On Torchwood and the Welsh Language

[eldarwannabe]

I started by writing a fic about this, but it just wasn't coming together, and meta is much easier sometimes.

Comments

[iceshade]

Also, as I've said, a lot of the people who hold that Ianto is fluent in Welsh, held this before CoE and/or disregard it anyways. And I've just come up with the theory that Ianto's grandparents used to only speak Welsh, so wee!Ianto picked up a little. (Or would revert to Welsh when they were upset; like my grandparents and Yiddish).

I've also said that my theory is that Jack understands Welsh, but without Tardis help can't actually speak it (as you've clearly articulated by his abominable pronunciation in the ficlet)

[xtricks]

Haha! My interpretation of the ficlet was that Ianto had no clue what he was saying, since *he* doesn't speak Welsh and told Jack taht to keep him from trying to talk to Ianto in it (and finding out he doesn't know *quite* everything).

[iceshade]

XD It's an ongoing argument with me and eldarwannabe about whether or not Ianto speaks Welsh. I say 'yes' because I established this head canon before I saw CoE (and then completely ignored CoE for a while) and I think it would be in his nature to teach himself Welsh if he didn't speak it at home, she says no for reasons explained already.

[xtricks]

Well, I pretty much ignore everything after Exit Wounds but I like the idea of Ianto as a lying liar who lies -- it does seem to fit what little of his backstory we got, pre CoE

[eldarwannabe]

See, now I want a fic with lying!Ianto who is totally a fluent Welsh speaker. Argh, fandom.

[eldarwannabe]

It was just a scribble, but I was trying to show that Jack was totally comfortable having a whole conversation in Welsh. Ianto, meanwhile, can't speak/understand it, but he know what Welsh is supposed to sound like. Which is...nothing like what Jack was saying. Nothing at all.

[eldarwannabe]

You aren't allowed to come up with new theories after my GINORMOUS post. NOT OK. :p

(see below for my comments on my tiny!fic)

[madder_rose]

The first option seems reasonable to me. Jack probably does speak Welsh, and a number of other languages (guy must have learned something after 180+ years on Earth...), Gwen might speak it a little and Rhys and Andy probably do it with their mates.

Thing is, I don't think any of them pepper their daily conversations with Welsh at all. Never met a bilingual person who mixed both languages or even peppered one with the other. I mean, I grew up with 2 languages in my family. I'm fluent in Swedish but not in Finnish. I know some Finnish, but even so I never mix it in with Swedish. If my mother talks to her brother or sister mum might speak Swedish while the other two speak Finnish. Neither of them will mix things, unless it is to translate to me.

Not that one shouldn't mix languages, it's just that people don't seem to naturally do it. :/ And it throws me out of fic to see it lol. (Like Nightcrawler in X-Men. ACHTUNG MY LIEBLING! D: )

[eldarwannabe]

That's interesting, because I have seen people pepper one language with the other - but mostly in situations where they are speaking in front of similarly bilingual people. (I've caught myself doing it when there isn't a convenient word in English. And I'm not fluent in anything else.)

I've also experienced full code-switching, where the conversation just keeps changing languages naturally when both people are fluent. I find it can change based on topic, specifically, but I'm no expert.

I think it's one of those things that depends on the languages and personal preference. (And writers need to be more aware of that when giving characters foreign language catchphrases, which can sound so odd.)

[madder_rose]

Yeah, I've seen the last a lot. My mother and her family will switch from Finnish to Swedish, back and forth, but if they switch they stick to the one they're using at the moment. The time they do use another word (in either language) is usually if they forget what a word means or how it translates.

lol the foreign language catch-phrases are just weird. And a pet peeve D:

[eldarwannabe]

Ha, yes to the forgetting-words-in-one-language thing.

[madder_rose]

True :) but the same could be said for English and Welsh. Granted, pronunciation of Cariad might make it easy to fit into English but there are lots of separate words like that in all languages. It probably is the exotic feel of differnet languages that make people mix it up, even if it never happened in canon. Nothing wrong with it, but it looks a bit odd sometiems and done wrong (REMY LEBEAU!) is just plain annoying.

Welsh English however... Samwidges! Now there's something I want to see more of *g*