Mail Something Amazing by Adam
November 3rd, 2007 1:18 PMTrain Tickets and Tube Maps
I love travelling and I decided that my amazing thing would be travel related. I have always been fascinated by travel and love trains and train maps, especially things in London. The London Underground has been a particular fascination of mine, I have a massive tube map on my wall above my laptop and I have a colleciton of tube maps from 1994. I love the system and the way it is translated into a simple diagram.
As I decided that the tube map was a confusing thing translated into a simple thing I decided to write my card in Welsh. Translating something simple into something difficult. A fair translation is:
To Charlie,
Id like to wish you a Merry Christmas
I hope my mail is amazing enough for 'Amazing Mail'
I am very envious of the fact that you live in London, I love London.
From Adam,
Much love in Welsh.
PS.
I have included train tickets which contain a short description of the journey.
I love the London Underground and have included a tube map for you.
The task states I should find something which "amuses me no end". I can't send a jouney but I can send the remains of that journey which are the tickets. I included a short description of how much each journey was enjoyed. I hope that Charlie will appreciate that these are more than just pieces of paper but they are memories of a time when I was having fun.
The tube map includes a few little doodles I made standing on a tube train, a picture of a Starbucks mug and some other little bits of writing.
I posted this letter on the 3rd of November First Class.
The package
The tube map, Train tickets and Xmas Card
The card
The card with a mediocare Welsh translation
And finally
The letter whisking its way to Mr Fish A Harry Potter stamp!
11 vote(s)
Tøm
5
The Vixen
5
Jane McGonigal
5
Fonne Tayne
5
Meta tron
5
Hey-Look-It's Caleb!
5
Ben Yamiin
5
Mario Incandenza
5
Lank
5
Lincøln
5
Charlie Fish
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(none yet)24 comment(s)
This is great. But why Merry Christmas?
I've never seen Welsh in written form before and it's interesting to finally view it. Coming from a Lord of the Rings nerd, I have to say: it conjures up memories of reading Tolkien's Quenya (high elvish) language. Although the two languages look nothing alike, Welsh seems to be one of those magical, ancient languages that hasn't really diminished in time. That, or I'm being completely ethnocentric :)
Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen,
yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!
Yéni ve lintë yuldar avánier
mi oromardi lissë-miruvóreva
Andúnë pella, Vardo tellumar
nu luini yassen tintilar i eleni
ómaryo airetári-lírinen.
-Galadriel's Lament (in Quenya)
Wow, I just translated that (from it's English translation) to Welsh then back to English. It makes no sense what so ever, and mentions "heartburn" every other sentence.
Well Merry Christmas because Ive already written all of my Xmas cards and its only a month and a bit away.
And I love Welsh. Its such an amazing language. I can write it but I can't pronounce it for my life, same with Latin.
Its a Celtic language I believe and is similar to Bretton. It's fascinating because alot of the words have no resembelence to English or any other European language but sometimes you get some excellent Cymricised (I made up that word) English words.
One of my personal favourites is taxi; Welsh has no X so it becomes Tacsi. I just love the word Tacsi. Same with Bus, Bus doesn't sound like b-us when pronounced in Welsh so they such Bws.
One of my favourite images from my recent holiday to Wales, its a roadsign. After the WLA (Welsh Language Act) all road signs have to be bilingual.
That's awesome that all the roads are bilingual! It's very encouraging when people make the attempt at the preservation of a language or culture.
The Welsh Language Act is such a fantastic piece of legislation it really has kept the language alive.
I went to Brecon and there about 30% of the population speak semi-fluent Welsh and a small percentage use it as a first language. This would have been about 5% of people speaking it in the 50s.
Everywhere you go everything is in Welsh and English. It isn't just road signs. There is the Welsh channel, S4C, and the Welsh radio stations, BBC Radio Cymru, and not to mention all the Welsh Medium Schools where the spoken language is Welsh.
Even in places where you wouldnt expect to find Welsh, on labels for milk, train station announcments (even on the English side of the border) and in supermarkets.
This was in a Tesco I believe
You even find people who didnt learn English until they were well into their teens. Its a very odd sight to see someone mispronounce English despite being born, and living their whole lives within the UK; the home of English. I went to a Woolworths to buy a bottle of water and the girl on the till was talking at me in Welsh.
Where signs aren't in Welsh there is a strong sense of debate and patriotism for the Welsh Language. People defend the WLA up to the hills and the Welsh national party, Plaid Cymru, are very succesful at the moment.
"Where's the Welsh" this was seen on an all-English sign
I've been to England 6 times (Ihave a ton of family in England [mostly Suffolk and Norwich]) but I haven't yet been to Wales. I want to go badly!
My word, Sufolk and Norwich?
Well you'll have to come and visit the GY0 crew next time your down.
I live about 20 miles from Norwich and about 10 from the border with Sufolk.
Gooooooogle Map
Our location. A secret, non?
Damn, I was just there in June. Yea, it's a secret. I doubt anyone else on here really knows what I'm talking about. I think.
Can't say when I'll be there next. Possibly next spring. Who knows.
June, what was GY0 up to in June?
Well GY0 was a little fledgling back in June, we were doing our labelling compulsion and other summery tasks.
Well drop us a line by email, SF0, carrier peigon and we could task together. Well, if we're not perverted, 50 year old men.
Which we're not.
gingerblokey.adam@gmail.com
Welsh IS an ancient language.... the celtic tongues being much older than the conflative mix of words you and I use together (modern English). It's been around since.... um, since damn well before Mr. Chaucer and Mr. Shakespeare.
Also.... as for Tolkien, he was a whiz-bang linguist. He wrote most of his work while a professor of, I believe, Scandinavian or Angly / Saxony type languages. Something reasonably obscure. But the Elvish languages were - you guessed it - created with Welsh in mind, and if memory serves, even somehow integrates a bit of its grammar.
Did you think it was a coincidence that in the film Merry and Pippin, et al., had different accents? I always thought the hobbits were (absolutely politically incorrectly) referencing the irish, while the elves were somehow welsh, and the dwarves scottish. the humans, clearly, were english. good thing he went easy and didn't include cockney characters.
Yeah, I know Welsh is an ancient language.... And like I said, I'm a Tolkien geek. Read "The SilmarilliOn" for a full history of Middle Earth and grammar/pronunciation of 4 different Elvish languages (yes, there are more than one). He also developed some non-elven languages. Crazy guy.
anty idol: Have you read the books?
Along with grammar and pronunciation, I believe the good Professor Tolkien appreciated spelling. Such as the correct spelling of his lifework, The Silmarillion.
Also, I'm skeptical. Ancient? I think Welsh is clearly made up. The word sounds made up. welsh. wellllsh. Fictional.
Whoops. Excuse my apparently uneducated attempt at sharing the great works of a genius.
I dun knoe if yur awair, butt yur Oh See Dee iz showin.
P.S. aren't all languages made up?
In essence, pretty much. The most made-up of these being Klingon... or Esperanto.
Most just evolve from other languages, I think. English is a patchwork quilt - we have words and phrases from pretty much every locale imaginable.
I'm voting for all the Welsh roadsigns! (never thought I'd say that) the only word I've ever picked up is 'Llath' as it appears pretty much every 100 yards (for obvious reasons to Welsh speakers).
I heard that there were lots of different Elvish languages in Tolkein. My Finnish friend once told me that High Elvish is similar to old Finnish and that she could even make some of it out!
Should The Vixen get geeky? Yes!
Here are the different Elvish Languages:
-High-Elven (or Quenya)
-Grey-Elven (Sindarian)
-Telerin (language of the Sea Elves)
-Nandorian (the Green-Elves tongue)
-Old Sindarian
There are several other obscure, extremely unfinished languages ias well as the languages of the non-elves including Dwarvish, Westron, Entish, Valarian...
ok, I'll stop now.
Nqnz 'TL0' Fzlg, i award you one (1) vote not just for completeing this task, but for spawning a very intriguing discussion of a language i know absolutely NOTHING about!
zOMG, 18 million votes for Cymru.
And Vixen, you're a nerd. Sick.
You have to admit that Welsh is the world's most fantastic language.
Its .. weird.
SilmarilliOn: no.
Fellowship: yes.
Hobbitt: no, but I looked at the cover a lot when I was little.
Beowulf: yes.
It took me awhile to get this. Things like "Ble Mae'r Gymraeg" tend to confuse me. But after a lot of time studying it, I'm starting to enjoy it.
I used to play a game called Shadowrun and the ancient elves in that game spoke an ancient elvish language called Sperethiel and there are terms like reth'im (which means to be Elven), and that language always confused me, but I recognized that it was beautiful as I recognize this as beautiful.
My favorite word in Sperethiel is rillabothian which is an unresolved chord in music. Poetically, an unresolved situation in a relationship. How beautiful that there's a word for that? I love it.
And these Welsh signs remind me of that.
And I never read the Silmarillion (or the Rings trilogy either), but I did enjoy The Hobbit.
Heh, it all seems kind of irrelevant after all that stuff about Welsh elves, but I only just read this and I am looking forward to getting my package!
:)
Well matched to the Trajectory, vote for you!