Apparently, Ryan Reynolds has been curating Welsh-language programming on his TV network
Turn on the subtitles because Ryan Reynolds is bringing the consonant-heavy dialect to America
Aux News Ryan Reynolds
After securing four Emmy nominations for Welcome To Wrexham, Ryan Reynolds is looking to expand the reach of the Welsh world. Per The Guardian, the Free Guy himself began welcoming American audiences to “Welsh Wednesdays,” which has been airing on his television station since June 28. “As many have noted, there is an alarming lack of Welsh content available for American viewing pleasure,” Reynolds said. “That stops today. Well, actually, Wednesdays.”
Okay, first, Ryan Reynolds owns a TV station because, of course he does. Why wouldn’t he? There isn’t enough Ryan Reynolds smirking on television. The network Maximum Effort, which shares the name of Reynolds’ production company, is on FuboTV, a streamer focused on live sports. In 2022, Reynolds took an equity stake in Fubo to launch Maximum Effort TV and launched last month with Bedtime Stories With Ryan, in which Reynolds, in his best sleepytime tea bear cosplay, reads “new and classic bedtime stories.” If any readers need a moment to process all of this, please feel free to take a moment and touch the grass outside or take a deep breath.
The programming block sees Reynolds curating six hours of weekly Welsh language from the UK-based Welsh-language television channel S4C for Maximum Effort. Offerings will include the crime drama Bang, a documentary series about Welsh car enthusiasts Pen Petrol (Petrol Head), and Y Wal Goch (The Red Wall), a football (soccer) talk show. We’ll allow The Guardian writer Andy Welch to take it from here:
Viewers will also be able to keep up with Ystwyth Vets in Aberystwyth by watching Y Fets (Vets), Gareth Bale: Bwy’r Freuddwyd (Gareth Bale: Living the Dream), which, as you might have guessed, is a short film about the charmed life of the greatest ever Welsh footballer and, understandably given that Reynolds co-owns the club, episodes of Wrecsam Clwb Ni (Wrexham Our Club).
“We’re so grateful to S4C for helping to bring Welsh programming to a broader audience,” said Reynolds. “And to that broader audience: don’t worry, I am told there will be subtitles.” Non-Welsh speakers are going to need them.
38 Comments
the consonant-heavy dialectwelsh is a language, not a dialect
Welsh is also not particularly heavy on consonants. It does map slightly worse to the latin alphabet. W and Y are used exclusively for vowels, various single consonant phonemes have to be written as digraphs like LL, FF, DD, etc. Sure, if you try to pronounce the words as if they were written English then you will get a lot of consonants … but Welsh, like most languages, is not English, so don’t do that.
If anything, Welsh has extra vowels.
Came here to say the same thing. Does the author think Welsh is some offshoot of English?
The author probably thought that “dialect” was just another way of saying “language,” because he likely never took a decent composition or rhetoric class where he would have learned that thesaurus-talk is bad, lazy writing.
But a broken clock is right twice a day! Actual linguists believe there is no objective difference between a language and a dialect. There’s a famous saying that “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy” because the reason dialects get promoted to language isn’t due to any objective criterion about mutual intelligibility with related dialects but rather politics. Hence Swedish and Danish are considered different languages despite being more or less mutually intelligible because there are different countries behind them, but Mandarin and Cantonese, despite not being mutually understandable at all, are considered “dialects” of Chinese because the official policy of China is that there is one Chinese language that has different dialects.
Yes, I know. I have taken classes in both linguistics and the philosophy of language. Doesn’t make the author’s usage any less incorrect, though. Lots of categories are defined more by common convention than by consistent, objective criteria—that still doesn’t mean they’re interchangeable. Cereal is not a stew. A taco is not a sandwich. New York City is not a hamlet. France is not a tribe. Chess is not an RPG. Etc.
But purple is a fruit.
And a hot dog is a sandwich.
That’s because a RPG is no boardgame, a tribe is not a nation-state, a hamlet is ‘a village without a church of its own, belonging to the parish of another village or town’ etc. There are objective criteria to those things you mentioned, not between a language and a dialect!
Oh there are, are there? An RPG involves moving various figures around a grid according to a predetermined set of rules defining each figure’s unique role and capabilities. Ergo, Chess is an RPG. A tribe is a community of people with shared customs, traditions, and language. (Isn’t a nation-state quite literally just a tribe with an army and a navy?) Ergo, France is a tribe. I don’t know where you’re getting this business about a churches, because there is no universal legal definition for a hamlet. I do know that “hamlet” translates to “little village,” however. At a diminutive 8.8 million people New York is less than a third the size of Chongqing, China. Ergo, New York is a hamlet…relative to Chongqing, anyway.
OK first of all you have no idea what a RPG is, so I’ll give you the wiki one: “A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting or through a process of structured decision-making regarding character development.”As you may see it does NOT involve ‘moving various figures around a grid according to a predetermined set of rules defining each figure’s unique role and capabilities’ whatsoever; that’s the very definition of a boardgame that you just gave us here!“Isn’t a nation-state quite literally just a tribe with an army and a navy?” lol no, that’s ‘literally’ just not it, as it involves a constitution first and foremost!Also I gave you the hamlet defintion I just found on google, there’s certainly no ‘universal legal definition for a hamlet’ so you are free to call NY a hamlet (although that’s pretty stupid but so far that’s just par for the course lol) but there is no universal legal definition for a dialect either so the author of the article should be free to use it as he likes it too!
Ah, so Dungeons and Dragons, which does involve moving various figures around a grid according to a predetermined set of rules defining each figure’s unique role and capabilities, is, indeed, a boardgame just like chess! You’re so eager to dunk on me that you fail to grasp my point. I’m making a distinction between conventional and objective criteria. There is no Central Gaming Authority laying down universal criteria for what does and does not constitute an RPG. Rather, enough people have enough of an idea of what an RPG is that they can feel comfortable in declaring chess to be something else entirely, despite the fact that it shares many similarities with putative RPGs. But there are always fuzzy boundaries and edge cases. Take videogames for example. By the definition you provided, a good 90% of videogames would be classified as RPGs, and yet most gamers would look at you funny if you defined Mortal Kombat or Super Mario Bros. as such.The concept I’m getting at here is Wittgenstein’s “family resemblance.” In building categories people group individual cases together according to some mutually agreed upon criteria, but ultimately those criteria are derived from a series of overlapping, arbitrarily meaningful similarities rather than some objective likeness. Tennis bears a resemblance to both chess and a foot race, and yet tennis and chess are typically defined as “games,” whereas a foot race typically isn’t.And that’s all fine and good! That’s how language functions. You’d go crazy trying to nail down objective definitions that cover every single possible case, but we’re still happily capable of applying our conventional definitions to things and accepting that marginal cases exist. I agree with you. Chess is emphatically not an RPG! It’s just not objectively not an RPG, because an objective definition of “RPG” is impossible.Likewise, there is no clear-cut, objective distinction between “language” and “dialect,” but that doesn’t mean there’s no distinction at all. It’s all politics, sure, but politics play a powerful force in society. Welsh is considered a language because practically everyone in the world agrees that it’s a language—much like how practically everyone agrees that much of the border between the United States and Canada lies along the 49th parallel, despite that border having no objective existence. Furthermore, linguistically, there are some pretty compelling reasons for defining Welsh as not-a-dialect. Dialects are conventionally described as mutually intelligible branches of the same language family, but Welsh is not mutually intelligible with the other members of the Brittonic family, such as Cornish and Breton. So, nope, unless the author was making a very specific point about the relation between Welsh and other Brittonic languages he should have used “language,” not “dialect.”(Finally, I had to laugh at your definition of “nation-state.” I’m a political sociologist who frequently teaches classes on nations and nationalism. While the vast majority of nation-states have written constitutions I can’t think of anyone in the field who would agree with you that the presence of a constitution is the defining characteristic. Countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Israel don’t have constitutions at all.)
Holy molly AGAIN Dungeons and Dragons, the very first RPG, does NOT involve moving various figures around a grid: “D&D departs from traditional wargaming by allowing each player to create their own to play instead of a military formation. These characters embark upon adventures within a fantasy setting. A Dungeon Master (DM) serves as the game’s referee and storyteller, while maintaining the setting in which the adventures occur, and playing the role of the inhabitants of the game world, also referred to as non-player characters (NPCs). The characters form a party and they interact with the setting’s inhabitants and each other. Together they solve dilemmas, engage in battles, explore, and gather treasure and knowledge. In the process, the characters earn (XP) to rise in levels, and become increasingly powerful over a series of separate gaming sessions” (Wikipedia) To clarify further, because you’ll certainly need it, “within a fantasy setting” means no physical setting like a ‘grid’ (???) or any kind of board like chess or whatever!!!(no way I’m reading the rest of your BS, what a waste of everyone’s time lol)
Lol, have you ever actually, physically played D&D? Here are some folks playing D&D:Notice some common elements? D&D doesn’t require the use of figures and grids, but for practical purposes everyone uses them, because the game has very specific rules governing movement and interaction, so they’re helpful to keep track of who is where at any given time…which you would know if you had actually played the game or done some research instead of copy-pasting wikipedia articles. Wizards of the Coast even sells official “Adventure Grids” (https://dnd.wizards.com/products/adventure-grid) and miniatures (https://dnd.wizards.com/miniatures). I wouldn’t waste your money though—I run a 5e campaign and I spent maybe five bucks on a dry-erase mat and some generic plastic game tokens.My sincere gratitude for not attempting to respond to any of my other points. I think it would have been pretty embarrassing for the both of us.
So you admit it doesn’t require a ‘grid’ (not sure what you call a grid exactly in that case but whatev’ and no, not everyone uses one, I certainly didn’t when I was in a RPG club at 12, we just didn’t have money to buy ‘grids’ and fancy, painted characters but enjoyed playing all the same!) whereas chess usually requires a chessboard (good luck playing sans, I know it’s technically possible but you have to be really extremely gifted) which was my original point, thank you!
FYI, as a linguist I can tell you that there is a definitional distinction between “dialect” and “language”. The former is a relational category, restricted to language varieties that are closely related, genetically. Welsh and English are both Indo-European, but the former is a Celtic language and the latter is a Germanic language (McWhorter’s speculations aside). By definition, they are NOT dialects.
Thank you!
llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogochExcuse me, I have a terrible cough.
Sir, this isn’t even a Wendy’s…
Nailed it!
Welsh is fantastic , although accidently turning on S4C during its Rugby coverage with Welsh commentary is I imagine a bit like having a stroke , more so if you had to study Welsh’s distant linguistic cousin language Gaeilge (Irish) in school , and you sort of vaguely half understand some words.
“As many have noted, there is an alarming lack of Welsh content
available for American viewing pleasure,” Reynolds said. “That stops
today. Well, actually, Wednesdays.”
This dude is always trolling and making money from it. LOL!
The Welsh Not was a token used by teachers at some schools in Wales in the 19th century to discourage children from speaking Welsh at school, by marking out those who were heard speaking the language.[…]
The Welsh Not came in several forms and with different names (“Welsh not”, “Welsh note”,“Welsh lump”, “Welsh stick”, “Welsh lead”, “cwstom”,Welsh Mark, Welsh Ticket”)
and was used in different ways. It was a token typically made of wood
often inscribed with the letters ‘WN’ which might be worn around the
neck.
Typically, following the start of some prescribed period of time, a
lesson, the school day or the school week, it was given to the first
child heard speaking Welsh
and would then be successively passed on to the next child heard
speaking it. At the end of the period, the child with the token or all
children who had held the token, might be punished. The nature of that
punishment varies from one account to another; it might have been detention, the writing out of lines, or corporal punishment.[…]Professor Martin Johnes writes that neither the Welsh Not nor the
efforts to prevent the use of the language in schools were official
state policies, instead coming down to actions taken by individual
teachers; but that the Welsh Not nonetheless remains “a powerful symbol
of the oppression of Welsh culture.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Not
“Ystwyth Vets in Aberystwyth”It’s like I’m reading Lovecraft.
Do you want Yogg-Saron? ‘cause this is how you get Yogg-Saron.
If I were rich and charming, this is definitely the kind of random thing I would do. Welsh is delightful.
“Turn on the subtitles because Ryan Reynolds is bringing the consonant-heavy dialect to America”For fuck’s sake, “language” and “dialect” are not synonyms. You’re paid to write. Learn what words mean. Throw away your thesaurus and buy a dictionary.
You know what? I will, and- wait- what’s another word for dictionary?
This might actually turn out to be the only time anyone has ever watched some shows from S4C, a channel notorious for having statistically zero viewers at some times.
Can this somehow lead to Matthew Rhys delivering more roles in his lovely native accent? Seriously, I love hearing him talk when he’s not playing an American. And he’s not bad to look at either.
But his American accent is better than most Americans’, mine included.
He does smirk an awful lot.
If you haven’t seen stand up comedian Greg Davies’ You Magnificent Beast, check it out. He concludes his show by inviting a Welsh choir (The Phoenix Choir of Wales) who sings a childhood song that his father forced him to learn. It is magnificent.
I freaking love Greg Davies.
I love how even though he had no end of shocking stories on Graham Norton, even Miriam Margoyles scandalised him with some of hers!
The best bit is when you realise he wasn’t actually acting in The Inbetweeners. “Sorry to disappoint, but teachers don’t start each day by swearing allegian to the Education Fairies under a photo of the Queen. It’s no so much a calling these days as a graveyard for unlucky and unambitious – between you and me, the only reason anyone teaches these days is because they’ve taken a more relaxed view on police checks in recent years.”
noblesse oblige
Why is the tone of this article so sarcastic? Ryan Reynolds seems like a pretty nice guy and he’s not hurting anybody with his Welsh TV shows.