Favourite Foreign Language Television Programmes

[FunkyLeprechaun]

Learned about this through my fiance's family, as we couldn't park where we usually do because the lot was being used for the tv show.

Caught the show the night before we went back home and it's great. It's called Cowbois ac Injans (Cowboys and Engines in Welsh).

It's funny because the area (about an hour from Cardiff) it films in is primarily English speaking (If you go to North Wales, the Welsh jumps above the English in the signs).

Welsh is a foreign language to me, and I'm perplexed at how they speak it without all those vowels.

How about you? Do you have any favourite foreign language shows?

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. I remember, before S4C started, when the BBC broadcast the occasional Welsh programme in England

and I found the occasional English phrase that the Welsh hadn't, for some reason, translated would sound really weird.

So, in a soap opera, it would sound, to an ear with no clue about Welsh, like "forg an futh yol trool ung im Intensive Care Unit, ol gorb bach bach".

[FunkyLeprechaun]

2. Cowbois ac Injans has a website

http://www.s4c.co.uk/cowboisacinjans/c_index.shtml (There's an English version of the website but it's quite fun to see the Welsh and try to decipher it, also the English version subtitles the Welsh show in English).

I wish we had the option to subtitle foreign television shows in the US into English, like on Univision or Telemundo. I quite liked watching the telenovelas (Latin American soap operas) because they looked SO dramatic. When I studed Spanish in Boston, I finally understood the soap opera's Spanish subtitles, and they are as dramatic as I had imagined!

Maybe I should take some Welsh classes. I wish Cowbois Ac Injans had clips on YouTube so I could show people and confuse them even further!