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beccatoriaAll right. I confess it, and it's all ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
asta77's fault. (Well okay, her and one or two other people who kept saying, but...it's not as BAD as I thought it would be...)
I watched the first thingy of Torchwood. I am thoroughly ashamed of myself and feel kind of dirty.
On the plus side I was also fairly emotionally detached from the whole thing and so didn't feel any need to like, FORGIVE it for what it did to Tosh.
(TOOOOOOOOOSH!!!)
In fact, I spent most of the show sight-seeing my city and nitpicking about Ianto's family. Thus, the public service announcement:
Guys, they got Ianto's family wrong.
His sister and his nephew can't even say his name right. XD
There are Welsh names used by all Welsh people (regardless of whether or not they speak Welsh) - names like Rhys, for instance. And people choose to use them because they're Welsh. Because as a general rule, we have a high level of national pride.
And then there are names like Ianto. Names which belong firmly to the first-language welsh-speaking community. A community in which names like that are an important identifier. I would bet actual money that a real person named Ianto would speak welsh.
I would also bet actual money that his sister does not speak welsh.
Thus, reflexive brain rejection.
Essentially, they characterised Ianto, both by virtue of his name and accent (his accent isn't something that specifically tells me he speaks welsh, but it IS one of the accents I would associate with a first-language welsh-speaker from Cardiff and the surrounding areas, unlike his sister's accent - I understand it's probably hard to hear the difference if you're not from around here, but they are different) as part of one welsh subculture and then introduced us to his family from a very different one.
I want to say that it's as dissonant as having someone named Tarquin Fortescue-Smythe go home to his stereotypically cockney family, but that analogy falls down on a bunch of levels, basically because while there are massive class issues at work here, they also interconnect with linguistic issues, and this analogy would incorrectly suggest that 1) Ianto might speak and behave this way if he were trying to escape his working class roots and 2) that the Welsh speaking culture I'm talking about is equivalent to upper class England.
What I think's going on here is RTD's love of simplistic stereotypes to telegraph a message. It's the same reason he hasn't shown a single actual Cardiff accent on the show (which while it's a pet peeve of mine, I do also actually understand and cautiously support; there is a REAL dearth of Welsh accents of the type used in mainstream television unless they're comedic characters).
RTD, I think, named Ianto to be "OMG LOOK WELSH AND UNUSUAL!" and is now falling back on the stereotype that the more regional you are the more working class your background is.
Which fails to address the issue that I honestly think probably most people outside of Wales (and probably a good many IN Wales; there's a fair amount of insecurity between the two groups along the lines of "stop attacking our language!" vs "stop saying we're not really Welsh!") aren't aware of:
Speaking Welsh is broadly associated with being middle-class. I'm happy to explain the reasons for this to anyone interested, but I won't go into it now out of an attempt not to make this post YET LONGER. I will however note that this class divide is less the case in North Wales and really rural areas where Welsh didn't get anywhere near as stamped out in the first place, though that's also not my area of expertise, so if any Gogs want to correct the Hwntw, speak up. ;)
But of course, despite being middle-class, the Welsh-speaking culture is unrepentantly not English and often comes with a stigmatising accent and therefore is in an inferior "class position" to like, England? If this makes sense?
So the reason I don't think it's that Ianto is trying to forget his council estate roots and seem middle-class instead is that if he was trying to do that, he wouldn't be picking up an accent that is also stigmatised. He'd, you know, do what my dad did, and slowly just lose the Welsh altogether. You know, someone with a Scouse accent trying to get rid of their accent for class reasons (consciously or subconsciously) isn't going to pick up a Brummie accent instead.
But while, as I said, Welsh-speaking culture isn't analogous to English upper class culture, it is often viewed with some trepidation by non-Welsh-speaking cultures. It's seen as threatening (because of the "you're not welsh enough!" emotions it brings up with its existence) and, yes, superior and insular, in addition to the fact it IS middle-class, so all the regular class baggage is there too if you're a non-Welsh-speaking working class person. It's quite an academically, musically and religiously oriented culture in terms of broad values. So finding a kid named Ianto in a family from a Cardiff council estated really IS like finding a kid named Tarquin on EastEnders. There probably is one, but it's a little weird all the same.
I mean basically, I'm not trying to sound like some kind of classist git here. I really, really, REALLY wish these issues did not divide my nation. But they do and as a Welsh-speaker not really a member of either group I've been discussing, who grew up going to Welsh-language schools where what language your family spoke at home wasn't really a point of judgement or a reason to bully anyone, but was a fact people just knew, like how old you were or your hair colour or whether you sucked at gym, I can't help but pick up on this crap. It was like, the background to my entire growing-up. This particularly weird little knot of linguistic politics in this particular city.
Essentially I think that if RTD wanted to make Ianto a character who grew up in a working class family and then ran off and sort of ditched them due to daddy issues and who knows what else as soon as he could, to go be a yuppie, then that's absolutely fine, but he shouldn't have named him Ianto.
From the credits, his sister is named Rhiannon. This is a name that's also fairly associated with welsh-speaking but not to the degree that Ianto is. If I knew someone named that I'd guess she spoke Welsh but wouldn't really be that surprised if she didn't. It does, however, help with my current fanon that their mother was a Welsh-speaker but died/ran off when they were young or something. Or she was just Romantic when it came to names... ;)
I mean, I am aware that going off on a god-knows-how-long rant about this is faintly ludicrous.
If I was gonna rip Torchwood a new one for incorrectness, there are maaaaaaany better avenues to do so (like the utterly tasteless joke about Filipino kids for instance, though I have to say, for an RTD script, the episode was far less awful than I was expecting; people didn't lie when they said it was better than it was last season).
This is just...me throwing the equivalent of those rants my doctor-in-training friend used to throw when he had to watch INACCURATE HOLLYWOOD MEDICINE, you know?
On the very slim chance anyone is interested in where I am in this mess of weird linguistic crap, I'm part of a confusing new generation of Welsh speakers. I learned Welsh when I was 5. Got thrown into an immersion classroom and three months later I was fluent. So I don't come from a home that is part of the culture I was describing above and feel faintly like an imposter when I'm immersed in it (though I was, frequently, as a child since a) I had close friends who were first-language fluent and b) our school had a kind of militaristic attitude toward nationalism). But since I DO speak that language, I actually have a place in that culture and can understand that culture, and was raised in and around it. And equally am still seen by many non-Welsh-speakers as part of it by default.
Which like, I'm not actually looking for sympathy on this point. I'm hugely grateful my parents threw me into that classroom at 5, and I'm hugely grateful I have the parents I have and the home life I have. Je ne regrete rien, and all that. I'm just telling you this in case you were interested and in the interests of disclosure - I'm discussing the interactions of two subcultures I grew up with but am not, strictly, a part of in either instance.
And, um, there's my public service announcement.
For the record, it's pronounced "Yan-toh" not "Yan-toe". (Yes, I know Gwen and Ianto also say "Yan-toe" but they DO actually pronounce it slightly differently to Jack, Ianto's family and others who say his name; they anglicise it like Welsh-speakers or people with a high familiarity with Welsh names would anglicise it. Though I admit the difference is subtle.)
In conclusion: Ianto, ble wyt ti'n cuddio dy deulu go iawn?
*gets off soap box*
asta77's fault. (Well okay, her and one or two other people who kept saying, but...it's not as BAD as I thought it would be...)I watched the first thingy of Torchwood. I am thoroughly ashamed of myself and feel kind of dirty.
On the plus side I was also fairly emotionally detached from the whole thing and so didn't feel any need to like, FORGIVE it for what it did to Tosh.
(TOOOOOOOOOSH!!!)
In fact, I spent most of the show sight-seeing my city and nitpicking about Ianto's family. Thus, the public service announcement:
Guys, they got Ianto's family wrong.
His sister and his nephew can't even say his name right. XD
There are Welsh names used by all Welsh people (regardless of whether or not they speak Welsh) - names like Rhys, for instance. And people choose to use them because they're Welsh. Because as a general rule, we have a high level of national pride.
And then there are names like Ianto. Names which belong firmly to the first-language welsh-speaking community. A community in which names like that are an important identifier. I would bet actual money that a real person named Ianto would speak welsh.
I would also bet actual money that his sister does not speak welsh.
Thus, reflexive brain rejection.
Essentially, they characterised Ianto, both by virtue of his name and accent (his accent isn't something that specifically tells me he speaks welsh, but it IS one of the accents I would associate with a first-language welsh-speaker from Cardiff and the surrounding areas, unlike his sister's accent - I understand it's probably hard to hear the difference if you're not from around here, but they are different) as part of one welsh subculture and then introduced us to his family from a very different one.
I want to say that it's as dissonant as having someone named Tarquin Fortescue-Smythe go home to his stereotypically cockney family, but that analogy falls down on a bunch of levels, basically because while there are massive class issues at work here, they also interconnect with linguistic issues, and this analogy would incorrectly suggest that 1) Ianto might speak and behave this way if he were trying to escape his working class roots and 2) that the Welsh speaking culture I'm talking about is equivalent to upper class England.
What I think's going on here is RTD's love of simplistic stereotypes to telegraph a message. It's the same reason he hasn't shown a single actual Cardiff accent on the show (which while it's a pet peeve of mine, I do also actually understand and cautiously support; there is a REAL dearth of Welsh accents of the type used in mainstream television unless they're comedic characters).
RTD, I think, named Ianto to be "OMG LOOK WELSH AND UNUSUAL!" and is now falling back on the stereotype that the more regional you are the more working class your background is.
Which fails to address the issue that I honestly think probably most people outside of Wales (and probably a good many IN Wales; there's a fair amount of insecurity between the two groups along the lines of "stop attacking our language!" vs "stop saying we're not really Welsh!") aren't aware of:
Speaking Welsh is broadly associated with being middle-class. I'm happy to explain the reasons for this to anyone interested, but I won't go into it now out of an attempt not to make this post YET LONGER. I will however note that this class divide is less the case in North Wales and really rural areas where Welsh didn't get anywhere near as stamped out in the first place, though that's also not my area of expertise, so if any Gogs want to correct the Hwntw, speak up. ;)
But of course, despite being middle-class, the Welsh-speaking culture is unrepentantly not English and often comes with a stigmatising accent and therefore is in an inferior "class position" to like, England? If this makes sense?
So the reason I don't think it's that Ianto is trying to forget his council estate roots and seem middle-class instead is that if he was trying to do that, he wouldn't be picking up an accent that is also stigmatised. He'd, you know, do what my dad did, and slowly just lose the Welsh altogether. You know, someone with a Scouse accent trying to get rid of their accent for class reasons (consciously or subconsciously) isn't going to pick up a Brummie accent instead.
But while, as I said, Welsh-speaking culture isn't analogous to English upper class culture, it is often viewed with some trepidation by non-Welsh-speaking cultures. It's seen as threatening (because of the "you're not welsh enough!" emotions it brings up with its existence) and, yes, superior and insular, in addition to the fact it IS middle-class, so all the regular class baggage is there too if you're a non-Welsh-speaking working class person. It's quite an academically, musically and religiously oriented culture in terms of broad values. So finding a kid named Ianto in a family from a Cardiff council estated really IS like finding a kid named Tarquin on EastEnders. There probably is one, but it's a little weird all the same.
I mean basically, I'm not trying to sound like some kind of classist git here. I really, really, REALLY wish these issues did not divide my nation. But they do and as a Welsh-speaker not really a member of either group I've been discussing, who grew up going to Welsh-language schools where what language your family spoke at home wasn't really a point of judgement or a reason to bully anyone, but was a fact people just knew, like how old you were or your hair colour or whether you sucked at gym, I can't help but pick up on this crap. It was like, the background to my entire growing-up. This particularly weird little knot of linguistic politics in this particular city.
Essentially I think that if RTD wanted to make Ianto a character who grew up in a working class family and then ran off and sort of ditched them due to daddy issues and who knows what else as soon as he could, to go be a yuppie, then that's absolutely fine, but he shouldn't have named him Ianto.
From the credits, his sister is named Rhiannon. This is a name that's also fairly associated with welsh-speaking but not to the degree that Ianto is. If I knew someone named that I'd guess she spoke Welsh but wouldn't really be that surprised if she didn't. It does, however, help with my current fanon that their mother was a Welsh-speaker but died/ran off when they were young or something. Or she was just Romantic when it came to names... ;)
I mean, I am aware that going off on a god-knows-how-long rant about this is faintly ludicrous.
If I was gonna rip Torchwood a new one for incorrectness, there are maaaaaaany better avenues to do so (like the utterly tasteless joke about Filipino kids for instance, though I have to say, for an RTD script, the episode was far less awful than I was expecting; people didn't lie when they said it was better than it was last season).
This is just...me throwing the equivalent of those rants my doctor-in-training friend used to throw when he had to watch INACCURATE HOLLYWOOD MEDICINE, you know?
On the very slim chance anyone is interested in where I am in this mess of weird linguistic crap, I'm part of a confusing new generation of Welsh speakers. I learned Welsh when I was 5. Got thrown into an immersion classroom and three months later I was fluent. So I don't come from a home that is part of the culture I was describing above and feel faintly like an imposter when I'm immersed in it (though I was, frequently, as a child since a) I had close friends who were first-language fluent and b) our school had a kind of militaristic attitude toward nationalism). But since I DO speak that language, I actually have a place in that culture and can understand that culture, and was raised in and around it. And equally am still seen by many non-Welsh-speakers as part of it by default.
Which like, I'm not actually looking for sympathy on this point. I'm hugely grateful my parents threw me into that classroom at 5, and I'm hugely grateful I have the parents I have and the home life I have. Je ne regrete rien, and all that. I'm just telling you this in case you were interested and in the interests of disclosure - I'm discussing the interactions of two subcultures I grew up with but am not, strictly, a part of in either instance.
And, um, there's my public service announcement.
For the record, it's pronounced "Yan-toh" not "Yan-toe". (Yes, I know Gwen and Ianto also say "Yan-toe" but they DO actually pronounce it slightly differently to Jack, Ianto's family and others who say his name; they anglicise it like Welsh-speakers or people with a high familiarity with Welsh names would anglicise it. Though I admit the difference is subtle.)
In conclusion: Ianto, ble wyt ti'n cuddio dy deulu go iawn?
*gets off soap box*
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no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 06:08 pm (UTC)If anything this is kind of why I'm even less okay with her death than I'd otherwise be. She was like an also-ran to the angsty heroic death they gave the fucking rapist.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 06:10 pm (UTC)Though you may just have ruined that for me by pointing out the differences between her rather feeble nothing death, and the rapists big heroic mourned-by-all death.
Dammit.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 06:22 pm (UTC)I understand now and honestly feel quite bad for you that I ruined that perfectly acceptable coping mechanism.
(Also please ignore the other post I made that I have now deleted but might still be emailed to you; for some reason I thought my original post hadn't posted!)
no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 06:35 pm (UTC)And as much as I'm quite enjoying children of earth, I am rather annoyed that its... actually okay.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 09:30 pm (UTC)Also, I like to pretend the horrifying sex never happened...
no subject
Date: 2009-07-09 07:43 pm (UTC)... I have quite strong feelings about that character.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-11 03:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-11 03:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 06:41 pm (UTC)And I'd like to go on record that you've apparently seen more of the show than I have so I will not be the fall guy for this! :p
no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 09:29 pm (UTC)And to be fair, it was seeing more of it that made me quit it in the first place!
*still blames you*
no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 09:11 pm (UTC)I will however note that this class divide is less the case in North Wales and really rural areas where Welsh didn't get anywhere near as stamped out in the first place
Yes.
his sister is named Rhiannon. This is a name that's also fairly associated with welsh-speaking but not to the degree that Ianto is.
Also used by English hippies of a certain age (isn't Pratchett's daughter a Rhiannon?). Also possibly chosen for the association with monsters and child-stealing rather than for sociological reasons?
no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 09:28 pm (UTC)A lot of the loss of welsh among the working class in south wales was down to the industrialisation of the area; that's when a lot of families (like the families of both my father's parents) decided to stop speaking it to give their kids a "better life". North and mid wales avoided a lot of that industrialisation and remained farming communities. But, you probably know all this.
As to the hippie factor, I wasn't aware of Pratchett's daughter but it doesn't surprise me. Yes, there is a hippie contingent of welsh-naming your kids. In Wales however, that also tends to coincide with sending your kids to welsh-language school for grand, romantic reasons, which is one of the (many) reasons why welsh-speaking kids from non-welsh speaking families also tend to be from middle-class families, thus compounding the class divide in the south. :/
I think that you may also be right about the choice of her name. And honestly, I don't think this is anything like RTD's more egregious sins. It's more...just something I'm wired to notice. And something I think is mildly a shame they haven't done more with.
I'm less annoyed that they gave Ianto a background that was disconnected to my expectations (and things they perhaps accidentally suggested) than I am disappointed that they missed another chance to actually show some welsh being used in wales, you know? They make so much of the setting in interviews and stuff, but then don't really make anything of the conflicts that are native to it?
If it had been a cultural discrepancy on another issue, I might have noted it but probably not with the, um, voracity of this post?
*is biased*
Also - I got post from you today. Thank you very much for that, and I really appreciate the good thoughts in your note. Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 10:12 pm (UTC)::nods agreement::
I'm less annoyed that they gave Ianto a background that was disconnected to my expectations (and things they perhaps accidentally suggested) than I am disappointed that they missed another chance to actually show some welsh being used in wales, you know? They make so much of the setting in interviews and stuff, but then don't really make anything of the conflicts that are native to it?
::nods understanding::
I'm sorry I was too rubbish even to muster up a postcard and you got the back of an envelope instead. Maybe I'll do better another time. ::wryface::
no subject
Date: 2009-07-09 04:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 11:49 pm (UTC)2. That being said, I'm astonishingly proud of myself that, as an ignorant American, I understood the points you made. Kind of. I mean, I understand it but I'm emotionally detached because I don't really have a cultural framework for it. Can you illustrate this in terms of the Philadelphia area?
3. Y'all sound alike ta usn's over heer.
4. My favorite Welsh word is still llongyfarchiadau. :D
This thoroughly pointless comment brought to you by: me!
no subject
Date: 2009-07-09 04:25 pm (UTC)2. Ha, you're not an ignorant american; I know for a fact you're more linguistically talented and more interested in other cultures than I am for a start! ;)
3. Ditto. :p (Well okay slightly less to me on account of my Mom being from NJ and all and me therefore having spent holiday in the USA but...even I'm not that great at accent-location within the US.)
4. Which is a far more useful and jubilant word than my favourite: llygoden fochdew. (All right, that's two words, but it's the name of one thing. A cookie if you know what it is; two if you can work out the literal translation.)
no subject
Date: 2009-07-12 02:48 pm (UTC)3. I get the feeling that British accents are more generally recognizable than my area... like, if I were listening to someone from around here talk, they'd have to hit certain linguistic features for me to determine where they're from. If they say "chocolate" like "chawklit", they're from South Philly, but if they draw it out like "chawwklit", they're from North Jersey. If they say "glass" like "glaehss", they're from South Jersey (woo!), but if they say "water" like "wooder", they're more working-class. And no one will ever do the "water" and "chocolate" thing at once, so if you ask them to say the title "Like Water for Chocolate", you get a good idea.
Um. Yay linguistics!
4. ...hamster-mouse?
no subject
Date: 2009-07-12 07:03 pm (UTC)Llygoden = mouse (I think you know that one).
Boch = cheek
Tew = fat.
(But due to mutations - when the first letter of a word changes due to the word that preceeds it, and it's terribly complicated how and why this happens, boch = foch and tew = dew.)
Also our word for rat is Llygoden Mawr, which, um, means Big Mouse. If you see the descriptive problems that arise from this and wonder if we have ways of getting around them, the answer would be no. ;)
\o/ linguistics!
no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 11:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-09 04:28 pm (UTC)Tosh was my favourite, but I do enjoy Ianto - I'm glad to have been able to provide helpful info. :)
no subject
Date: 2009-07-09 12:41 am (UTC)I think the most interesting thing is your description of the nonrural middle class connection. And now I have all these questions and realize it's like educate me, so I better go and do my homework first :)
But yes, I think we talk way too little about the way language functions in terms of socio- and geopolitical contexts, and there's so much you just *know* about the place where you grew up and how the person across the river and in the other part of town talk completely different to you...
Then again, I now live in the Deep South, and as far as the rest of the country is concerned, we talk the same from San Antonio to Savannah. When in fact, I can often tell class and rural and region and...I'm not even from here...
Part 1
Date: 2009-07-09 05:02 pm (UTC)I honestly don't mind answering any questions you have to the best of my ability - it's just about the first time it's ever really been relevant to anything, and there probably isn't a whole load of stuff out there on the issues. Although if you have an interest I would absolutely encourage you to do your own homework on it just because while I can relate to you my life experience, that's very subjective and this isn't an area I have studied or anything. I might very well get some specifics wrong, and as already noted, I primarily know about the industrialised south of the country rather than the more rural north.
Since you mentioned it, I can at least provide a little more information on the class thing. Basically, Wales has been conquered forever. Since like the late 1200s. For most of that time, Welsh was not particularly associated with the middle-class. It was just associated with, um, being Welsh and therefore probably uneducated. So at this point there was a more traditional English-speaking=Educated thing going on, not that most people had that option. (Although, as an aside, one of the reasons Welsh is the most spoken Celtic language and didn't ever get stamped out was the strong poetic/musical traditions and it's immovable status as the language of the strong non-conformist chapel traditions. There was actually a bible in welsh before there was one in english, so wales had its own strong literary and oral traditions that have continued throughout history, but these were not recognised by the english).
So slowly welsh-speaking decreased but the real massive decrease came around the time of the industrial revolution and the introduction of mass schooling. In the South which was heavily industrialised with coal mining, shipping, etc., people suddenly started moving into cities, having their children put into English schools, etc. It was at this point that many working class families decided to stop speaking welsh at home to give their children a better chance at a better life. This actually continued right through to my grandparents' generation. My father's mother, for instance, had an older sister who spoke welsh, but her family stopped speaking it before she was born. (Though she spoke more than she was ever comfortable admitting). My grandfather, similarly, was part of a class of older welsh people who are entirely capable of understanding conversational welsh but who are shy of admitting this because of feeling their welsh isn't "good enough" or "proper" welsh.
Obviously in more rural North Wales, these social issues were less prevalent and thus their working classes (who tended to be farmers rather than miners) were not as pressured to stop speaking it. Although the, um, I can't remember what it was called but another factor was some educational report that basically said Welsh was a vulgar language and to ban it in schools so they stigmatised it by giving the first kid they heard speaking welsh a "Welsh Not" around his neck (bit of wood) and he could pass it on to any other kid he heard speaking welsh, and whoever had it at the end of the day got beaten. Which was a good way of ensuring solidarity on the language issue was well and truly destroyed among the kids.
Anyway, Welsh in the south was decimated far more than the north for the above reasons, but the southerners who DID keep their language through that time tended to be the families that were more middle-class and who could afford to do so because they didn't feel that they needed to give their kids every leg-up they could and were probably already functioning bilingually. So, you know, shop owners, ministers, etc.
Re: Part 1
Date: 2009-07-09 06:35 pm (UTC)I, of course, only found this out because I actually listen to old people ramblingon about their pasts.
Re: Part 1
Date: 2009-07-10 11:35 pm (UTC)Using welsh as a linguistic defence against listening adults brings back strong memories of childhood. It's kind of wonderful to think about that in the context of these London kids and how they kept that. Evactuation was, I imagine, a frightening and traumatic experience for most - probably especially if you were dropped into a place that didn't even prefer to use the same language as you. It's nice to think they got something they chose to keep and appreciate out of it.
You're right, it definitely makes you wonder how many other children had similar experiences.
Re: Part 1
Date: 2009-07-10 11:50 pm (UTC)Part 2
Date: 2009-07-09 05:06 pm (UTC)1) Nationalism.
2) Now that welsh is an official language of wales, a lot of public sector jobs require welsh or consider speaking welsh to be a big advantage. It's now an extremely sellable skill.
3) Welsh schools actually tend to be better academic schools than their english counterparts. They are still government funded and free, but they tend to be in better areas and get better results. So I have a few friends whose parents' decision to send them to welsh school was influenced by the fact otherwise they'd get sent to a really awful local school otherwise.
So the kids who tend to go to welsh school are either kids from the (largely middle class) welsh speaking families in the first place, or kids whose parents made a conscious decision to send them there. And while I don't want to go into negative stereotyping and there were a fair number of kids from working class areas in my school, it was much more middle class than many other schools, becuase the working classes are often socialised not to take such an active interest in education - to give up on it because it fails them anyway. So yet again, most of the parents making the decision to send their kids to welsh school for nationalistic or academic reasons trend toward the middle-classes.
It's one of the reasons I've never bought the argument that the reasons many ethnic minorities underachieve is linguistic difficulties in school. The majority of my school were learning in their second language and had far less exposure to welsh outside school than most kids will have to english if it's their second language, and our school had some of the best results in the city, every year. Plus, NOT all ethnic minorities under achieve (at least 10 years ago when I was studying this crap, I think that the Chinese community, which places a lot of emphasis on academic achievement, regularly outperformed whites?). It is, pure and simple, a class (and its intersection with culture) issue. And yet more evidence that our education system chronically fails working class kids.
And, um, I'm...finally done? Sorry that was probably way more info than you were looking for! As I said, people are so rarely interested in this stuff, it's kind of exciting to find someone who is.
For the record, most people in the UK can identify three American accents. American and Texas and Mobster. Which is probably a little weird, but there you have it. That has been my experience of UK opinion on US accents. Pretty much you're all identical unless you're cowboys or gangsters. ;) I'm a tiny bit better since my mother actually is American, and I've spent some time there on holiday visiting family and stuff, but even I struggle with much beyond very basic accent differences. Embarassingly I can't really even tell west from east coast very easily!
no subject
Date: 2009-07-10 09:18 am (UTC)I really found your thoughts about Welsh culture interesting (I learn more from LJ than I did in school!).
I've had a very ambivalent and sometimes antagonistic relationship with Torchwood. I liked season 2 better than season 1 but found myself still skipping episodes and when I heard about the glee surrounding the miniseries found myself intrigued enough to check it again but then:
like the utterly tasteless joke about Filipino kids for instance,
Did RTD really do this? I'm not the most nationalistic person around but whenever I come across jokes like this it turns me off a show faster than you can say cinammon buns.
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Date: 2009-07-10 11:50 pm (UTC)I'm glad that you found the post interesting. I certainly agree that I've learned more from the net and LJ than I did in school! But then, learning only really gets to be fun when you're in charge of it, I think.
I also have an extremely difficult relationship with Torchwood, as you may have gathered from my post. Partly because I want to love it because it's set where I live and because there is such a dearth of programming set in Wales in the UK. It's really hard to explain without cultural reference points or making it sound like I'm starting a "who's the most oppressed!" game (which I'm not, and the Welsh wouldn't win that game). But Wales is pretty much a national joke and I literally cannot think of another national TV show that's been on in my lifetime that was set in Wales, or a character with a recognisably welsh accent who wasn't used primarily for comedy.
AND YET IT SO OFTEN SUCKS. And sometimes in horrifyingly offensive ways. And Owen the Rapist. Dear god, my rage about him might have exceeded Adama levels.
I have seen the first four episodes now and I'm....well to be honest, ambivalent is probably the right word. So far it is (that insane joke aside) much, much better than I've seen it before. But I'm not sure if it's a show I really like. I guess I feel like on some level it's finally starting to look at the last two seasons through more rational eyes and actually following them through to their natural conclusion (since Torchwood is hopelessly unprofessional about everything). But that is...not exactly an uplifting picture and I'm not sure I'm not reading things into what is going to turn into yet another excuse to wallow in self-righteous angst.
I guess we'll see when I watch 5. I might actually feel the urge to like, WRITE about it here which would, I guess, be a step up from my normal relationship with this show.
As to the joke...yeah. It's bad. It doesn't even make SENSE. It's like...really random. I think that the writer probably thought it was "edgy" and taking the mick out of current adoption trends and calling out inequality by making an obviously sarcastic statement, except most of the time those reasons are all just smokescreens for icky racist jokes. You know, like this time. *facepalm*
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Date: 2009-10-13 02:57 am (UTC)