George Orwell, gwleidyddiaeth a’r iaith Gymraeg

Mae’n ddiddorol i weld cofrestr o eiriau i’w hosgoi ar y blog BBC, Cylchgrawn: strwythur, strategaethau, opsiynau, cynaladwyedd, datganiad cenhadaeth ayyb.

Dw i wedi blogio fan hyn o’r blaen am Politics and the English Language gan George Orwell.

Crynodeb: mae iaith yn gallu cuddio ystyr felly mae defnydd o iaith yn rhywbeth gwleidyddol.

Darn:

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a “party line.” Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself.

Ond darllena’r traethawd llawn. Mae’r peth “shoulder to shoulder” dal yn bodoli!

Yn y cyd-destun Cymraeg, ro’n i’n hoffi “arferion da” (yn hytrach na “best practice”). Ond efallai dw i ddim yn gallu barnu achos Cymraeg yw fy ail iaith – dw i’n cyfieithu e yn fy mhen i’r ymadrodd plaen “good habits”. Mae defnydd heb ddidwylledd a heb fwriadau anrhydeddus yn gallu lladd unrhyw ymadrodd – ymadroddion da hefyd. Chwarae teg i’r person gwreiddiol sydd wedi casglu’r geiriau.