I almost forgot, but I heard about the following link yesterday. Regardless of one's opinion of Microsoft or their products, this has to be one of the most awful videos ever inflicted on anyone. (For background: MS are trying to persuade their customers to advertise the new operating system Windows 7 on their behalf.)

You can choose whichever ( Read more... )

Today I received a parcel from Amazon I'd ordered last week on something of a whim. They included this novel and two Teach Yourself book+CD language kits: Irish and Spanish. I want to learn Spanish because I'm travelling in a Spanish-speaking country later this year and need to be able to buy beer/chat up senoritas/fend off hyenas. I want to learn ( Read more... )

This Times column by Daisy Waugh (the link is to a discussion of said column) is pretty unabashed in its entirely unnecessary ridiculing of Wales and the Welsh and the Welsh language. The gist of Waugh's column seems to be that house prices in rural Wales are such that they allow one to purchase a bigger house there than one would in central London ( Read more... )

Hell yesLooks like stupid-but-fun entertainment. The portrayal of Watson (by, um, Jude Law) feels much closer in spirit to the ex-military man of the books, and the oft-ignored mischievous side of Holmes himself suits somebody of Downey Jr.'s exuberance. Of course, it could simply rape the hell out of everything Conan Doyle ever wrote, but I'm ( Read more... )

If you are familiar with Welsh, you may have heard of the Welsh strict poetic system called cynghanedd (usually translated as "harmony"). It's v popular amongst the kids in the street, as you can imagine, and predictably there's a website hub where poets and aspiring poets congregate to discuss cynghanedd 'n' shit: Annedd y Cynganeddwyr. At the ( Read more... )

There was a follow-up article of sorts in The Sun today to the one yesterday. It's somewhat sinister IMO.

Deva Kumarasiri from Sri Lanka is a Nottingham postmaster and Lib Dem councillor, and he refuses to serve customers except in English. ( Read more... )

More or less explicit in this hateful article (front page today) in the red top The Sun is the supposition that anyone living in the UK who does not have English as a first language is automatically less intelligent, or at least less worthy, than those who do. (Edit: the headline was 'Broken English'. Make of that what you will.)

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FACE meet PALM.

The Tintin books by Herge are things that, I suspect, a large number of western European children grow up with. I can't speak for the rest of the world, though God knows the works have been translated into almost as many languages as there are languages. Certainly I read those that were translated into Welsh, and all of the English-language ones ( Read more... )

Like I did last year, I've decided that, rather than write 5,000 words of my thesis, I would have more fun writing 5,000 words of a stupid short story instead. So here it is, for you to read or ignore at your whim. Merry Christmas! Nadolig llawen!

Title: Average King Wenceslas
Author: peredur_glynRatings: Adult ( Read more... )