Does anybody in Leeds(anywhere?)speak Welsh?

blackprince · Post by **blackprince** » Sat 02 Jan, 2010 4:44 pm

chameleon wrote: blackprince wrote: When I was at school in Leeds in the 60s there was one Welsh word most people knew - Nos Da - Goodnight.The announcer on one of the TV Channels ( BBC or ITV not much choice back then) always used to say this either at the close of transmission or possibly at the end of the news ( memory fades) and it became a bit of a catch phrase. Anyone else remember this? It was Bill Grundy wasn't it - nos dar, something like, yaccy dar (apologies to any ones who knows how that IS spelt) and good night, after the 'local' news? Bill Grundy! Well remembered!

blackprince · Post by **blackprince** » Sat 02 Jan, 2010 5:23 pm

Trojan wrote: chameleon wrote: blackprince wrote: When I was at school in Leeds in the 60s there was one Welsh word most people knew - Nos Da - Goodnight.The announcer on one of the TV Channels ( BBC or ITV not much choice back then) always used to say this either at the close of transmission or possibly at the end of the news ( memory fades) and it became a bit of a catch phrase. Anyone else remember this? It was Bill Grundy wasn't it - nos dar, something like, yaccy dar (apologies to any ones who knows how that IS spelt) and good night, after the 'local' news? It was because up to 1968 and the advent of Yorkshire, our "local" news came from Manchester. And they covered parts of North Wales. It had it's pluses and minuses. One of the pluses was that the Granada early evening programme (like Look North) in 1962, featured an unknown rock group from Liverpool. The Beatles. So Leeds people were privileged to see the first TV appearance of the Fab Four. I was one of them and was sold from day one. Still am. Thanks for that. I do remember our local ITV company was Granada for many years, so that neatly explains the token goodnight in Welsh. I too saw that first TV appearance by the Fab 4 on the early evening news show. I didn't realise we might have missed it if we hadn't been part of the Granada TV region. When I left Yorkshire, a few years after YTV started, the promising young presenter on the local news programme was Austin Mitchell. I remember seeing him about town a few times with his glamorous blonde wife.

dogduke · Post by **dogduke** » Thu 11 Mar, 2010 6:54 pm

Todays papers :-S4C Channel 4's Welsh language channel gets a subsidyof £100 MILLION from the taxpayers.Last month it broadcast 890 programmes.196 of those recorded ZERO VIEWERS.Just how much does propping up the Welsh languagecost THIS country?.

Post by **chameleon** » Thu 11 Mar, 2010 7:00 pm

dogduke wrote: Todays papers :-S4C Channel 4's Welsh language channel gets a subsidyof £100 MILLION from the taxpayers.Last month it broadcast 890 programmes.196 of those recorded ZERO VIEWERS.Just how much does propping up the Welsh languagecost THIS country?. Why does a commercial company get a public subsidy?

dogduke · Post by **dogduke** » Thu 11 Mar, 2010 7:18 pm

That's as reported by theMirror,presumably somesort of contribution towards culture etc.

Cardiarms · Post by **Cardiarms** » Thu 11 Mar, 2010 7:47 pm

It's not a commercial station. It's a public channel that can advertise."The Department for Culture, Media and Sport finances S4C. In 2007, the Channel will receive a grant of £94.4m from DCMS. S4C has the right to produce additional commercial income through the sales of programmes and advertising space, and through working with other broadcasters on co-productions."

Post by **chameleon** » Thu 11 Mar, 2010 8:04 pm

Cardiarms wrote: It's not a commercial station. It's a public channel that can advertise."The Department for Culture, Media and Sport finances S4C. In 2007, the Channel will receive a grant of £94.4m from DCMS. S4C has the right to produce additional commercial income through the sales of programmes and advertising space, and through working with other broadcasters on co-productions." Ah right. Carrying the association with Channel 4 in the post, you will see how this could be misunderstood!

tilly · Post by **tilly** » Thu 11 Mar, 2010 8:39 pm

dogduke wrote: Todays papers :-S4C Channel 4's Welsh language channel gets a subsidyof £100 MILLION from the taxpayers.Last month it broadcast 890 programmes.196 of those recorded ZERO VIEWERS.Just how much does propping up the Welsh languagecost THIS country?. To be fair the Welsh language is far older than the one we speak i for one think it should not be lost in the mists of time. But then i wonder what language will be spoken in say one hundred years time in England. Does this sound daft. i will bet that Christianity is not the main religion in this country at some time in the future.

Catweazle · Post by **Catweazle** » Thu 11 Mar, 2010 9:20 pm

Welsh miners got around a fair bit when their local pits closed, and certainly migrated up to the Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire coal fields. There is a St Davids Society in Bradford: http://www.communigate.co.uk/brad/stdavidssociety/I believe thousands of Welsh miners came to Yorkshire in the early part of the 20th century to work in the pits.I worked for Parcelforce at Rotherham in the early part of the millenium and remembering delivering a package to an ex-miner in Elsecar near Barnsley who was in his late-80s and had come to Barnsley as a young man in the early 1930s. He'd therefore lived in the area for over 60 years but had the strongest Welsh accent I'd ever heard. I had a chat to him and he said the Welsh community had been so strong in the Barnsley/Rotherham area that only a few decades earlier there had still been a Welsh speaking chapel in Maltby, South Yorkshire.

Cardiarms · Post by **Cardiarms** » Thu 11 Mar, 2010 10:18 pm

The deep welsh mines were well established when the Northern coal fields were seriously expanded. The owners up here offered them more to come work up here and bring their skills and knowledge.