of the population of wales;
IM NOT EVEN FUCKING WELSH!
and relax...
Here's a question: Should Microsoft Office be translated as "Microsoft Office" or "Swyddfa Microsoft"? After all, in this context, Office is more a trademark than a noun.
Think I'm being pedantic? Some people don't: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_west/4648551.stm
"Even in France which is known to be somewhat pedantic over this subject, Office is known as Office, not Bureau."
Was just about to chip in with this. As another example, Windows 7 in Spain isn't "Ventanas Siete" despite me thinking it's funny to say so to my Spanish colleagues who have that look upon their faces of "will this guy ever get fed up of that lame joke?"
non-English IT conversations generally go:
"blablabla Windows blablabla Office blablabla"
Hwyl fawr!
office.microsoft.com/en-gb/downloads/office-language-interface-pack-lip-downloads-HA001113350.aspx
There are also Welsh translations for Linux desktops, Open / Libre Office, Firefox and I think (but I don't use Windows) there used to be one for Windows (possibly in 95/98 days). The standard of Welsh (and the amount that is actually translated and doesn't have to fall back to English) is somewhat variable though.
The translation given for this article seems pretty good by comparison.
At work we also have a basic on-line translation service that (I think) is only accessible to public bodies. It's good for single words and short phrases, but it doesn't produce anything remotely acceptable for "official" use, even for temporary signs. For those, we have a translation department.
What used to annoy me at school in the 1980s / uni in the 1990s though was that while there was a Welsh-language word processor available on the BBC Micro (IIRC it was a variant of "EDWORD" called something like "SYLFAEN") and Acorn had gone to great lengths with RISC OS to include the non-standard glyphs y-circumflex and w-circumflex in their fonts (in the days long before they were standardised, in fact in the days before Microsoft even knew what an "outline font" was), even Welsh-language schools such as mine(*) were being "encouraged" to move to DOS/Windows and lose all that.
Hwyl!
M.
(*)For those who may not realise, in Wales it is possible to opt to send your children to a school which operates almost exclusively through the medium of the Welsh language rather than English. In some parts of Wales you don't get much of a choice, in other parts of Wales (such as the south-east where I live), Welsh-language schools are growing strongly while English-language schools are contracting.
> In some parts of Wales you don't get much of a choice, in other parts of Wales (such as the south-east where I live), Welsh-language schools are growing strongly while English-language schools are contracting.
That's interesting because I live just outside Chepstow (on the English side of the Wye) and the school here on this side of the river is vastly oversubscribed by families on the Welsh side because... they don't have to teach the kids Welsh by law and apparently even the Welsh families think it should be optional rather than a mandatory waste of your life.
OT, sorry. <rant>
There is a subtle difference between mandatory second-language teaching in English-medium schools (which can, I thoroughly agree, appear to be a waste of time), and choosing to send your child to a Welsh-medium school where Welsh is used as a first language.
Yes, some parents probably choose Welsh-medium as a way of avoiding the local sink-school in the same manner that some other parents (in Wales or England) will choose the local Church school in preference. Others choose it because of the whole (largely invented by Victorians) cultural thing, and a few may choose it because it's a fact that you have a lot better chance of a job in the public sector or the media in Wales if you are fluent in Welsh and have already done the "networking" at school. Given that there's not a fat lot else work-wise in Wales at the moment, "every little helps" as they say.
Still others have read the literature from other bilingual cultures around the globe (and there are quite a lot of them) and have realised that being first-language fluent in two or more languages actually conveys cognitive benefits that are simply not available to monoglots. It is an interesting fact that children in Welsh-medium education perform (a little) better (on average) than their peers in English-only schools.
And so you end up with situations such as that in Caerphilly where I live where up until 1982 there were no Welsh-medium secondary schools in the borough. In 1982 a school opened which now has 1,300 pupils, and another one has opened this year which will itself hold about 1,000 pupils (from just three feeder primaries) once it is fully-populated.
At the same time, English secondary schools are being amalgamated or closed. In Caerphilly town itself there were three secondaries. Some ten years ago, one of them closed. The buildings on one site are now a Welsh-medium primary school (see below) and the other site has now been taken over by the Welsh secondary. Further expansion of this site will see one of the other Welsh-medium primaries move sometime in the next year or so.
Of the three feeder primaries in Caerphilly town, one did not exist ten years ago but now has two-form entry (65 pupils entering each year). One moved to a new site five or six years ago and is already full, and the other is moving onto the same site as the new secondary because it also is moving to two-form entry and cannot be accommodated in the existing buildings.
A little way out of town, the primary built by housing developers on a large local development, originally earmarked as an English school, was actually opened as Welsh-medium, and there are plenty more examples.
</rant>
To answer the point about teaching Welsh in English schools. I find it sad that people find this a waste of time, but then I personally found being taught football and rugby a waste of time and would rather have spent my time in the Physics lab or twiddling with the RML-380Z. It doesn't help that some of the teachers teaching Welsh have poor Welsh themselves and are merely keeping one step ahead of the class by reading the book the night before.
Of course, the teachers with good Welsh are in demand in the Welsh-medium schools :-)
Hwyl!
M.
As I understand it, sending your kids to a Welsh-as-first-language school when they don't speak any Welsh and neither do you is not regarded as good wholesome fun for the family in those bits of Wales where people have jobs and can afford Netflix.
Your mileage clearly varies.
The only jobs that go to Welsh speakers are those specifically invented by the Assembly to make the Welsh language look as if some fucker speaks it, anyway.
I'm intrigued by this. As an Englishman who spent eight years in Wales one thing I learned is that there doesn't seem to be total agreement on the Welsh language within Wales - and I'm not even straying into the Welshification of English words.
I worked in IT for the NHS on a system which produced large amounts of output on pre-printed stationery which had to be in both English and Welsh. In the office we had two "native" Welsh speakers, ie. people who had grown up with it as their first language at home and, in one case, in school. One of these chaps was from North Wales and the other from South Wales (bearing in mind we are talking about a country which is only about 70 miles from North to South).
Anything that needed to be translated into Welsh was sent to these two who would each produce their translation, and these invariably disagreed in quite major ways. We're not talking about the equivalent of one saying "don't" and the other saying "do not", I mean BIG differences. The two of them would be locked in a small room and not let out until they had come up with a version that they could both (reluctantly) agree on.
That was the easy part. Because we were a government department the translation then had to go off to the Welsh Language Unit at the Welsh Office to be vetted by their expert. A week or two would pass and then the "official" version would be returned which would always be materially different to any of the three previous versions.
So my question is, how on earth did they get agreement on the "official" version to go into Bing etc.
"That was the easy part. Because we were a government department the translation then had to go off to the Welsh Language Unit at the Welsh Office to be vetted by their expert"
And all of course paid for by taxpayers money.
I have nothing against people speaking Welsh and I believe it should be taught in schools in Wales , but I'm afraid I object to large amounts of money being spent on a language (document translation, road signs, official publications etc) that when all's said and done is only spoken as a first language by a few thousand people all of whom speak English fluently anyway. There are a lot more important things in the current economic situation to spend money on than a cultural totem that really is only popular because some people are desperate to make it known to anyone within earshot that They're Not English.
The French have the right idea wrt to minority languages - speak them if you want but don't expect the state to pay to support them. Funnily enough that doesn't seemed to have killed Breton or Occitan.
Until late in the nineteenth century French was actually a 'minority language' in France itself -- it had more speakers than any other of the languages within the geographical area, but fewer when these languages were aggregated. It took a massive -- taxpayer financed -- effort by central government to bring about the current hegemonic status of French. Similarly in Wales large sums of taxpayers' money was employed to promote the English language. Now that there is a little redistributive justice there's a surprising amount of bleating about the alleged costs of this -- often, in my experience, from those of an UKIPish disposition.
PS Students of language have a good joke 'What's the technical term for someone who can speak only one language?' 'English'.
@oldgroaner
I have spent many holidays in "foreign european" countries (if Brussels will allow that term). Most of them speak only their own language, and I have helped many Brits and Yanks who found that out the hard way.
There are two categories that do speak English. Firstly the highly educated: university types, and senior business people and politicians. Secondly, those in the tourist trade: hotel reception, taxi drivers, head waiters... . But not supermarket checkout staff or local bar staff, as examples.
There are two types of Welsh speakers; There are those who were raised with it and speak it because that's what they've been brought up to speak (these are usually in the rural areas of West and Mid Wales) while the other type are the Welsh Hipsters of Cardiff and the South where Welsh speaking is more of a fashion statement, a bit like white earbuds and thick-rimmed glasses. Here you'll find people changing their names to sound more Welsh than they really are so someone called Mark Pugner (for example) would change their name to Pedr Rhys ap Rhewgell-Iolo-Owen and hope to work for BBC Wales.
I'm a Welsh speaking Welshman from the west who lives in the east.
That Welsh/Cymraeg is an official language of Government in Wales, and has legal parity with English. Therefore anything that helps those working with Welsh in the assembly is an useful aid, especially when it can be used by the greater public. In comparison England doesn't actually have an official language.
As for "Well you can speak English perfectly well" arguments. Yes, I can speak English, but in my work and home life I genuinely don't need to unless dealing with firms like EE or BT business. Heck, even my (Spanish owned) electricity supplier offers welsh language billing. It's a peculiar trait of some English speakers to not quite understand why anyone would want to speak anything else (the classic "when abroad simply speak louder" mindset).
And as for "Welsh isn't even standardised", neither is English (hence all the choices of "xyz English" for MS word spell checking).
And as for "Welsh isn't even standardised", neither is English.
Perfectly true, except that written English is pretty much standardised within the UK. The choices of "xyz English" in MS Word are on a national level - UK English, US English, Australian English, etc.
My point in my earlier post was that Welsh wasn't standard in places 70 miles apart which is hardly the same as saying that English isn't standard between places 3,000 miles apart (or more). Now if we were arguing non-standard Welsh on the basis of "Welsh" Welsh vs. Patagonian Welsh then it's a fair comparison, but that's not the basis of your argument.
I work with an organisation with offices all over Wales (15 sites) and we've never had any issues with standardising language for documentation or with general conversation.
And if your looking for a closer example, what do English people call a small bread item ideally shaped to contain cooked bacon?
And if your looking for a closer example, what do English people call a small bread item ideally shaped to contain cooked bacon?
Personally I call it breakfast, at least as often as I can get away with one when it does contain aforesaid pig slices...
Although around here you should probably call it the beginning of a whole new parallel argument (based on past experience anyway, especially if you include sauce and accompanying beverage of choice).
"My point in my earlier post was that Welsh wasn't standard in places 70 miles apart which is hardly the same as saying that English isn't standard between places 3,000 miles apart (or more)."
ITYM "not standard in places 70 meters apart". Or, yn fy mhrofiad i, 70cm ar wahan.
My own Welsh is an eclectic mix of North, South, West and Valleys due to the eclectic mix of teachers I had in my school years. I work with people who use Welsh first, and in exactly the same way as English, every single one of them has their own dialect.
This is not a bad thing.
Hwyl!
M.
Welsh is an interesting language. I recently discovered cynghanedd.com and on it, another of those nice new Welsh words. The word for a USB memory device ("memory stick") is "cofbin". Not unlike my wife's favourite "popty ping" (microwave oven) or the backronym-esque "cryno ddisg" (compact disc).
Hwyl!
M.
I see Google Translate has Welsh - and Catalan and Hmong - like Bing, but in addition, it even has Basque.
Google Translate rendered your article's title as
Microsoft dysgu Office, Bing, i siarad Cymraeg
which I, of course, can't tell if it is better or worse than the one from Microsoft. But those of your readers who are native speakers of that still thriving Celtic language should be able to.
Obligatory links:
There are loads more - I found a website full of them the other day but can't find the link now.
M.
I learned old Welsh in school, not Cymraeg Byw. I'll be impressed if MS Office can properly handle nasal, spirate, and aspirate mutations.
Yn = In
Cardiff = Caerdydd
In Cardiff = Yng Nghaerdydd
Working for DEC in Reading during the 90s, we built in support for most European languages and dialects, including minority languages such as Basque and Catalan.
These days, I mostly use my Welsh to demonstrate to young American programmers how their GUI dialogs will blow up when translated from their English telegraphese into less compressible languages.
That 380Z was in the second science lab built above the new changing rooms of the Aberbargoed site. No fancy names for "blocks" in them days, and of course it is now a primary school.
Showing my age there - I was the first intake to that school in 1982, all 153 of us with 12 teachers. Very interesting then that my eldest son is in the first intake to the new secondary in Caerphilly. 90-odd of them this time.
Hwyl!
M.
What is simply staggering on this thread is how 99.9% of the commentards are not Welsh.
I can't see what possible validity of opinion they can claim when they don't know anything about a subject in a country which is not theirs, and most of the opinions are naturally bigoted.
This has been going on for 100s of years with the express aim of destroying one of the oldest spoken languages in Europe.
Now all we need is Microsoft to add a few more errors as above.
That is sure to bring the finger of death.
You might as well be a Russian in Moscow trying to claim to know the useage and legislate for the use of Ukrainian language in Ukraine.
Oops, it's already being done!
Or today's fun. I wandered into a supermarket in town:
"Welcome to Morrisons Caerphilly"
"Croeso i Morrisons Bae Caerffili"
Caerphilly Bay? Bring me my sun lounger, I'm off to the beach(*).
Hwyl!
M.
(*)Caerphilly is about eight miles inland from the Severn Estuary, with a dirty great morraine between it and the Cardiff flood plain. Even the local river - the Rhymney - avoids as much of the town as possible.
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