When Austin Boyle went to register the birth of his daughter Aoife, he wanted to celebrate her Gaelic heritage. He had given her a Gaelic first name and planned to do likewise with the surname.
But when Mr Boyle got to the desk of the register office in Kyle, in the west Highlands, he got a bit of a shock. Although the Scottish executive spends millions of pounds each year trying to save the language from dying out, he was told that he couldn’t register a Gaelic surname.
“I was told by the local office to contact Edinburgh, so I did. When I got on to this fellow he said that Gaelic, as far as their policy is concerned, is a foreign language. He added that wanting to register the name in Gaelic would be similar to registering it in Sanskrit.”
Monthly Archives: Mehefin 2003
Dwisio’r llinell ! Blog Cymraeg newydd arall arall.
diolch i mici mac am hyn
Dyma un arall, dyma un arall
ramirez – blog newydd Cymraeg.
hogynorachub – blog newydd arall Cymraeg.
Diawl, maen nhw fel bysus Llundain. Ti’n aros am dwy flynedd ac yn sydyn dyma 12 ohonyn nhw. Dim yn deall pam mae pawb yn defnyddio blog-city – ydyn nhw’n well na Blogger – neu dydy pobl ddim yn gwybod am Blogger?
Dych chi’n gwybod bod albym newydd Radiohead yn dod allan wythnos nesa, ond o’ch chi’n gwybod bod albym gan Christopher O’Riley o fersiynau piano o ganeuon Radiohead yn dod mas y diwrnod wedyn? Mae’n swnio’n wych.
Hooked on Classics i’r mileniwm newydd?
Corachflog – gweflog Cymraeg newydd sbon, gan Geraint o’r hen Faes.
Ac o’r weflog honna, dw i’n ffeindio’r darn ’ma gan Julie Birchell (gohebydd gyda’r Guardian dw i’n wedi hyfforddi fy hun i anwybyddu erbyn hyn) sy’n dweud llawer o bethau call am Gymru. Penawd twp, fel arfer, ond nid arni hi mae bai am hynny.
When I first came here four years ago, I was newly, incandescently in love and necking a bit of E at weekends, and thought this might have some bearing on the fact that Portmeirion seemed to me to be the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Four years on, still in love, but stone-cold sober, it still made me weep. Though, with characteristic modesty, Williams Ellis dismissed his dream village as “a gay, light-opera sort of place”, it is in fact tremendously moving. Thoughtless and dogmatic architecture has blighted and ruined the lives of millions of people; to see a place created with the sole simple aim of bringing joy by shoving disparate objects of beauty into one small space seems to sum up all the folly and glory of mankind. Simply being in Portmeirion seems to mimic the experiences of being in love or on drugs; the dizzying distortion of perspective, the shock of beauty around every corner.
Google fel offeryn i ieithyddwyr. Dw i wedi dweud o’r blaen mai Google yw’r unig spell-check mae dyn yn gallu dibynnu arno. Mae sawl geiriadur ar-lein ar gael yn y Gymraeg erbyn hyn, ac maen nhw’n defnyddiol iawn (yn enwedig os ydy “Bruce” wedi crwydro o’i le priodol yma wrth fy llaw chwith ar y desg), ond mae Google yn rhoi llun byw o iaith (o bob iaith?) fel mae hi.
O Google dw i’n gallu cymharu “gwelog” a “gweflog” (dau gyfieithiad o’r term “weblog”), ac ar yr un pryd ffeindio gweflog Cymraeg arall dw i heb roi yn y rhestr.
Gary Snyder – Why I Take Good Care of My Macintosh Computer – dylwn i ofalu am fy i-dot yn well, druan iddi.
Mwy o gerddi Snyder, gyda un o/m ffefrennau.
Bellona Times – llawer o hwyl.
Ond bydd y Cynulliad yn cadw’r Gymraeg yn saff!
A Plan To Save The Irish language
Research indicates that if a single English-speaker joins a network (people who regularly talk to each other) of Irish-speakers, then the entire network will switch to using English. Except in the most isolated Gaeltacht communities, people whose first language was Irish now spend most of their waking hours in the company of English-speakers. This has turned the language of schools, pubs and whole communities from Irish to English. The 1996 census found that around 40% of Irish-speakers living in the Gaeltacht could go a whole day without speaking Irish and 31% didn’t even speak it once a week.