First Minister referred to as woman on Welsh language Labour pamphlet – ‘Why wasn’t it checked?’
The First Minister has been referred to as a woman on a Welsh language pamphlet which is riddled with errors.
The pamphlet says “yn dilyn ei hailetholiad fel Aelod Seneddol dros Orllewin Caerdydd”, and later on “cafodd Mark Drakeford ei hail-benodi yn Brif Weinidog”. In both instances, the pamphlet suggests that the First Minister is a woman by consistently mutating “ei ail” to “ei hail”
The pamphlet has numerous other errors such as “Talwyd Mark Drakeford diolch” rather than “Talodd Mark Drakeford ddiolch”.
The errors were spotted by Plaid Cymru staffer Math Wiliam after the pamphlet was put through his letterbox.
“The First Minister’s team has just put a leaflet through my door that refers to him as a woman,” he said. “The lack of respect for the Welsh language, when it would be so easy to get someone to check, speaks volumes.”
Mark Drakeford, a Welsh speaker, was elected the Senedd Member for Cardiff West in 2011 and became First Minister in 2018. He had previously served as the previous Cardiff West MS and First Minister Rhodri Morgan’s chief advisor.
A Welsh Labour Spokesperson said: “Mark’s personal commitment to the Welsh language is beyond doubt. It’s quite a big leap to think this is anything other than an unfortunate error.”
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Hire fully-qualified cyfieithwyr. I’ve been shocked to see staff at the Senedd in the past not knowing the difference between Cymraeg and Cymreig.
AND I must add: Why is my use of geiriau Cymraeg resulting in the red underlining of them? Surely, geiriau Cymraeg should be a standard acceptance on your site?
Like many sites, including the Guardian or WalesOnline, the comments section are set up for US English, so even standard UK English spellings will receive the wavy red underline treatment. This might just down to the way the defaults are set up and all that’s required is a change in the settings in the website’s control panel or it might be that US English is ‘hard wired’ to use a US English spell checker. Increasingly it seems that US English is being accepted as a norm for the English used on the internet, along with the default use of just… Read more »
Sorry, the red underlining vanished as soon as I posted my comment. Da iawn!
Perhaps your browser’s spell-checker can handle only one language at a time. On my Android phone, I have both English & Cymraeg listed in “Settings / System / Languages and input / Languages”: it gives me autocomplete in both languages and in the text box where I’m typing this, words don’t get red underlining unless they’re wrong in both languages. I’ve forgotten whether or not there’s a similar tweak for desktop computers.
There are localisation, settings on desktops, but I think on websites it will be more a function of the spell checker settings at the website end.
We are all non binary or gender fluid now, who cares
Mrs Drakeford?
Obviously, our FM is a man. He’s a drake(ford) – not a duck …
Enghraifft arall o ‘Sgymraeg’ yn anffodus. Yr hyn sy’n fy mhoeni am enghreifftiau tebyg yw eu bod yn adlewyrchiad gweddol cywir o wir blaenoraeth y mae’r Blaid Lafur yng Nghymru yn rhoi i’n haiath ni y tu ol i’w slogan ‘A Million Speakers By 2050’. ~ Another effort of ‘Sgymraeg’ (sloppy Welsh), unfortunately. That which bothers me is that such examples of Sgymraeg ar a fairly accurate reflection of the true priority the Labour Party in Wales gives to our language, behind their slogan of ‘A million speakers by 2050’.
That is a pretty unacceptable grammatical error if the translation was done by a real live Welsh-speaker, no argument. Welsh Labour should be embarrassed.