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

[xtricks]

to be fair, a good bit of the fanon 'Ianto speaks Welsh', came well before Fragments or any backstory at all of Ianto aired. And, in fine fandom tradition, it was made up for him (and still is) -- and since he's often exoticized, giving him the little known and strange language of Welsh was a natural.

[eldarwannabe]

Oh, I know a lot of the fanon pre-existed any knowledge we really had, so it made a lot of sense at the time.

But I keep seeing it, and can make me twitch because it's sometimes just gratuitous cool language insertion. (Exoticized! Exactly!)

Hasn't stopped me having extensive conversation with poor iceshade about it. And then mulling it over, and writing about it anyway. :)

[xtricks]

Well, one thing I've found about fanon is that it often persists even when/if canon directly contradicts it. Many reasons, of course, but I think one major reason is that fanon develops because that bit of creative liscence satisfies some part of why fans are ... fans and why fanfic writers write. ie: fanon is often more emotionally satisfactory to fans than canon is.

[eldarwannabe]

True. And there is a significant group of people who simply ignore CoE and all the information therein, including any backstory.

As a hard-core canon-ite, I sometimes have trouble reconciling this stuff in my head. And as I consumed all of Torchwood in about three weeks, it's hard for me to separate out parts of canon.

[pocky_slash]

I kind of agree with iceshade. I don't think Ianto grew up speaking Welsh and I don't think he speaks it fluently, but I think around the time he decided to reinvent himself in London, he started picking up useful phrases. But I think he did that with a handful of languages. In my mind, Ianto sort of turns himself into a jack-of-all-trades in his effort to be indispensable. I don't think he speaks anything but English fluently, but he knows how to find the bathroom and direct someone to the highway and ask for directions in a handful of languages, Welsh included, more out of nostalgia and maybe because the other kids in the office teased him about it than anything else

[iceshade]

AHAHAHAHAHAHA WIN.

Gwen, Rhys and Ianto probably also know Welsh so they can yell insults at the other rugby teams

[eldarwannabe]

See, I'm willing to give iceshade that one. It's a good reason for speaking Welsh, but I think he's use it occasionally. You know, a "nos da/good night" to Gwen at the end of the day or something. The Torchwood production team made SUCH A BIG DEAL about being in Wales, why no language drops??

Oh, someone read past Ianto! :D Yeah, I see Gwen as very proud Welsh citizen. Unlike Ianto who ran to England first chance, she's probably spent her whole live living in Wales. And Gwen always gets points for effort.

LOL on your Jack theories. I don't agree with it, but I interrupted London!Roomie's guitar practice from laughing too hard. I just think, 108 or so years in a place, YOU GOTTA LEARN SOME LOCAL LINGO JACK.

Oh god, Ianto is going to make him pay in your head!canon. *collapses in laughter again*

[hab318princess]

I agree broadly but there is one argument that you've not included: he knows shorthand... that is like learning a foreign language (been there, done that, forgotten it), so he may have some other language skills (considering he claims to know everything) and done his best to learn Welsh (maybe to impress his father)

[eldarwannabe]

Huh. Good points. But shorthand isn't a foreign language so much as another way to write English. Like maybe ASL, which is significantly easier to learn than, say, Russian. I see shorthand as something he would need to learn as a researcher, or even as Jack's Personal Assistant.

Of course, I do agree that he might have learned Welsh in his effort to Know Everything. I honestly didn't consider the father idea, which is going to germinate for a while. Huh.

[hab318princess]

It felt like one when I learnt it, they even described it as one as we started ... I had to give up trying to learn English shorthand by myself after learning it in German and that was tough enough!

Ianto makes a comment about his father expecting too much of him, so yeah, learning Welsh may be one of the things he got made to do because Ianto's life seems to be about bettering himself (even if not always by choice) - and also: it would help with the tourist office: impress the tourists with a few well formed phrases with welsh vowels

[eldarwannabe]

Hm. Obviously I'm going to have to look into shorthand some more. I'm not saying it's easy (I gave up on American Sign Language fairly quickly) just not as...foreign? IDK. Shutting up now until I've looked into it some more.

I was one of those tourists! Ianto would have haaaated me. We asked the guy at the Tourist Information Center to give us some handy Welsh phrases, but he gave us maybe seven before calling over this other guy who was a native speaker.

The idea with his father is starting to inspire fic. After I just spent a whole post on why he didn't speak Welsh!

[alt_universe_me]

Ooh, meta! I have a foot in both doors, I guess. I'm cool with Ianto speaking Welsh, but honestly I think it can be overdone in fic...

Cute ficlet too :)

[eldarwannabe]

Thanks! :)

I mostly go either way as well, I just wanted to respond to the sheer volume of Welsh-speaking-Ianto I kept seeing everywhere.