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Languages, like plant and animal species, can become extinct, a fact about which a lot of people care.

Well, so we thought.

One of the languages under threat of extinction is Welsh. It is a Celtic language spoken as a native tongue in Wales and, surprisingly, in a Welsh immigrant colony in the Chubut Valley in Patagonia.

British census figures from 1991 and 2001, and a Welsh Language Use Survey in 2004, show that usage of Welsh is in fact growing, but this is marginal and is largely due to a lot of government money and effort, including legislation introduced in 1993 giving Welsh equal status with English in the public sector in Wales.

It is not known if the law extends to Patagonia.

Another way the government has tried to generate public interest and knowledge of Welsh is to fund television programming in the language. Just last month, Channel 4 in Wales showed 890 programs in Welsh.

Television viewer figures just released show that 196 of them got a zero rating.

A zero rating does not mean that nobody watched them, although it could. Technically, it means those 196 programs were watched by fewer than 1,000 people.

At the other end, 139 of the 890 programs were watched by more than 10,000 viewers.

The Cardiff-based Channel 4 was launched by Gwynfor Evans, leader of the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru, after Evans threatened to starve himself to death if the station was not set up. Channel 4 receives 100 million pounds a year for Welsh-language programming.

With the release of the latest viewing figures, one television insider said the channel was failing viewers. "The cost per viewer must be absolutely astronomical," he said. "It would be cheaper to send every viewer a DVD."

Sometimes it's hard to save the things we love.

dailymail.co.uk

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Europe, UK, Wales, Language

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William Safire, 1929-2009

September 27th 2009 23:39

William Safire receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006

William Lewis Safire, Pulitzer Prize winner, language expert, long-time columnist for The New York Times and speech writer for President Nixon, has died at the age of 79. The Baltimore Sun newspaper described him as a conservative columnist and word warrior who feared no politician or corner of the English language.

Author Eric Alterman, in his 1999 book Sound and Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy, called Safire an institution. "Few insiders doubt that William Safire is the most influential and respected pundit alive," Alterman wrote.

He was born William Lewis Safir (he added an e to his surname later for what he described as pronunciation reasons) on December 17, 1929. A Jew, Safire was throughout his life a staunch and vocal advocate of Israel. The young William attended the Bronx High School of Science and then spent two years at Syracuse University before dropping out. He worked as a radio and television producer, in public relations and as a publicist before joining the Nixon presidential campaign in 1960.

In 1973 Safire joined The New York Times as a political columnist, beginning a 32-year stint as one of America's most respected political pundits and its mostly widely read language expert. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for commentary on the alleged budgetary irregularities of Bert Lance, an adviser to Jimmy Carter (and widely acknowledged as originator of the saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it").

Safire described himself as a "libertarian conservative", defined by Wikipedia as, "A term adopted by a broad spectrum of political philosophies which advocate the maximization of individual liberty and the minimization or even abolition of the state".

Bill Clinton was more interested in Safire's nose than his prose. Clinton said he wanted to punch that nose after Safire called his wife "a congenital liar".

Safire also wrote several novels and was chairman of the Dana Foundation, a philanthropic organisation which supports brain science, immunology and arts education.

Upon announcing the retirement of Safire's political column in 2005, Arthur Sulzberger Jr, publisher of The New York Times, said, "The New York Times without Bill Safire is all but unimaginable. Whether you agreed with him or not was never the point — his writing is delightful, informed and engaging."
Image: UPI.com

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Journalism, Language, US, Politics

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Family's Fielding fluffs his fiscal

September 9th 2009 02:51

Mary Whitehouse: at least she could spell

Australian Senator Steve Fielding is apparently taking, as his yardstick for political performance, the career of former American vice-president Dan Quayle. Fielding is paying particular attention to Quayle's inability to spell.

The Australian is a member of the Family First Party, which is, in its own words, "the only party that has as its top priority the well being (sic) of Australian families and the success of small businesses". According to their web page, they also believe, "Australia should be the best country in the world".

So, to hell with everyone else and do you think the portrait of Mary Whitehouse would look better over the mantlepiece?

The noun well-being should, of course, be hyphenated or one word, not two, and this brings us back to Senator Fielding and his language flaws. He has had an ongoing problem, when offering opinions on economic matters, in confusing the words fiscal and physical. "Physical policy" has become something of a catchphrase for the good Senator, and good journalists are giving him every opportunity to repeat the malapropism.

This week, however, he went a step further along the Quayle trail. Dan famously couldn't spell potato. Fielding decided to mangle the word fiscal even more than he has by proving that, not only does he not know how to use it, he doesn't know how to spell it.

Speaking to journalists on Monday, he was asked about his regular mispronunciation of fiscal. "I'll make it quite clear," Senator Fielding replied, "fiscal: F-I-S-K-A-L."

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Australia/NZ/Pacific, Journalism, Language, Politics

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Bush's language talent can not be misunderstated

January 13th 2009 21:14

George W Bush, who in 2000 started his forceful march to the US presidency by asking, "Is our children learning", leaves the public stage shortly, which is sad because he will now have fewer opportunities to mangle the language.

Debate may rage forever over relative merit of the gaffs which have come to be known collectively as Bushisms, but The Global Language Monitor, an organisation which tracks language trends, has just published its Top 15 list of Bushisms, and coming out on top is "misunderestimate

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