LastPlace

Just found this..........


LONDON (Reuters) - Council officials in Wales were left red-faced after discovering cyclists were being confused by a road sign telling them they had a bladder problem.

Officials had translated the command "cyclists dismount" from English into Welsh for the sign between Penarth and the capital Cardiff.

However, the result had been the baffling phrase: "Llid y bledren dymchwelyd" which roughly translates as "bladder inflammation overturn."

"The root of the problem was seeking an online translation and that's where it went wrong," a council spokesman said on Wednesday. "Unfortunately on this occasion we ended up with the problem."

All signs in Wales must be written in both the local language as well as English.

"The order in which the words have been placed means the sentence makes no sense whatsoever," Welsh-language expert Owain Sgiv told the South Wales Echo newspaper.

"It certainly does not mean anything like cyclists dismount."

The council spokesman said the sign was being replaced.

OH306

There was a link to that photo in another thread. Did you notice the sign was on the right side of the road, meaning a (British) cyclist would need to drive facing traffic in order to read it? Makes me wonder if it was a fabricated story and a photoshopped picture.

https://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100n...name_page.html

stapfam

If you have listened to the welsh language- then it is welsh that makes no senese whatsoever.

I can understand Latin- Greek and French. They have had a bearing on the Engish language, but welsh predates "English" by quite a few centuries. It bears no relationship to English so you might as well be speaking Urdu- Which a lot of people in England do, incidentally.

OH306

My dad was a Welshman from Cardiff and spoke Welsh as well as English. There is no language in the world anywhere close to it. It is amazing anyone can understand it.

bcoppola

It's a Celtic language, hence supposedly related to Scots and Irish Gaelic. But even the Gaelic speaking Irish and Scots can't understand or speak it AFAIK.

Pretty country, though. I don't think there's a straight road anywhere in Wales.

stapfam

There are but it is straight up the mountain - or straight down.

Talking about Gaelic. When I joined the Marines, we had a scots lad lad that was a bit slow, I think we called him thick. From day one of training- whenever an order was directed- he was always the last one to act to it. This went on for a couple of weeks and eventually we got to the bottom of the problem. He came from the Isles and his native tongue was gaelic. The only English he knew was very basic so whenever we were called to attention- he had to see what everyone else was doing and then he would copy. He learnt very quickly after that- but if you want to hear a foreign language- Talk to a Geordie. That is some one from Newcastle and the accent is so thick- it might aswell be a foreign language.

abarkley

No, Welsh isn't related to Scots or Irish Gaelic which (IIRC) have an Icelandic derivation.

Curiously, Welsh is closely related to Breton, as spoken in North West France and to Cornish which is still just about alive in the far South West of England.

Once went on vacation to Brittany with a Welshman - he found he spoke the local lingo pretty well - to his surprise.

Pedant signs off....

bcoppola

I thought Cornish, Breton, Gaelic, and Welsh were all Celtic languages, much as Italian, French, Spanish, Catalan, Portugese, and Romanian are all Romance (Latin-derived) languages.

Not that the various Gaelic languages wouldn't have many Scandinavian loan-words thanks to the Danes and Vikings -- much as English has many Latinate (especially French) loan words thanks mainly to the business that began in 1066, and to a lesser extent from ecclesiastical Latin.

(And the Normans, at least the nobility, were descended from marauding Vikings who settled in and, over the generations, took to speaking French -- of a sort. And then, instead of imposing Norman French on England after they invaded, began speaking English, albeit much modified from what it was before the conquest).

I think the various Scandinavian tongues (including Icelandic) are classed as Germanic languages, as is English and, naturlich, German. Except for Finnish. That's in another family, along with Turkish of all things IIRC. (One long ago wandering Turk to another: "Hey, Kemal, I think we're lost...and boy, is it cold!")

Now this armchair linguist bows out...is there a professional linguist in the house?

Anyway, if I ever bike in Wales I'll refrain from peeing alfresco, regardless of what the signs say.