I attended the Wales rally across Northern Wales…and I was dismayed that basically everything apart from a token “Cymru” was in English. It felt either very disrespectful…or completely naive.
The reality is most Welsh speakers will never seem to notice or care…and yet a learner like me does…is it a question of awareness and mindset?
Anywhere else in Europe would complain (well just those who speak dominating non-minority languages!
Ive asked them on their facebook page why this was so
Any thoughts? Is it overly pedantic?
Note to everyone: please keep discussion about this calm, collected and polite.
We’re not a campaigning forum - but we also don’t want to prevent discussion of anything to do with the language - we need, though, to make 100% sure that discussion of language politics in here is particularly calm and polite, and does not put any of our learners off from getting involved in the community.
Just as a blanket suspicion:
Rally = sports event
sports event = business
business = profit
profit = maximising advertising revenue
maximising advertising revenue = using most wide reaching language possible.
Unfortunate by-product of our global capitalist world.
Just a note: I was chatting with my cousin on Saturday. He’d spent all day at work and was about to head back for the evening, because the council had asked his company last minute for a load of bi-lingual signage to be placed around Llandudno specifically for Rally Wales GB on Sunday. So, there was definitely some Welsh there - he has the bags under his eyes to prove it.
True, but poor marketing. I recently saw some research that said most people were positively affected by seeing Welsh used (whether or not they spoke the language) than were ‘turned off’ by it. (Most people didn’t care or didn’t notice.) So using Welsh in Wales can only increase your positive reception.
This could go two ways, of course. It could mean that we should expect the Rally fully to represent a bilingual Wales, or it could mean that we’d have to pay extra for that and maybe we can’t afford it. There’s no doubt that it provides an economic boost to North and Mid Wales and it’s not something we can really afford to lose to Northumbria or Scotland. On the other hand, what is the point of an economic boost that alienates a fundamental cultural and geographical aspect of the locality?
Can anyone tell me if this is the rally or rallies extensively covered by S4C? I haven’t watched the programs, because I’m not really into watching rallies - use to navigate in car rallies years and years ago - that was fun - but watching…no. However, if S4C covers them, I’d expect a lot of Cymraeg because a lot of generated interest among Cymru Cymraeg!
