Y Coch Cymru

Ran into my hot bear coworker at Bear Night and my eyes were immediately drawn to his chest. And not just because of his eye-popping pecs this time either. No, it was the dragon-shaped logo, which combined with the dark red background sent the words "CYMRU AM BYTH!" coursing through my brain. I immediately surmised that it wasn't the jersey of the Welsh National Team due to the conspicuous lack of "BRAINS", but that didn't tell me whose jersey it was. He couldn't tell me either; seems a buddy from his days with the Gotham Knights had sent him a passel of old shirts when he cleaned up his apartment, and this was one of them.

Don't mock me, Cymrophiles, but when I saw the "DYFED STEELS" logo on the back, I thought I'd found the name of the team. Sleuthing the next day, however, determined that this was a merely a sponsor and the ruggers in question were the Llanelli Scarlets. (They dropped the "Llanelli" from their name to broaden their appeal when Wales was reorganised into four rugby regions a few years back.) Later I told another coworker about this and he asked me, "What are they called in Welsh?" I couldn't answer authoritatively, but I thought maybe "y Cochion". Wrong; sad to say but Welsh Wikipedia sez "y Sgarlets". At least the Cardiff Blues are the Gleision Caerdydd instead of "y Bliws". Rounding out the big four are the Ospreys/Gweilch and the Newport Gwent Dragons/Dreigiau Casnewydd Gwent, and apparently plans are afoot for a fifth major team based in Colwyn Bay.

Forgive my insufferable ignorance, but I'd never realised what a major sport rugby was in Wales. In England, at any rate, it's associated with the posher schools, football being the sport with the greatest mass appeal. I never realised how firmly it had taken root in the Valleys. I guess the next step is actually watching a game or two?

ETA: I don't know what it says about my typing skills or my linguistic confusion that every time I had to type the word "rugby" in this post, I began writing it the Welsh way (rygbi) and had to go back and correct it.

(no subject)

You know me, I'm generally extremely sympathetic to the promotion of minority languages and I strive not to be judgmental about what goes under that label; the whole "language or dialect" argument is unscientific claptrap in my eyes. But I'm sorry, "Belarusian" just looks like ordinary Russian badly misspelled.

Exiting ignorance

It occurs to me that I'm still suffering a mental block from a bad definition I was taught over twenty five years ago. When I began studying Spanish in school (patience, mlr; I'll get around to writing up the sequence soon), one of the very first words we learned was salir, which was glossed as "to go out". I suspect the reason was to make example sentences like me gusta salir con amigos readily intelligible. Later, when I picked up Catalan and French, I mapped this verb to sortir (either because it was glossed the same way or because I learned very early on that salida = sortida = sortie).

So far, so good. I never noticed my subtle misapprehension until recently when I found myself stymied trying to translate sentences like the sun has come out or I'm waiting for him to come out. I came across il soleil est sorti as a translation of the former and promptly forgot it, since as it came into my recall, I'd tell myself That can't be; sortir is "go out". If only I'd been taught in the first place that salir/sortir really means "exit" (or deduced this from its use on signs) or, better put, "to move from an interior location to an exterior location, regardless of the perspective of the speaker" I could've avoided all this.

A welcome trend

Before there was OK Go:

...there was The Bravery.