Welsh in schools

I have been asked: “Is the Welsh taught in schools Southern or Northern Welsh?”
My suspicion is that there is a common curriculum and core that is taught to qualify at GCSE level - at least in the early years.
Does anyone have direct experience or knowledge… ?
I think the question originated from a keen language learner who is fluent in several languages and who has done the complete Duolingo language in Welsh! (She’s my daughter-in-law and is a native Austrian :wink: )

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Unless you hear back from someone fairly quickly, I can find out for you from teacher friends.
There are loads of parents and some teachers on here.
From what I know already, it will be a slightly formalised version of the local dialect.
Incidentally, you might already know that there are Welsh medium and English medium schools (and now bilingual schools as well). So there’s not just one Welsh exam.

Thanks. The Welsh government have a good spreadsheet showing the distribution and numbers of Welsh and English medium and bilingual schools. It is interesting that there is a spread across the whole country so the ‘policy’ of encouraging the language learning process seems to be working to some extent.
My interest is purely academic as my children are both grown up and only my daughter has a child but lives in England.
Though I come originally from the West Midlands, Wales has always seemed close - my first holiday was in Rhyl! (I was about 5 then! :wink:) It rained… say no more… :rofl: I have now retired to North Wales but not near the coast…
One other thing that interests me is why the schoolchildren in our village (a Welsh speaking area) always talk to one another in English? The adults often converse in Welsh…

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So Welsh-speaking children in a Welsh-speaking area are chatting in English? How curious. In my experience of mixed language groups, there is a natural tendency to default to the language shared to the highest level. That wouldn’t seem to apply here. Perhaps it is connected to content. Perhaps social media connecting them to other youngsters outside the village is also a factor.

Thank you, some interesting observations there. I don’t have any opportunity to speak with the youngsters so I can’t ask them but my observations on the local bus (pre pandemic :wink:) suggest that you might be right about social media and outside influence. I’ll check on the mode of teaching at the local secondary school…:thinking:

When I lived in Llandysul I noticed that the children often spoke to each other in Welsh, but it only took a small thing to switch them into English, e.g. another child came along who attended the English medium school in a nearby town, so his Welsh was limited. Other times they would be looking at an online game or watching a TV show in English and their conversation stayed in English for a while afterwards until something switched them back to Welsh. It’s fairly normal bilingual behaviour - picking the language according to the circumstances.

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