Certainly better than nothing, but not necessarily better than giving the job to someone who can speak Welsh!
In somewhere like Gwynedd, there are many people who will keep an eye on the situation, through necessity and otherwise. Outside that, even in Welsh heartlands like Carmarthenshire, the political and social situation means they won’t, unfortunately.
Through many hours job-hunting over the years I have seen many many jobs with a requirement to be a Chinese speaker. Never ONCE being willing to learn was enough.
Why should a Welsh speaking job be any different?
Although, just because something has always been done a certain way, does not mean it shouldn’t be attempted to change.
If English can get you through at least the minimum, the actual learning to be taken care of by the employee in their own time, and say an hour a week with a Welsh speaker to help/guide/make sure there is a continuing curve of improvement.
A contractor could do that. Ssi-make sure you’re learning like you’re meant to boyo!
New expansion opportunity there @aran
hahaha
Really pleased to hear that, Jenny! I was talking last night with a friend whose elderly, confused, Cymru Cymraeg mother is in hospital (don’t know which one) with an infection, and none of the staff on her ward know Welsh 
I admit to surprise, Owain, as I think you are in Abertawe and I don’t remember seeing much sign of Cymraeg when I came in from Gower!! I guess I wasn’t looking, to be fair. I thought yr hen iaith started somewhere around Loughor or Llwynhemdy![quote=“aran, post:21, topic:6274”]
I think it’s gone well so far
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Oh diolch! I realised fairly rapidly that I’d started a hare, with which I was failing to keep up. but I was sparked into it by your book so… 
[quote=“pete, post:20, topic:6274”]
house burning and painting post boxes green
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which I suspect did less good than Gwynfor’s hunger strike and a lot of peaceful protests and marches!! Not that those did any good at all for Capel Celyn!!
The really awful thing, I think, is that I could post this thread all these years later and provoke deep discussion rather than a simple “Yes!”
Your next post is very kind, but my generation failed, didn’t we? OK S4C, but back to only one channel and that threatened by lack of funding! I agree it does marvels with what at has, I agree its programs are great, but BBC2 came in about 1969/70? Now there must be hundreds of channels on Sky… only 1 in Cymraeg! And I can ask that question because the real answer isn’t “Yes of course!”
It makes me want to cry and write 20line poem!
To @Toffidil (I really must ask about that name some time, as I get visions of my little poodle when I read it!) - but seriously, my parents’ generation came back determined not to repeat the mistakes after WW1, when ordinary people ended up worse off - hunger marches, the General Strike etc resulting! Socialism, the Labour Party clearly had the answers. With those came the whole notion of “Workers of the World Unite”. Speaking different languages divided. And, my grandparents’ generation was Welsh-notted into Saesneg by powers-that-be who wanted an English speaking work force! I don’t blame them now, although I did in the 60s and 70s, but back then, I was more interested in political independence than doing much for the language other than TV!!
Must go now - only about 25 more messages in this thread to read!! Oh, what have I started??? 
Certainly I found far more Welsh here after learning Welsh and speaking to people! 
But that’s the point I was making - that I could, if I so chose, do that (as described above) in an area often thought of as anglicised in language.
Skills gap is the only real reason at the moment. We don’t have enough Welsh speakers to fill every skilled position.
If you walk around Swansea and read the insciptions on the chapels and the street names from Llansamlet or Pasmarl to Waunarlwydd or Llangyfelach. Chapels built in the early 1900s, oozing images of Welsh centric communities. Swansea certainly has always had English only areas, where the rich may have lived, but Swansea has a Welsh speaking history and a very very rich one. Calon lan yn llawn daioni.
Indeed it does!
[quote=“hectorgrey, post:32, topic:6274, full:true”]So when I say there isn’t enough good Welsh media, I’m not commenting on a lack of quality but the lack of quantity - and this is a major problem for the language. It, combined with the fact that many Welsh speakers are uncomfortable beginning their conversations in Welsh unless they know the other person speaks that language, means that Welsh doesn’t look like a part of public life. It’s easy to forget that there are half a million people who speak Welsh in Wales when you almost never encounter it; it’s easy at that point to think that the language is dead.
[/quote]
Since I’ve started to learn Welsh proper, I have watched S4C almost everyday and been impressed by the high quality of the programmes - the recent Cantata Memoria and any recent Huw Edwards documentary have been particularly enjoyable. I think the biggest hurdle we have in Wales is achieving a decent non-tabloid-like written media.
I agree with your last point. I think maybe sometimes Welsh speakers are just too polite - I would say please speak/type Welsh as much as possible and not worry about offending monoglots! I know a few first language speakers and you’d hardly know they were. I know it is their choice to speak/type in English and I would never dictate that anybody should do anything but as @hectorgrey says, from my experience growing up in the anglicised south, one can certainly believe the language is dead because you never hear it spoken in the street/on the tv/on the radio (other than dedicated Welsh language channels). I would love to have heard Welsh being spoken growing up (hopefully children now increasingly will do :-)).
Add in the fact that every article emanating from the [England-dominated] media seems to shout that Welsh is useless, dying etc, it just serves to validate this idea. The more that people in anglicised areas hear Welsh spoken ‘in the street’/hear a bit here and there on tv/radio, the more they will realise it is very far from dead. For example, Welsh language music has been a revelation to me since I have been learning and cannot believe how vibrant the scene is. The other day, I listened to Kizzy Crawford sing on BBC Radio Wales… she started with her song ‘The Starling’ and I was gutted when she started singing the English version because the Welsh version is really beautiful. To my delight, she then sang some verses of the song in Welsh and followed up with another bilingual song. This is what we need to hear!
I didn’t aim to post anything here at all as I’m not that one who could really say/measure anything but from all read here I can (as outside observer) see clearly that there’s not enough will (generally speaking of course) at any side - neither at “Only English supporting” nor by the Welsh people. If one has the “Why bother to learn Welsh, it’s dead language anyway” attitude, that one has told me all.
On the anger part … I’m not sure if it would work and yes, it can leave negative “imagination” about Welsh people, however, sometimes you just have to raize your voice and “say” clearly and with determination what you need and want. Being too quiet also isn’t too good sometimes. Asking politely why you didn’t appologize for demanding to sepak English instead of Welsh … It might do some good maybe but as I see things it could raise more arogance more likely then realizing people did something wrong. People with demanding attitude most times need much more then polite asking questions to realize (if ever they do) that they’re the ones doing wrong and harm and not oposite way. I have such situation at my job just right now (which doesn’t involve language but is quite similar) so I know this from the first hand very well. I feel like being cheated on and it makes me angry also it is happening like this already my whole employment time - 23 years (or so).
Well, however I don’t support burning anything down, to make things clear, but, yes, I felt the same sort of anger (although I am not Welsh) as @pete does when I heard of the simple fact that Welsh people have to fight for their language even nowdays and even more made me anger that many Welsh people are not willing to give even a slidest chance to (re)learn their mother tongue in the first place.
Although I (like many others here) want this forum doesn’t sparkle into burst of flames I can completely understand Pete and in sort of ways understand his feelings.
And about Abertawe … I’ve just travelled through but I had the feeling it is Welsh city. Sign on railway station greeted me in both - Welsh and English. One day I have to step down from the train to Llanelli and go for a sightseing … (I’m mentally still driving around Cymru even after so many months passing by) 
Now, my advise … go and speak Cymraeg … And, yes, I believe living (mostly) In Welsh is possible. If you will say it isn’t you did the first step toward not being possible at all.
(over and out here Pob lwc pawb! )
Grav - A far greater person and patriot than I will ever be and ten years my junior!
re - S4C - as far as actors are concerned, haven’t people noticed the number of brilliant actors ‘found’ on S4C and grabbed eagerly by movies and high profile English TV series?
Have I ever mentioned the Returning Officer who announced the Devolution Referendum result in 1997? I was lying in bed praying and knowing how many more votes were needed to get the Assembly (Senedd). Carmarthen - last figures to come in - and - an accent like…well I’m not sure - certainly NOT Welsh, and the figures read out incredibly slowly and carefully by someone who had clearly been told how to pronounce them and had written them down in a way that told him that! Of course, before he finished and switched to English, I knew we’d won and was crying all over my poor bemused little dog in relief! But “must be willing to learn Welsh”…???
An interesting thought that the first words your baby will hear will be / may be Welsh.
(But to be honest, I suspect language will be the last thing on your mind at that moment… )
What little S4C I’ve been able to see was really good. Unfortunately, they go to great lengths to keep it away from furriners, so I only get to watch what I can find on dodgy download sites. And Welsh is scarce even on those.
Apparently that is so. Unfortunate! I don’t know if that is S4C or the jealous BBC deciding that, but it would be good for S4C to be available abroad, of course!
I do wonder about the availability of Y Gwyll on Netflix. The series there is only available in a particularly English version. I do wonder if S4C could have pushed the Welsh one to go up as well, but have absolutely no idea about the implications and behind the scenes stuff there.
(I’ve watched a fair few films and stuff, terrible and otherwise, in languages other than English on Netflix, mind.)
However, good luck sailing those piratical seas, you are quite justified if that is the only way you can get them!
On a lighter note, a colleague in work did an agency night shift in Glangwili hospital Carmarthen last week. She became known during her shift as ‘the nurse who doesn’t speak Welsh’!
Geronimo!! Hope you pointed her towards SSiW and suggested, “The nurse who has learned Welsh ever so quickly” is a better name to have!!
@joel Where are you? S4C is avilable on Sky in UK, on line in a lot of places and a limited amount on line via S4C International. If you manage to see any and want more, try our petition to get the channel decent funding! I’ll send an invite!
Just checking that you are aware of the official international S4C site:
http://www.s4c.cymru/en/international/
It only offers a subset of the full S4C range unfortunately, but it’s better than nothing, and all legal and everything.
And Radio Cymru is (so far as I know) available everywhere:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radiocymru
Pob lwc.
I remember my father being in Glangwili and being pleasantly surprised at the way that even the consultants started speaking in Welsh to him (and this from a first language Welsh speaker from the surrounding area).
The idea sometimes pushed that Welsh is good in such places because it is of use to old patients going senile who don’t have a good grip on English is sometimes a bit of red herring. Basically it’s just good to have places like that using Welsh because that’s the language of the people from the area.
Agreed, @AnthonyCusack. I should mention that my mum wasn’t taking a Welsh-speaking job away from anyone. She was hired to teach French and spoke that language at all times with her students (she’s a big proponent of immersion whenever possible).