The Irish Language

Welsh General / Questions
#41

Oh yes it is. This pantomime is quite typical in many areas in France. When the English are not around the French love to be obtuse and obstructive with each other, sort of like a cultural courtship dance, before yielding to their ultimate natural response to embrace each other.

So what we Welsh or English sometimes interpret as being obstructive is because we don’t hang around to see the play in the final act.

Add to this that most people whose first language is not English actually want to learn and practice English and you have the pantomime that you describe.

You could try speaking English first. At that point to be true to the cultural courtship process you have an increased probability to be replied to in French.

We live on the Italian/French border and if we want a guaranteed response in French, then we go to an Italian market town on the border and start a conversation with the traders in Italian or English. Hey presto they reply in French until we insist they speak Italian if they want us to buy their wonderful proscuitto and formaggio. It’s all such great fun. :wink:

Justin

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#42

We’re going to France in May and I’m going to suggest that we speak Welsh in public places, not English, in the hope that people won’t reply to us in English when we try to speak French. However, I had a conversation with Aran about this once and he suggested that to the French Welsh sounds like English anyway…

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#43

That I can recognise!!! Did I tell you about the friend who learned Norwegian and then found nobody in Norway would speak it to him because they were insulted that he thought they couldn’t speak English? I always found the French far too patriotic to be like that!!
As far as Cymraeg is concerned, I think we are far too polite for our own good!!! I teach a little bit to people here!! They are quite interested!!

Honestly??? I find that hard to imagine!! Try it and see! Or - it may be that when faced with any unknown tongue, Slovene, Croatian, Mandarin… they try English because they know that!!! :grinning:

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#44

I will try it in May, and then will report back! (You’re probably right about their reverting to English when faced with an unknown language.)

I was chatting to an old uni friend who now lives in The Netherlands with his French wife. He claims not to be a ‘natural linguist’ , but does speak a number of languages (partly because he’s an opera singer and works all over Europe). He claims that the French people he knows are very, very critical when his French isn’t perfect and so he ends up speaking English with them. (I think he does speak French at home, and his daughter is trilingual: English, French, Dutch.)

#45

I’ve mentioned the German waitress who criticised my friend’s German and then sympathised with him when he explained that he had learned it while living in Austria!
Well, I remember a French waiter being very critical of the fluent French spoken by the Quebecois whom I had met on my way to Paris. (Er…we picked each other up, but that’s another story) When the Quebecois explained that he was from Canada, the waiter did not seem to regard this as a legitimate excuse!!!

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#46

Brilliant!!

#47

I remember a receptionist in a posh German hotel, after I had thrown in a couple of English words into an otherwise German sentence, saying something like “Now, are we talking English or German?”, as though it had to be a black and white choice (not like the situation in Cymru where people seem happy to throw English words in ad lib). However, when I explained I was a learner trying to speak German as much as possible, her attitude changed and she was sweetness itself, and very helpful.

I would find that extremely difficult to deal with if it happened to me. But on the other hand, maybe one needs to grow a thick skin and just try to learn from the experience.

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#48

This has worked well for Eirwen and me. We just kept replying dani’n siarad Cymraeg, ydachi’n siarad Cymraeg? - and eventually people will think you are from Azerbajan and revert to French :smiling_imp:

Justin

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#49

I used to visit a family in France, with my older brother when I was in School. They were in Montpellier and I think I helped their kids enormously with their English - I never comprehended the fact that I was there to learn French - they had a nice pool and we went to the beach most days. The only think I ever said in French was Puis-je avoir.

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#50

Dw’i caru’ma!!! :sunny:

#51

I think some assumptions about what is possible need to be reexamined in a country that is, presumably, growing more self-confident and self-governing. Rather than an Irish-style gaeltacht policy, the Basque Autonomous Community aggressively promoted Basque-medium education throughout the entire country, though they never made it mandatory. Now cities like Alava, where there used to be hardly any Basque spoken, have a generation of young people who are fluent because they went to school in Basque.

I saw BBC documentary, “Make me Welsh” that showed young school children from outside Wales going through an intensive language course to prepare them for integration into mainstream Welsh-medium education. I’d like to see all of Wales embrace a similar policy, so that you can’t grow up in Wales without becoming a Welsh speaker.

I think the latest census showed that the percentage of Welsh speakers in Y Fro Cymraeg has started to shrink again, when people hoped things had stabilized and the percentage of Welsh speakers was starting to grow. This may be related to the demographics of the area, a large number of in-migrants, like retirees and university students. But the Basque Autonomous Community has to deal with a large number in-migrants (I believe an even higher percentage that Wales or Y Fro), and long-time resident families with no ethnic Basque background. I believe that the majority of those families are choosing Basque-medium education for their children.

So it might take a generation or two more, but it is possible to foresee the normalisation of Basque in all of the BAC (and maybe parts of Navarre). I don’t know if Welsh-medium education has acquired comparable momentum, although the Welsh have been doing it just as long. Perhaps the benign neglect of Westminster has been more dangerous than the outright hostility of the Franco dictatorship.

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#52

Frederick,

Who knows what would happen in Wales if it had the affluence of the Basque autonomous community - a lot of things could be very different.

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#53

I think that’s a reasonable suggestion (although the assumption that the country is growing more self-confident and self-governing is itself, unfortunately, worth being looked at closely).

There are some things that are not dependent on confidence, though - while I agree about promoting Welsh medium education, for example, it’s fairly clear that English medium schools in Gwynedd restrict their children from taking a full part in the community to which they belong - they can’t, for example, get employment with their local county council if their school hasn’t given them the necessary levels of bilingualism - so there’s a strong argument in favour of all education in Gwynedd being Welsh medium. That argument currently doesn’t exist in Newport.

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#54

There may be something in this. Sometimes movements need something to oppose, an enemy to galvanise the community to support what’s right and capture the hearts of both the mainstream and the rebellious to accelerate change.

justin

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#55

Oh, I wish!! But the danger is that the kids are put off by being made to learn something they see no use for! We don’t want to do the equivalent of an English Not!
In areas with a high proportion of incomers and folk who are native but lost the language in the 1860s, there is sometimes a lot of resentment among the adults to any idea of “forcing the language down the kids’ throats”
p.s. @aran I had a pink message telling me I was talking too much, or words to that effect!! “Let someone else get a say”, but my posting can’t stop anyone else?? Um, are we rationed?

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#56

That’s the forum software, which they’ve tried to build to nudge behaviour based on what they recognise as the best contribution patterns - I get pinged occasionally myself… :sunny:

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#57

I think part of the “answer” lies in economics. Sadly, Wales is not as prosperous as a lot of other parts of the UK, and inevitably young people will seek their fortunes outside Wales, and therefore won’t see Welsh as an important part of their future life.

It would be good (in some ways) if somehow Wales became the most prosperous part of the UK, and then young people might be more likely to stay, and then a wholly (or mostly) Welsh-speaking daily life would make more sense to them. Only in some ways though, because a highly prosperous Wales would also attract more incomers with no particular interest in Welsh. So it would be a question of balance.

Also, it’s not just economics of course. People look outside their own country for many reasons … novelty, excitement, travel, and that would be fine except that for various reasons, English has become the global language, exacerbating the problem that Welsh already had because of English. I don’t know how you get around that problem.

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#58

The enemy that could work in South East Wales in particular might not be the one everyone would go for. A rift was created in the 19th century between the ungovernable workers, who spawned the Merthyr rising and the “bloody” Chartist uprising in Newport, ultimately leading to the advent of the “blue books”. These welsh speaking people lost their language partly through the educational changes, but also were inclined to do so in opposition to the leading Welsh Speaking aristocrats of the day - many of whom, like Lady Llanofer were English and stauch supporters of the crown and the Eisteddfodau in equal measure or the Mayor of Newport who is classed as a saviour of the language yet during the uprising ordered the troops to open fire. These aristocrats were great, but controversial historical figures who stood on the other side during the uprisings. These were people who ensured the survival of the language elsewhere, but played a key role in accelerating it’s decline in South East Wales.

The language was caught in the middle of a social battle, but going forward I think the growth of the Language in South East Wales needs to be based on using those differences in a positive way and doing things differently to other parts of Wales and maybe reinvigorating the language as a form of opposition to the accepted norms of the language now and perhaps of Welsh culture etc.

I have lived in Newport and it is one of the most patriotically Welsh parts of Wales, fanatically rugby orientated and very different to neighbouring Cardiff. Also the people of Gwent would be anyones, best friends, but most feared of adversaries and if the people of Gwent were energised to create their own Welsh language identity, with all the gwentian idiosyncracies then we could have a very healthy and energetic little battle on.

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#59

I am afraid, sometimes, Newport supporters were their own worst enemy! I only went to one game there and found the attitude so virulently anti-Caerdydd that I was so uncomfortable, I never went back! When I went to Stradey Park, I was welcomed! It was lovely!!

#60

I think this is a really interesting topic (and I have learnt a few things here that I was not that aware of before!)

I grew up in Wales, but we did not speak Welsh at home - my dad’s family is all from Ireland and England and my mum’s family Anglo/Welsh. My exposure to the language came entirely from going to a bilingual primary school in Clwyd, where we had some (but not all) lessons in the medium of Welsh and we conversed with the teachers almost exclusively in Welsh.

I was also, obviously, aware of the language through the bilingualism in other official communications such as road and street signs and official documents that my parents had to fill in. This has obviously been reinforced since the advent of the Welsh Government (whatever you think of the beuarocracy, it certainly keeps the language in the public eye)

Despite not coming from a Welsh language home, I really felt that the language was part of my identity and everyday life.

We moved to Newport when I was 11 and from that point on (at that time, in the 1980s) I saw very little sign of the language . There was a Welsh school, where you sent your kids if they spoke Welsh at home, but every other school taught exclusively through the medium of English.
(Thanks @Toffidil for some historical background on this! I agree with him that people in Newport are fiercely proud of being Welsh, but always wondered why there was so little of the language here and I’m sure what he describes is historically part of that)

At the time I felt that this kind of two tier approach to language in education was pointless - great that 1st language speakers could send their kids to a Welsh language medium school (although gives them a fairly limited choice of schools in Casnewydd!), great right up until the point that all the 1st language households have disappeared because the parents and grandparents have passed away and the kids have moved away…

This is what is happening in the Gaeltacht still - the number of households and communities in the west that use Irish daily is still declining (down 90% over The course of a few generations), despite the high status of the language in those areas. Conversely, since the Irish language has become taught in all schools in the republic, appears on every road sign etc, it has seen a resurgence in urban areas even to the point of new schools appearing in those areas that teach through the medium of Irish. Almost the opposite of what is happening in the Gaeltacht. As ever, this is a social as well as a cultural issue though - in the west, irish is still declining amongst the general population as a day to day language, whilst being increasingly embraced by the middle class of Dublin who maybe see it as an affirmation of their identity in a multicultural city. Maybe this will start to go full circle back to the country? Who knows?

I’ve been staying in the south west of Ireland for the last week, but have not heard anyone speaking the Gaelach. I did, however, witness a couple of people on the tram during my brief stay in Dublin last week speaking the language and one texting in in it… Not a very scientific study, I know!

Although I still seldom speak Welsh to anyone in Newport, almost every time I go to Cardiff I speak Welsh to people (usually in the pub after a few pints to loosen the tongue and stop me worrying about if I’m saying things “properly”!) and I always try and seek out conversations in Y Fro (a term I have only just become aware of through this thread, but obviously refers to many of the places in Wales that I love)

I personally think that how you keep the language alive is through use in schools and making it as ubiquitous as possible in day to day situations. This is also I think how the Irish language has survived, even with the decline in exclusive use in the Gaeltacht. You don’t have to “push it down people’s throats” by insisting on only one language or the other - try to introduce it everywhere, in schools, in shops, on the bus, in the pub. There should be nowhere where it’s inappropriate to speak Welsh. But, likewise, if you try to make an education system universally based on teaching exclusively through the medium of Welsh, this will alienate plenty of people.

I think to single out Y Fro as an area where the language has special status, like in the Gaeltacht, risks turning those areas into a “minority” enclave when our aim should be for the Welsh language to be a majority language, with equal status everywhere.

It’s a difficult one for sure, and I look forward to seeing more of other people’s comments !

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