Gareth Roberts
Welsh linguist in Philadelphia. I grow languages in the lab. Opinions my own. He.
Ieithydd o Gymro yn Philadelphia. Tyfaf ieithoedd yn y lab. Barnau fy hun. Fo.
linktr.ee/garicgymro
- In fact, as pointed out by @elisabethjkerr.bsky.social, people are probably less likely to drink tea with their tea than at any other time of day!
- Something visitors to Britain often find hard to grasp is that the term "tea" really is widely used for the evening meal, regardless of whether any tea is served as a drink. (and it's often not).
- For some reason it seems to take a lot of people multiple steps to understanding this. The first step is often "Oh, right, so not just tea—sandwiches and cakes too". No. That's afternoon tea. Or (the special scone-based version) a cream tea.
- The word "tea" is still used for the drink, of course, but as a meal it's dinner. If you're invited to a British person's house at around 6pm for "tea", it could easily look like this!
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View full threadEither way, it might be followed by pudding bsky.app/profile/eisr...
- "Caouissin ... would like to think the language will follow a similar path to Welsh, which has enjoyed a revival over the past half-century and is spoken by 538,000 people" People keep getting this wrong about Welsh! There has not been a "revival". Let me explain. 1/
- If you track the percentage of Welsh speakers from 1881 to 2021, it's a *downward slope*. Welsh did not die or come close to death and then get "revived". What happened is that the decline slowed significantly and we reached something like a plateau in the 1970s. 2/
- And that's a really good thing! It's why Welsh is comparatively healthy. But it's not a "revival" in the sense that so many people always seem to imagine. We could maybe say there was a *revival of support*, both at the state level and the popular level. A reinvigoration perhaps... 3/
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View full threadCoda: To be clear about what I'm saying here: I don't think it's too late to try to stop Breton from dying. I'm saying it's too late to follow the path that Welsh did. Breton is already too far down a different path. bsky.app/profile/gari...
- Tonight's #BoardGame: Anachrony
