Yay for superbowl commercials!

[hrj]

Yes, I really do watch it just for the commercials. Bayer had its first superbowl commercial this year -- the one for Aleve with Leonard Nimoy. (I successfully guessed what the gimmick was going to be based on a very slight hint on the in-house newsletter description.) But what just made my day was hearing Welsh spoken during a superbowl commercial. (Beer commercial: people from lots of different countries saying the equivalent of "cheers" while raising a glass. I didn't notice what brand it was for -- it gave the impression of being a a promotion of beer in general as a concept.)

Comments

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

I liked both of those, as well. The Nimoy gimmick was funny, especially given his past reluctance about that character...

I think the beer ad was for Bud, which is barely beer at all (despite their current slogan). But their ads are terrific - the Clydesdales playing football, the colt pulling the wagon... and "Slainte" in a dozen languages (or however many it was).

[folkmew.livejournal.com]

I didn't even know you were *here* until filkerdave suggested that I could just ask you for the chords to "Bird of Gold" instead of posting pathetic queries in filk. Sigh. I just sent you email about it (before I found your LJ).

Duly added to my flist.

And, last night Ed and I decided we *really* want to learn to sing "All through the Night" in Welsch, is there hope for a total non-Welsch speaker I wonder? I miss Judy Jones who used to sing in Welsch with her lovely pure voice. Did you ever meet her? She's really a delight, I'm sorry I've lost touch with her, I bet you'd like her a lot. Oh well... nice to "see" you!

[hrj.livejournal.com]

I didn't even know you were *here*

I've only had the journal for a little while, and I've been fairly passive about advertising it.

Ar Hyd y Nos has its pros and cons as a Welsh-language performance piece. On the pro side, pretty much everyone is familiar with the tune, so they're more likely to be willing to enjoy it in the original. But on the con side, it's pretty much a practice piece for all the trickiest Welsh sounds all munched together. I think you'd have to learn it in person from someone who's good at teaching and critiquing pronunciation. I remember trying to learn the song from a book when I was first starting to learn Welsh and running into lines like:

I oleuo'i chwaer ddaearen

and not having any notion what to do with the vowels.

[folkmew.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yeah, that matches my expectation. :) I suspect that learning Welsh will be on the (very) long list of "cool things I'd like to learn someday".
I'm more interested in learning Welsh than Dutch, although my Dutch heritage is a lot more clear and recent.