One of my colleagues is from Poland. She has a slight accent but otherwise speaks English as well as I do.
Was on a call today with a client and a Slovak interpreter. Slovak and Polish are apparently, while not identical, mutually comprehensible.
Client was complaining to the interpreter that my colleague was asking far too many questions. She says she needed to as too many of the clients answers were prefixed by 'maybe' but were translated without that qualifier.
She gets to the end of the call and says in Slovak how nice it was to chat with them!
To say the client was embarrassed would be an understatement.
I has a colleague in my previous career who was hard of hearing and had a desk mike and earpieces with amplified sound for use in meetings. During a loo break they could hear exactly what the other parties were saying about their tactics for ongoing negotiation....
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Thu 11 Sep 25 at 13:44
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Had a colleague who enjoyed holidaying in Pembrokeshire. He'd go into a shop and notice if the conversation stopped, it would often re-start in Welsh after he spoke in English. He'd learnt Welsh, so as he was about to leave we'd thank the staff and wish them a happy day in Welsh just to see the faces of those present.
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>> the conversation stopped, it would often re-start in Welsh after he spoke in English
Does that still go on? We experienced that BIG time when we went there in the 70s, not been back since!
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>> Does that still go on? We experienced that BIG time when we went there in
>> the 70s, not been back since!
I don't know if it still does but I remember walking into a pub in, I think, Bethesda in the mid eighties and everybody switched to Welsh.
In contrast on the Western Isles, where Scots Gaelic is the 'language of hearth and home', people speak English when with non Gaelic speakers. B&B landlady upbraided her primary age daughter for speaking Gaelic while there were non speakers in the group.
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>> don't know if it still does but I remember walking into a pub in, I think, Bethesda in the mid eighties and everybody switched to Welsh
I can't say for certain they were speaking English when we walked in the pub, but we both remember that it all went quiet and the landlady ushered us in to a private room (snug)
I think it was up in the Brecon area. We couldn't get B&b anywhere and ended up sleeping in our mark 2 Cortina :)
A better experience was had in Aberystwyth.
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Hmmm, are you sure they were talking English before you went in? Because in my experience, having been down here for 24 years, when Welsh speakers are talking (And they are a minority among the Welsh, particularly in Pembrokeshire) they use their own language all the time.
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>>are you sure they were talking English before you went in
See above :)
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When we were in Portree in the late 60s, not language, but on the Sunday the shops all had blinds down or the displays covered in paper to hide them. We had some difficulty getting petrol for the Morris Landcrab and ended up at a busy cafe in Uig where there was a single pump. Obviously a non-believer !
Ted
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I recall doing the Shropshire union/Llangollan canal in the '70s. Try getting a pub lunch or pint!
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>> When we were in Portree in the late 60s, not language, but on the Sunday
>> the shops all had blinds down or the displays covered in paper to hide them.
Until very recently the Sabbath was still ferociously observed on the Western Isles north of Benbecula. There are multiple Presbyterian sects on the northern end of the chain who would have died to protect the Sabbath.
Barra and Uist are Catholic and never had the Sabbatarian thing.
In the 40 years we've been going to Harris/Lewis church attendance by the younger generation, I mean those under around 60 has plummeted. Car parks that would have been full for service are empty. You no longer see people walking to church with their bibles either.
There was a fuel station just outside Stornoway, run by a Norwegian guy, started opening on a Sunday. Mucho opposition but he'd been in the Norwegian SAS and wasn't bothered by a few clergymen!
Tesco now open on Sunday but with a late start.
Still waiting for AD's, the general store in Tarbert (Harris) to open though.
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I'm not big on Polish politics but a few years ago all big shops and malls closed on a Sunday, more than likely, pressure from the church. That meant only local, family-owned shops could stay open.
Extremely annoying, not just for the shoppers, but mostly because all the students paying for their education etc. with weekend jobs (me being one of them in the 80s) suddenly having their incomes halved. But it isn't youngsters flooding into the church on a Sunday. Far from it.
It detests me that the church 'dictates' to me that I should spend Sunday at home with my family. That is the last entity on the planet I would turn to for family advice.
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Now no longer the case, but many moons ago camping in South Wales I can remember the traffic jams as folk wanted to exit the county on a Sunday evening to find a pub that was open.
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I would imagine those sorts of isolated places will become ghost villages within 20 years. There's loads of them across Greece, Spain and Italy.
Perhaps they will become tourist open museums like Beamish.
Few people want to live like that. Even in the FI, for example, more and more are leaving the isolated farms, some of the 'villages' are down to people in the single figures.
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Work Fun & Games. - bathtub tom
