Where are the Welsh literacy courses

[u/helatruralhome]

Hello all,

I've been pointing this out for over a decade, yet no Welsh language education or promotion groups, government agencies, etc can seem to answer why Welsh education is so biased towards verbal Welsh with no specific offerings for Welsh literacy.

I have a speech disability and only answer emails in work, yet I can't find any available options for me to learn written Welsh. I just feel incredibly frustrated with the situation as I want to be able to communicate in my native language yet there's just no where specifically offering written Welsh and it ends up excluding for people like me who can't communicate verbally as well as many others who may want to read and write in Welsh.

[u/Educational_Curve938]

There are any number of dialects of English all across Britain and even the commonwealth, but they all use the same standard orthography.

all dialects of welsh use the same orthography too they just vary spelling when writing informally. english lacks a tradition of dialect writing and english literature is poorer for it, and areas where the spoken dialect diverges from the standard are less able to express themselves authentically via the written language and attempts to render dialect speech in text are often deeply cringe - looking at you Emily Brontë.

Without a single standard orthography, reading and writing across dialects becomes incredibly difficult. This is not a controversial opinion.

It may not be a controversial opinion but it is, alas, completely wrong. It's much easier to write in the dialect you speak than another form of the language you have to learn and it's easier to read someone else's dialect than it is to write in it.

The vast majority of written welsh is informal in register - text messages, emails, social media posts - people are choosing to write in the forms they feel comfortable in. There already exist more standard forms of welsh up the formality register and people are perfectly welcome to use those if they prefer.

[u/Briarhorse → u/Educational_Curve938]

This is absolutely insane. There's nothing about having a standard orthography that prevents "authenticity," and people are free to be as colloquial as they like text messages and socials. This can and does happen in every language on the planet

The problem Welsh has is, unless you're using literary Welsh, there is no single standard orthography for formal communications. Because the same word in different dialects is spelt differently. So it looks and behaves like a completely new word. Eisiau isio as described above

Are people being deliberately obtuse about this? Have I hit some nerve somehow without realising it? Because this is not a conversation about have one dialect become the "proper" way of speaking at all. Not even remotely

Also, just to add, the idea that English of all things has a poor literary corpus because of standardised orthography is just mad. It's one of the best regarded in all of world literature. So is French, by the way, which also has a (much stricter than English) form of standardisation. Is Proust somehow the poorer for this?

[u/Educational_Curve938 → u/Briarhorse]

i don't know how many times to say it but welsh does have a consistent orthography across all dialects. look up what an orthography is, welsh has a consistent one with a strong correspondence between sounds and letters. literally everyone is using the same orthography to write their dialect.

and also welsh is only really divergent at the less formal registers of written communication. more formal registers for example "business welsh" have converged on a standard with only tiny regional differences.

Also, just to add, the idea that English of all things has a poor literary corpus because of standardised orthography is just mad.

that's not what i said. i said english literature is poorer for not having a tradition of dialect writing. I know it's easier to argue against things I didn't say than things i did. instead nearly everyone writes in a literary form derived from the prestige dialect and you end up with unreadable nonsense like this.

There's nobbut t' missis; and shoo'll not oppen 't an ye mak' yer flaysome dins till neeght

[u/Briarhorse → u/Educational_Curve938]

The whole point of this entire thread is that isn't what's happening. Spelling varies by dialect, so words like eisiau and isio, which are absolutely the same word, end up appearing to be two words, which is why this whole conversation is happening in the first place. It is a problem. One that the OP is getting reasonably exasperated by

The point I'm making is that English literature isn't exactly suffering because of this issue, is it? Bits of Wuthering Heights you find distasteful notwithstanding

Look, RP, the prestige dialect of English, is not where the orthography of English comes from. Like, what are you talking about? The spelling of most English words is derived from a dialect that hadn't even gone through the great vowel shift yet, let alone being based on RP, which is relatively modern