>In response to Becky's admiration of our willingness to save a dying >language - "Dying" is too terminal a word to describe the state of Welsh >and Welsh Culture. etc. Unfortunately, at least around where I live, the phrase "dying language" has come into common parlance not to mean "a language which is dying off (because nobody cares to speak it any more or all the native speakers have been assimilated/eliminated)," but rather to mean "a language spoken by fewer people than, say, English is." In that case, "saving" _does_ mean promoting awareness of a beautiful language with deep roots. It just comes out wrong. It's still an impolite reference, but it's easy to forget the literal meaning when it's used so commonly to mean something else. I fell into the same hole once, and the sting when I realised I'd insulted my Welsh dinner companion has been enough to get me to choose my idioms more carefully forevermore. I wouldn't be surprised if Becky thought she was saying what I was, never even thinking about what the words literally mean. On another line: How _do_ native speakers of Welsh feel about "outsider's" interest in learing their language? My connection with Wales is so tenuous it'd might as well be nonexistent. One branch of the family has lived there only for three generations, so I have no ancestral link; I've visited Wales and fallen in love with the land. Is it seen as an intrusion (like the sterotypical Parisian view of non-natives butchering French), are outside people looked upon as wannabes trying to partake of a culture they might view as quaint? Carol M.S. Burrell Scavella@aol.com looking forward to my last Aeschylos class tonight so I can spend the rest of the summer studying Welsh Riverdale, New York