Not your usual "Cyclists Dismount" sign!

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RickH
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Not your usual "Cyclists Dismount" sign!

Post by RickH »

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gaz
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Re: Not your usual "Cyclists Dismount" sign!

Post by gaz »

Almost wet myself :wink: :lol: .

At the risk of similar embarrassment may I simply add "Mae fy hofrenfad yn llawn llyswennod".
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meic
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Re: Not your usual "Cyclists Dismount" sign!

Post by meic »

Not only the Welsh is baffling, I am also baffled by why this story is re-emerging 8 years after it happened.

viewtopic.php?p=146573#p146573
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Mick F
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Re: Not your usual "Cyclists Dismount" sign!

Post by Mick F »

Yes, I remembered it too, but couldn't find the original.
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RickH
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Re: Not your usual "Cyclists Dismount" sign!

Post by RickH »

meic wrote:Not only the Welsh is baffling, I am also baffled by why this story is re-emerging 8 years after it happened.

viewtopic.php?p=146573#p146573

My apologies :oops: - a friend of mine who lives in Wales posted it on Facebook earlier & I didn't notice the date on the article until you mentioned it.

In mitigation, M'Lord, I'd not seen it before. :) & I did find it amusing. :lol:

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Bicycler
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Re: Not your usual "Cyclists Dismount" sign!

Post by Bicycler »

'Cyclists dismount is an awkward sentence to translate as there is no Welsh word for dismount,' he added.

'But the correct translation would be something like dim beicio, which means literally no cycling, or man disgyn i feicwyr, which means fall-off area for cyclists.

:?
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meic
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Re: Not your usual "Cyclists Dismount" sign!

Post by meic »

Hello Rick,

Not your fault the news item was resurrected by the press and I am sure that your link did have a recent date on it when I followed it but it doesnt now. :?

http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-w ... rs-7253676
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661-Pete
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Re: Not your usual "Cyclists Dismount" sign!

Post by 661-Pete »

There's a serious side to all this - just how much of a 'living' language is Welsh?

If sign painters, working in the country where Welsh is an official language, have to resort to Google Translate or whatever, what does this say about the state of affairs?

Does this happen in other countries where the official language is spoken regularly only by a minority (Ireland for example)?
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661-Pete
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Re: Not your usual "Cyclists Dismount" sign!

Post by 661-Pete »

gaz wrote:Almost wet myself :wink: :lol: .

At the risk of similar embarrassment may I simply add "Mae fy hofrenfad yn llawn llyswennod".

Ni fyddaf yn prynu y cofnod hwn, mae'n cael ei grafu.
And, more risqué...
Os wyf yn dweud wrthych "gennych gorff hardd" y byddech yn ei ddal yn fy erbyn?
Suppose that this room is a lift. The support breaks and down we go with ever-increasing velocity.
Let us pass the time by performing physical experiments...
--- Arthur Eddington (creator of the Eddington Number).
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Re: Not your usual "Cyclists Dismount" sign!

Post by Bicycler »

661-Pete wrote:There's a serious side to all this - just how much of a 'living' language is Welsh?

If sign painters, working in the country where Welsh is an official language, have to resort to Google Translate or whatever, what does this say about the state of affairs?

That not all sign makers are bilingual? Welsh is spoken regularly by a significant proportion of Welsh people but there are huge regional variations (EDIT: in the proportion of people who primarily speak welsh not in the language itself). Having one or more official national languages which aren't commonly heard in a particular area but are used on all official documentation is common in many countries. I lived in British Columbia (Canada) for a while. Everything was bi-lingual English/French despite virtually no-one there having French as their first language. I suggest that having multiple national languages only seems odd if you come from somewhere with just one.
Last edited by Bicycler on 12 Jun 2014, 2:54pm, edited 1 time in total.
Ben@Forest
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Re: Not your usual "Cyclists Dismount" sign!

Post by Ben@Forest »

Bicycler wrote:
'Cyclists dismount is an awkward sentence to translate as there is no Welsh word for dismount,' he added.

'But the correct translation would be something like dim beicio, which means literally no cycling, or man disgyn i feicwyr, which means fall-off area for cyclists.



Welsh is not a particularly good living language. I remember hearing a Welsh speaker say how wonderful it was that they were still using a language that hadn't changed since the 13th century - which sounds great until you realise it would mean in English we'd all be going around talking like the characters in the Canterbury Tales. And in the 13th century dismounting a bike was not a big talking point for Welsh speakers - but it does make you wonder how they ever described getting off a horse.
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Re: Not your usual "Cyclists Dismount" sign!

Post by iviehoff »

Ben@Forest wrote:Welsh is not a particularly good living language. I remember hearing a Welsh speaker say how wonderful it was that they were still using a language that hadn't changed since the 13th century - which sounds great until you realise it would mean in English we'd all be going around talking like the characters in the Canterbury Tales. And in the 13th century dismounting a bike was not a big talking point for Welsh speakers - but it does make you wonder how they ever described getting off a horse.

This is nonsense. The language has continued to be used as vernacular, and languages used as vernacular always assimilate the change necessary to make them adequate to the situation. If you have ever seen bilingual signs in English and German, you will realise that sometimes some languages seem to take a lot of time to say certain common things, but this doesn't make them "not very good" languages. Welsh has even quite noticeably changed since the 1960s edition of Teach Yourself Welsh I once owned, if you compare that with a modern tutor. Similar claims about Icelandic being just like it was 800 years ago are sometimes made, but not by anyone who has ever compared the original texts of Icelandic sagas with translations into modern Icelandic. Icelandic has retained certain grammatical features of old Norse that continental Scandinavian languages have lost, thus making it easier for Icelandic people to pick up the grammar of Old Norse, but it doesn't mean that Old Norse at all mutually comprehensible with modern Icelandic, or that Icelandic is in any sense a language in which it is "difficult" to express modern ideas. Likewise Welsh people who do have indeed read mediaeval Welsh/Icelandic know that it is about as difficult as Chaucer to read for an Englishman.

I met an Argentinean native Welsh speaker once - Welsh is still spoken as vernacular in a few places in Argentina resulting from some Welsh colonies in the 19th century, though it is dying out. She had visited Wales and could attest that the Welsh spoken in Argentina is quite materially different from that spoken in Wales. She claimed that her Welsh was more conservative than the Welsh spoken in Wales, though most people tend to think their own form of the language is more "authentic".
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Re: Not your usual "Cyclists Dismount" sign!

Post by iviehoff »

661-Pete wrote:If sign painters, working in the country where Welsh is an official language, have to resort to Google Translate or whatever, what does this say about the state of affairs?
Does this happen in other countries where the official language is spoken regularly only by a minority (Ireland for example)?

I was in NW Wales recently, in the area where most people speak Welsh as vernacular, and came across a few signs whose English translation left something to be desired.

I've seen some pretty questionable English on signs in Ireland too.

I expect they don't have to resort to Google Translate, though it would be better if they could actually use it competently. Google Tr suggests "beicwyr oddi ar y beic", which translated back comes to "cyclists off bike", which I think would do pretty well if we didn't have "dismount" in English. I expect they use Google translate because they just need something good enough and don't want to bother/pay for the translation service they would use for something more important. Even then there was the famous case where someone asked a translator, got an "out of office" email, and put the wording of that onto a sign. Clearly some people have no idea at all what they are looking at even though they are in the country and seeing the language regularly. Sadly, that is the common arrogance of many English speakers, even English speakers resident/born in Wales.
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Re: Not your usual "Cyclists Dismount" sign!

Post by beardy »

Has anybody noticed that the English version is pretty dumb?

If you look at what it actually says you will get off your bike and wonder "what happens next?"

Something like "cyclists walk here" or "cyclists push here" would make sense and probably is quite easy to say in Welsh.
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Re: Not your usual "Cyclists Dismount" sign!

Post by Bicycler »

iviehoff wrote: Clearly some people have no idea at all what they are looking at even though they are in the country and seeing the language regularly. Sadly, that is the common arrogance of many English speakers, even English speakers resident/born in Wales.

It doesn't strike me as arrogance. Having 2 languages serves little purpose if everybody is expected to be able to use both. You might as well just have one if that were the case, the second would be superfluous. My relative in Monmouth feels as much of an obligation to learn Welsh as I, or anyone else in Vancouver, felt to learn French. If anybody wishes to learn a language or needs to learn a language or is in a predominantly welsh-speaking community then that is fair enough but I don't think it's right to criticise as arrogant those who never bother to learn a language for which they have little use.
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