Sir Lucien (Geoffrey Whitehead) made his name in the 60s as the most brutal of the brutalists. Unfortunately, times have changed and his love of all things concrete means his practice of misfits now only get commissioned to build car parks. Lucien is joined by his loyal-ish employees Matt (Dominic Coleman), Sarah (Ingrid Oliver (series 1), Anna Crilly (series 2)), Tim (Alex Carter) and Hayley (Aisling Bea) as they struggle to stay relevant in the 21st century.



The Architects is a new one for me. I must have missed it during its runs on the radio, and I came to it quite by chance while browing The Internet Archive. There are two series of four episodes plus one pilot. I won't discuss the pilot here as the cast was almost entirely different.

Sir Lucien is a typically Whiteheadian character: pompous, brusk, and verbose and is as enjoyable as any Geoffrey Whitehead incarnation.

Matt is, again, a typical Dominic Coleman character. A fairly likeable everyman, although occasionally prone to showing off his apparent knowledge of the world of architecture, only to have it corrected by someone else. He considers himself something of an architectural genius, but is somewhat deluded.

Sarah, sadly, falls into the trap of being the typical radio comedy token woman. Single, frustrated, and neurotic but clever, usually getting the better of her male counterparts. There's nothing wrong with this per se, but we've seen this character before in Sophie from Think the Unthinkable and Dr Ruth from Rigor Mortis, to name but two.

Tim is a strange one. Half sycophant, half dimwit. There's an undercurrent of dislike between him, Matt and Sarah, and yet there never seems to be any real acrimony towards them. In fact, in later episodes there's a degree of cameraderie between all three, as if the writers forgot what sort of character Tim was supposed to be. Tim starts as an unlikeable brown noser who keeps his distance from Sarah and Matt in order to suck up to Sir Lucien, but later in the show becomes more part of the team. At various times he's shown to be both a socially awkward, stamp collecting, battle re-enacting geek who makes poor attempts to come on to women and at the same time a bit of a ladies' man who has some success with them. He is sometimes shown to be so dim that you wonder how he passed the many years of education needed to become an architect.

For the first couple of episodes I found very little to laugh at, but as it progressed and the characters grew to become more of a team, the jokes also improved and I did find myself chuckling out loud on a number of occasions. The initial problems were that some of the characters didn't know quite who they wanted to be. Hayley, the receptionist, starts off a a bit of a ditz who, apparently, doesn't know that Deutschland and Germany are the same thing, nor that Deutsch and German are the same language, yet later in the series she's shown to be quite smart and easily holds her own in arguments with the architects, particularly Tim. She also seems to have little purpose other than as a foil for the other characters and plays little part in most of the plots, which might explain why she's quietly dropped in series 2, her absence explained as her being in prison.

I think the other problem with the program is the limited story lines you can do around an architectural firm. The setting of an architectural practice limits the potential situations in a way that the superficially similar Think The Unthinkable managed to avoid. Most of the plots revolve around the firm trying and failing to secure commissions for various architectural projects, from airports to renovating houses and restaurants. A lot of what that they do seems to border on interior design, rather than architecture, but I suppose purely architectural themed storylines were more limiting still.

And I suppose that's a good summary. It's a decent comedy that grows on you, but is never quite sure what it's trying to be.

I'll probably find myself listening to it all over again at some point, but I won't be hurrying to do so.

Rating: * * *

Alongside Welsh, I have also been brushing up on my GCSE French and hoping to improve my German (although I've already given up on this).

These languages have highlighted two more things I like about Welsh and that I think make it an easier language for the beginner:

1. The present continuous (I am going; I am doing; We are sailing (across the sea...))

In English, we have this periphrastic construction for the continuous tense that involves using "to be" as an auxilliary verb. This construction is alien to other European languages who simply use the present tense form of whatever verb, for example "to go", to indicate all three of the following ideas:

I go
I am going
I do go

In French, all three are "je vais". On the DuoLingo forum you see beginners in non-Welsh languages ask "Where is "am" in this sentence?" or asking "Why is it not 'Je suis vais'?".

Welsh, similarly to English, also forms the present tense periphrastically with "bod" (to be), almost in the opposite way to French by including the auxilliary where in English it *wouldn't* be needed:

Dw i'n mynd (literally "Am I going")

is

I am going
I go
I do go

and I think that inclusion of "am" (dw, in this case) is a more familiar construct to the English speaker, despite the reverse word order.

2. The same pronouns are used for both the nominative and accusative case.

What I mean by this is that "he" and "him" are both the same word, as are "She" and "her" (although not "her" the possessive pronoun), and "We" and "us".

For example:

Maen nhw'n mwynhau'r ddrama (they enjoy the play) - Nominative

Uses the same pronoun as:

Paid ag anghofio nhw! (don't forget them!) - Accusative

In French, "them" can be "ils" or "elles" or even "eux" in the nominative and "les" in the accusative.

The more Welsh I learn, the more I think it's a lot easier than people give it credit for. That said, it's not without its own strange constructs!

Ok, so it's been about seven months since I started learning Welsh in earnest, and he's what I think is hard and what I think is fairly easy about Welsh:

1. Mutations. Letters change at the start of one word depending on what word they follow. However I'm finding that this starts to feel more natural in most circumstances after a while.

2. Versions of "about" and "of/from" for each pronoun. If you're talking about a thing, they're "am" and "o" respectively. But if you're talking about/from me, you, her, him, us or them you're looking at "amdana, amdanat, amdani, amdano, amdanon and amdanyn" and "ohono, ohonot, ohoni, ohono, ohonon and ohonyn"!

3. The letter "Ll". Yes, it counts as one letter. The pronunciation is somewhere between ell and hissing like an angry goose with a headache. For some reason I find it easier to pronounce at the start of a word, like Llawr, than in the middle or end of a word, like Arall or Galla.

4. Conjugations. Well, this is the same for any language, really. Remembering the conjugations of short-form verbs is just one of those things you have to get used to.

5. Yes and no. There are no words for Yes and No in Welsh, you just repeat back (or negate) the appropriate conjugation of the verb in the question. "Do you like cheese?", "I do". "Are you tired?" "I am". "Are you reading?" "I am not". But that's only in the present tense. In the past tense it's usually "Do" for yes and "Naddo" for no. But then for emphatic questions it's "Ie" for yes and "Nage" for no. If the question was asking if there is something with you (see below) you reply with Oes or Nag Oes. Remembering which to use is the hard part.

6. There aren't many words that are similar to other European languages. There are some, mostly more modern words borrowed from English: tacsi, parcio, ffatri, ffôn, beic, etc; and some ecclesiastical words like eglwys (church) and capel (chapel) but not to the extent that you find with Romance or Germanic languages.

Things that are easier than I expected:

1. Mutations. Yes, they're difficult, but actually you get used to them, and in many cases the rules are quite consistent. You just get used to dropping the G in words like gweithio and gweld when they follow a sentence subject. You get used to changing D to Dd in adjectives after "yn", and you get very used to nasal mutations after "fy".

2. Conjugations. Although remembering them is difficult, many of the conjugations are quite consistent and actually fit in quite well with the pronoun they go with.

3. Possession. I've said before about there being no form of "I have a (something)" in Welsh, they instead say something is "with them": Mae ci gyda fi - "There is a dog with me". I got the hang of this much quicker than I thought. I think you just change your way of thinking and everything slots together.

4. The language as a whole. I'm only a beginner. Very much so. But I've been surprised at how much I've covered in such a short space of time. I'm not proficient by any stretch of the imagination, and I can only string together fairly simple sentences, but on the other hand I can make many more types of sentences in Welsh than my partner's daughter can in Spanish; a language she's been learning at school for two years now. I can use the present tense, the past perfect, a sort of imperfect, the future in several forms and some conditional tenses and even a kind of limited subjunctive mood.

On the whole, Welsh has (so far) been easier than I expected. It's not the incomprehensible jumble of letters it always looked like on road signs when we used to visit my Grandma in Rhossili when I was a child. In fact, in many ways it's a lot easier than the languages I'd been taught at school.

This is something I've started feeling quite strongly about lately, although I admit I'm partial to a bit of bias given my current enthusiasm for Cymraeg, but...

...why don't we teach Welsh as a second language in England? I say England because in Scotland and Northern Ireland they already have native languages that should be taught, but England does not.

I know some people will think, "Are you mad?!" but hear me out; my reasoning is sound:

1. Many children are more likely to visit Wales than Germany. German is taught in many British schools, yet British tourists to Germany number around 2 million per year compared to 10 million in Wales (2015 figure). This means more chance to practice a language learnt in school.

2. Welsh is the language of these islands. English people may not appreciate this, but our ancestors spoke something similar to Welsh. Before the Romans, Saxons and then Normans invaded, the native languages of these islands were the Brythonic languages, of these Welsh is the one currently in the healthiest state. Learning Welsh is a link to our past, even as Englishmen.

3. Learning any language has benefits beyond just that language. Learning one language helps a child understand other languages and their own language much better. There is nothing to be lost by learning Welsh and much to be gained.

4. Welsh is different. Welsh is not like French, German or Spanish; the languages children usually learn in school. The structure is different and it borrows little from Romance or Germanic languages. Learning Welsh gives children a different perspective on language learning yet remains relevant as it's spoken as a living language by 700,000 people and is an official language of the UK, unlike Cantonese, Mandarin or Satsuma ;)

5. Welsh is easy. Well, sort of. As I've covered previously, simple Welsh sentences in the past, present and future tenses can involve very little conjugation beyond the verb "bod" (to be). This makes progress fast and enthuses children to learn. Why spend two years mastering present tense conjugations in French when you can learn the same sentences in Welsh in a fraction of the time?

Not everyone will agree with me. I know the counter argument will be "but more people speak language X than speak Welsh!" or the usual "Welsh is a dead language! What's the point?!". But Welsh is growing. By teaching it as a second language it will grow more and these questions will answer themselves.

One of the more daunting things about Welsh which is common to all the Celtic languages is the concept of mutations: consonants that change to a different letter, or even group of letters, depending on context.

As an English speaker and someone who has learnt German and French in the past, this is a truly alien concept. German may have given us some pretty monstrous words, but at least they're always spelt the same way whenever you encounter them. The French may be sloppy when pronouncing the ends of their words, but at least the beginnings don't go changing.

In Welsh, however, certain initial consonants of words change to other consonants. This is a mutation, and exists in all the Celtic languages of the British Isles in various forms. Welsh has three types of mutation: soft, nasal and aspirate (which I won't go into here). The most common of these is the soft mutation. What this means, in practical terms, is that in certain circumstances the following letter changes occur at the start of a word:

c becomes g

p becomes b

t becomes d

d becomes dd

b and m become f

ll becomes l

rh becomes r

and g vanishes entirely!

One of the occasions these mutations occur is when a singular feminine noun follows the definite article "Y". So "cath" (a cat) becomes "y gath" (the cat). "Mam" (Mother) becomes "y fam" (the Mother). And so on. This change also occurs when we are going "from" or "to" somewhere. If we go "to Wales", for example, it's "i Gymru" with the usual C replaced by a G. I'm still getting accustomed to the various reasons for the soft mutation, and there are lots of them.

Then we have the nasal mutation. This is much less common, and comprises the following consonant changes, which I had to look up because they're not all yet very natural to me:

p -> mh

t -> nh

c -> ngh

b -> m

d -> n

g -> ng

I've principally encountered this mutation when saying I am "in" somewhere. As with the Cymru -> Gymru change above when we go to Wales, we change C to Ngh when we are in Wales. So one can like Cymru, go to Gymru, but be in Nghymru... argh! Still, all languages have their quirks, and the world would be a very boring place without these differences.

The purpose of mutations, so I've been led to believe, is to improve the flow of the language. I kind of buy that. Kind of. I can see that the words trip off the tongue a little better in the case of the nasal mutation ("my car" would be "fy car" ("vuh car") without the change but becomes "fy nghar" ("vunghar") with it), but I can't really see how abitrary changes to feminine singular nouns help the flow.

Still, it is what it is, and it's all part of language's rich tapestry!

The first tense I'm learning in Welsh is the present tense. When I started learning Welsh I held the opinion that it was a difficult language full of complicated constructs that I'd struggle to learn compared to French, Spanish or German.

Turns out I was wrong. Forming the present tense in modern colloquial Welsh (literary Welsh is quite different) is probably the easiest of any language I've learnt. The reason is thus: all simple present tense sentences involve conjugation of the same verb, "bod" (to be) followed by your action verb in its infinitive form (called a verb-noun, in Welsh).

So, where in French you'd need to know the first person singular and plural, second person singular and plural, and third person singular and plural forms of every verb you want to use, in Welsh you need only know the various conjugations of bod and the infinitive form of the other verb.

"I am swimming" is "Dw i'n nofio", where "dw" is the form of bod and nofio is to swim.

"He is swimming" is "Mae e'n nofio". "She is swimming" is "Mae hi'n nofio".

"I am eating" is "Dw i'n bwyta". "He is eating" is "Mae e'n bwyta".

And I really love this about Welsh. Forming a whole range of new sentences only involves learning one form of each new verb. It's so wonderfully consistent, and it lets you feel you're making progress almost instantly.