ADAPTIVE BILINGUALISM

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 19, 23 January 1926, Page 16

ADAPTIVE BILINGUALISM

ENGLISH TOWNS WITH TWO

NAMES.

In spite of the Holyhead Council's decision, the townfolk, and indeed those of Anglesey and all North Wales, will go on as they have always done and refer to "Holyhead" when they ars speaking or doing business with English people, and "Caergybi" when referring to the place among themselves. (" Car-gubby," by the way, is a near enough approach to the pronunciation.) There are many places that similarly have two names, one Welsh and-the other English, and both are habitually used according to the dictates of common-sense and convenience, says the "Manchester Guardian." "Anglesey" itself is only used in an English context; .in everyday Welsh speech and writing it is always "Sir Ton" (Seer Vone). There are a pood many English people who live in Flintshire and Denbighshire who have never heard "St. Asaph called by any other name, yet in speaking among themselves Welsh folk always call it Llarielwy.

This adaptive bilingualism extends to name? of English towns. Chester is always "Caer," Liverpool is '•'Lerrpwl," and London is "Llunden." Curiously, the Welsh name for Manchester (Manceinion) is only used in written Welsh, and generally newspaper Welsh at that. Colloquially the \English word is used, but it is, of course, subject to the mysterious law of mutation by which the initial consonant becomes something else following a preposition, with the result that a North Walian talks of going to or coming from " Vanchistar." He may be speaking in English perhaps a moment afterwards, when he will say "Manchester." It would be an interesting study for some student of speech to trace the effects of attitudes of mind on this bilingual habit. It is quite possible, for instance, to hoar references in a Welsh conversation to "Holyhead," but the subject would almost certainly be of a traditionally non-Welsh character, like football and the Holyhead team's doings, if the topic werb choral competitions or a preaching meeting, and the name of the (own came in, it. would inevitably be "Caergybi."