Iaith y Nefoedd / The Language of the Heavens.

Unless the peeps down in Nasa presumed that aliens converse in iaith y nefoedd (the language of the heavens), someone thinks extremely highly of the Welsh language.

On a golden record, amongst sounds of thunder and rain, nestled between a silhouette of a man and a woman, just below English and a Chinese dialect in a list of only 55 earthly tongues, the following message yesterday left our Solar System:

“Iechyd da i chwi yn awr, ac yn oesoedd” – Good health to you now, and forever.

No words of the beautiful languages of the Netherlands nor Norway had a place in this eternal record. Someone thinks highly of our homely inheritance.

One member of the Nasa team involved in the Voyager project was born in Caerfyrddin (Carmathen) and many believe this had a positive effect for our ancient Celtic tongue’s inclusion on Voyager’s golden record.

And since it’s the only Celtic language on the record, it represents all of Wales’ Celtic cousins in an inter-stellar stand that demands ‘Celts were here!’ …. or ‘Celtz woz ere’ to any 90’s graffiti artists.

But taking a step back from a floating concoction of metals and other materials, what can this mean for, not just Cymraeg, but for humanity?

Voyager, which already requires some 52 hours to send a message to Nasa, receive one back, act upon it and send back confirmation of completion, will not last forever. It will break down and decay – much like the planet from which it hails. Thankfully, the nature of the golden record ensures at least the important parts of Voyager’s already 36 year-long journey will endure the harshness of space. It will take another 40,000 years for whatever’s left behind to reach the next star after our Sun. Our ‘Haul,’ in Welsh.

But let’s presume there’s no life out there capable of understanding the symbolic instructions required to hear these everlasting sounds. Let’s presume the golden record’s contents will float around in space, keeping close that which makes our planet personal to us.

Meanwhile, a meteor wipes out humanity on Earth.

Imagine a new species (much like the humanoids who roam this lonely planet now) are born and live on our little rock. Imagine they, like us, get curious of their surroundings. Imagine they trawl the vastness in and outside of our Solar System.

Imagine they find Voyager.

How about the 55 languages, as well as a collection of tiger sniffles and rabbit burps, are heard by a new species? A new humanity. These will be alien sounds. Sounds from another time in space. Another people. Another world.

And the language of the heavens, third in a list of tongues comprising but a fraction of our modes of human communication, will once again be heard on Earth. A gift of our everlasting existence.

Should humanity continue on this Earth for millennia more and Project Voyager becomes but a myth about a pioneering event of the very first time humankind left his milltir sgwâr (familiar surroundings), lost in the sands of an ancient Wikipædia page, people will speak of an ancient language. A language of a peoples since gone. A language that was deemed important enough to be locked in time. A proof of an existence.

And our descendants will read.
And they will learn of Welsh.
“Cymraeg am byth“, they’ll whisper.

Everlasting smiley face 🙂

Will the Waste.i.am

A prolonged absence from blogging has given yours truly the opportunity to once again collect all the sadness that’s in the world.

My tweeting exploits, owing to my WordPress mini-boycott, have gained both acclaim and pace. I’m pretty sure I’ve evaded ‘Twitter Gaol’ rather well. 1,000 tweets per day and they metaphorically throw away the keys.

Being one who gives to receive, I like to think that @SarcasticRover is my personal reward for my unleashing of Tweeting loveliness…. It makes me laugh.

For those who do not follow this parody account…. Why the hell not?
Sarcastic Rover is a joke account that pokes fun at the beautiful irony that is the fact that Earth sent an ‘Ufo’ up to the red planet. I’m pretty sure War of the Worlds promised us that it’d be the other way around?!?!

But today’s point holds no humour. Having recently discovered that the Curiosity Rover (to give it’s correct and non-joking name) holds but 8GB of memory, I was appalled to hear that the first song to be played on Earth’s sister planet [citation needed] was that of Will.i.am!

Aside from this being a musical (and human) tragedy, the reason I mention the mere 8GB memory is worryingly obvious. Why the hell waste around 7 important MB on the former Black Eyed Peas singer? Considering the Rover needed rebooting upon landing because there was not enough room in its memory for basic movement, what a massive waste of space?

Welcome back to my blogs. And as Yoda himself put it…. “Pissed-off.i.am!”

Robotic smiley face 🙂

Cheers laa!

Growing up I never asked for much. Don’t get me wrong, I never went without necessities or materialistic objects that most of the Western world take for granted, but I was never the one with the latest fashion or up-to-date technology for example. My after-school hours were not spent in front of a games console (which, according to my nain, made my eyes go square), but out in the fields and hills – with a regular terminus being falling from a great height onto my a**e.
Now I’m not going to plead poverty and say that I was brought up in slum-like conditions in the heartlands of Africa or India – in fact, my situation was rather favourable in that I was brought up on a council estate in North East Wales, I took full advantage of the free-school-meals offer and had a wonderful family around me. I guess I’ve always enjoyed the simpler things in life. Need proof?

Recently, a regular (and therefore insane) reader of my blogging informed me she had “cheated” on my irregular [as in both topics and production time] moans and reading other peoples’ blogs. How dare she, I hear you implore! Well, no! I’m over it! And in the true instance of ‘playing fair,’ I’ve chosen to reveal to her, and therefore everyone else, the extent at which people all over the globe are succumbing to the ever-popular insanity that is reading my blogs! Check this out!

As a side note, it took England (under the banner of the ‘United Kingdom’) around 400 years to plunder and wipe out largely helpless civilisations across the globe – around 25% of it, to be precise. Yet it has taken me a mere 6 months to command a far superior chunk of the planet. Check out the following picture from Wikipedia showing Britain’s pitiful attempt at world domination…. Got ntn’ on me!

The sun never sets on a computer screen, I guess! (Whoop – history joke!) Not quite a small sausage factory in Tanganyika huh, Blackadder fans? I am, however, still waiting on the likes of Brazil, Denmark and Turkey to pull their fingers out though. I’ve given up on China and North Korea. They must just not be able to read my posts for some reason??

But whatever the reasons behind people’s reading, my stats page enlightens me that my blogging has enjoyed more than 1,700 hits since their inception which truly is an outstanding thing to get one’s head around. So whether you often ‘cheat’ on my blogs with other readers’ works, or you’re only reading this because it’s been posted on my Facebook wall countless times and you just felt that it would be ‘courteous and polite’ to have a read – THANK YOU. I honestly, and you can quote me on this; really mean it from the bottom of my heart.

Di 🙂 lch yn fawr!