1968: What is the WELSH WAY OF LIFE? | Check-Up | Voice of the People | BBC Archive

Check-Up considers what it means to be Welsh in 1968.
What are the events that have shaped the Welsh national character (if there is such a thing), how do Welsh people feel about life in Wales and what do they think constitutes Welshness?
This clip is from Check-Up: The Welsh Way of Life, originally broadcast 19 November, 1968.
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[@Joe-ji7km]

“We were made for better things, like singing hymns, composing poetry and being sad”

[@atomictraveller]

from wales, folks moved to arizona, pa got a job on res, not much different from a big apache reservation really. hint: the "being sad" part was written in england.

[@nesanesa9547]

My community was so safe happy bloody hard workers innovating yet emotional through our music choirs and chapel... 78 yo

[@ktsmells]

I'm English but I'm glad the Welsh, especially in the North, still preserve the language.

[@emilian7052]

Such a lovely accent

[@willowbrooke1215]

I'm a Kiwi and as a backpacker in Australia in 1990 I worked with 2 Welsh guys picking apples. One stage I couldn't understand what they were saying to each other. Then I found out they were speaking Welsh. I was both impressed and jealous since I couldn't speak mine and my mum's native Maori language.

[@Jesse__H]

I'm an American with a Welsh mother. This was very interesting, thank you. I would've been happy if this were an hour long!

[@lleifior2]

Yma o hyd....

[@orig66Super]

Here in New England we have candlepin bowling which is particular to this region of the U.S. I noticed some men playing a game which looks very similar to candlepin bowling in this program.

[@agamemnom]

the 'living pictures' what a marvellously old fashioned name for film lol

[@andrewjones-productions]

Depending on how you interpret 'Welsh way of life', an individual's answer can be quite different. I tend to interpret it as what national institutional and cultural events that whilst they may be completely unrelated to one's way of earning money/career, do provide the framework for positions in society to be aspired to and 'be somebody'. As a Welsh speaking Welshman growing up, our annual national events included things like (but not limited to) the Urdd Eisteddfod,. the chapel Gymanfa, the Royal Welsh Show and the countless local ones, the National Eisteddfod, local Eisteddfods, Gwyl Cerdd Dant, Noson Lawen and much more. Some events have wained in their popularity and others have become more popular. I left Wales for Japan in 1991 at 22 years old and so never got the chance to participate in the 'who's who' game of 'important' Welsh people in society. Not that everyone chooses to participate of course.

[@lleifior2]

"Up the Rhondda way" 🙂

[@mgore90]

It cracks me up as my mum's family is from a town in the valleys just north of the town we live in at the mouth of the same valley. Yet we joke about how rough it is, and my mum will tell us how we're all softies down here etc. The two towns are less than 8 miles apart. 😅

[@atomictraveller]

it's been being not english for quite a while now hasn't it

[@onlinemusiclessonsadamphil4677]

wonderful culture and unique people largely of Celtic origin, full of talent and a once persecuted language

[@ChillingCrowley]

Not persecuted now though

[@atomictraveller]

@@ChillingCrowley not anything you'd see anyway, or most people whose attention is managed by a personal heterodyning device.

[@atomictraveller]

@simonengland6448 get a hold of yourself and stop talking crazy talk. vague, sentimental memory, or arizona. otherwise, english racism is still as starkly tangible as it ever was, even from far away. didn't england dump radioactive waste in wales last decade?

[@atomictraveller]

@simonengland6448 it's reasonable by your standards. you think i have a life. you see it works like this simon, i type the words, you ignore them, everybody ignores them. if i had a life, would i be replying to this garbage?

[@Jesse__H]

​@Simon England doesn't seem particularly reasonable to assume someone has no knowledge about a place just because they're not _there._ Less knowledge, sure, but enough to potentially form a valid opinion.

[@louisep5178]

Used to be so many clubs in Cardiff and a great place to go out

[@skullandbones1832]

❤️

[@ej-fo8pd]

OMG Pierce Morgan at 25

[@cymro6537]

Going on 65

[@nesanesa9547]

I was an economic migrant to london..

[@Mark-ej4uf]

dirty spectacle at the opera.

[@kevfit4333]

Thumbs up for Welsh independence 👍

[@heinkle1]

🙄

[@JohnDoe-ne4kg]

🙄 what are we gonna do .. export rugby coaches?

[@cymro6537]

​@@JohnDoe-ne4kgCharge the English for using Welsh water for a start

[@NorthWalesKid]

Blaming England for things that happened 700 years ago

[@NorthWalesKid]

@@anachronism45 blaming England for your current problems is a mentality that will forever keep wales in England’s shadow. All this ‘I support wales and whoever is playing England’ mentality is small minded and embarrassing

[@nesanesa9547]

​@@NorthWalesKid78 yo in s.wales schools we were scolded for speaking welsh from the age of 3 yo I remember..!!!

[@johnw574]

You sound like you have a big chip on your shoulder and don't have a clue about Welsh history or culture. You didn't watch this video at all, you just saw the title and came in to show your anti Welsh hatred. Why did you move to North Wales in the first place? Probably because your family saw cheap houses in Clan thingy bob.

[@chestercopperpot9294]

He said soccer which was unusual for the time.

[@atomictraveller]

football. soccer was what americans said.

[@joshuataylor3550]

Welsh people have also called it soccer. Their football code is primarily Rugby Union. My father was ten years old in Ammanford at this time and he's only ever called it soccer.

[@toddunctious614]

Someone born in Somali simply has to stand on Welsh soil and they instantaneously become just as Welsh as anyone in this film. Apparently.

[@sevenwatson5854]

Over the centuries Wales, Scotland and England have become a mixed race of each other, even the great singer Tom Jones is predominantly English, so the only things that define differences are a different historical timeline and timeline. North Walians speak different Welsh to South Walians. I've seen an official map from the 1600s with Cornwall being South Wales and Wales recorded as North Wales. Times change. I'm British despite being born in London. I have the blood of all the UK in me. If you have more than one, are you not too?!?

[@joshuataylor3550]

The history of the British isles is that if several waves of foreign immigration. All nationalism is temporary, transient and mythical.

[@andrewjones-productions]

The Welsh of north and south Wales is essentially the same. Written Welsh is the 'standard' Welsh and that doesn't vary according to region.. The South Walians do tend to use specific words that are typically only found in southern Wales, but Wales has a vast vocabulary with different words to describe the same thing and this can vary from village and towns in the same area. E.g. 'llaeth' and 'llefrith' for milk. This is one of the things that makes the Welsh language unique and here in Japan, there are two universities that teach and study Welsh because of this apparently very unusual dense concentration of dialects in a comparatively very small area.

[@robertcummins1437]

Mother was welsh, she's dead now best favour ever did for me as a lifetime of emotional abuse. Not great advertisement for welsh people. Most cannot speak their own language.

[@robertcummins1437]

Thanks for like sadly true.

[@bid84]

The language was persecuted and outlawed, much like native Gaelige the Irish language. Hundreds of years of English oppression will do that to a culture

[@robertcummins1437]

@@bid84 Presume you are Welsh?

[@bid84]

@@robertcummins1437 wrong, Irish.

[@bid84]

@@robertcummins1437 wrong I’m Irish.

[@jasonayres]

To me, Wales.. it looks a bit like England. Well, New South Wales - bits of it do look like South Wales.

[@shabut]

Weird how they need to be replaced with Islam.

[@johnwilliams-ih3pv]

Wales the land of song ? My arse ! It’s the least musical nation of any ! Music is so much more than national ferver