Iestyn wrote:Seriously, if you can wear a badge or a tee-shirt that leads people to believe that you are Welsh speaking, you will be spoken to in Welsh (by people usually a bit embarrased that they may be wrong!)
I can vouch for that -- except that I'm usually too panic-stricken when wearing my Dw i'n dysgu Cymraeg badge to notice what kind of Welsh my interlocutor is speaking! Isn't it strange that when shopping in, say, Russia we can let Russky russky russky, or equivalent, go totally over our heads, but just down the road in our own country a friendly outburst of Cymraeg cymraeg helpu cymraeg pacio at the supermarket checkout can make one feel "Oh, [blasphemy of your choice], I forgot to take the badge off", go quite red, and at best mumble one's best rendition of Yyym.. Dim ond dysgwr ydw i -- which, one is sure, is almost certainly totally garbled Welsh anyway.
And yet, and yet... You will have just had a (sort of; well almost; in fact: genuine) interchange with a Welsh-speaker who is -- and this is very important -- neither your tutor nor your fellow student (and is pleased to speak to you in Welsh, because after all, they didn't have to; they could have ignored your badge) ...and a warm glow will finally come over you.
So, come on. Let us all be arses together. At bottom, it's the most fundamental thing, yndyfe?
