To celebrate the historic occasion of Wales playing tonight in the semi-finals of their first ever European Championship, I want to write something short about English words of Welsh origin. Short, because there aren’t that many! I think this is largely because Welsh both looks and sounds so different from English that it’s different for Welsh words to enter the English language. But there are a few, such as… Continue reading
Are you watching the football?
Many of you living in Europe will hear some variation of this over the next few weeks. Actually, now that I think of it, those of you in the Americas will probably be asked that too, with the Copa América on, but perhaps not so often in the USA!
Football does tend to take people’s lives over during major tournaments. I’ve lost a lot of interest in football in recent years, mainly due to my perception that roughly 99% of professional footballers are arrogant, petulant manchildren, but I do love the atmosphere of major international tournaments.
Partly it’s because they signify summer to me, and partly it’s because I’m lucky to have some great formative memories of football tournaments. My first ever sporting memory is of Ireland beating England at Euro ’88 thanks to Ray Houghton’s legendary header. I had no idea what it meant, but I knew it was good!
English-Language Thoughts 