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Everyone hates the Welsh language
at 16:56 21 May 2018

I haven't posted on Planet Swans for years, but I can never let a debate about the Welsh language go, so here I am.

In answer to the original post: everyone from Carmarthen knows that if you want to buy something Welsh like Welsh language Scrabble, you'd do it from Siop Y Pentan in the market, and not Waterstones. My aunty works in Siop y Pentan, and they have sold lots of the Welsh language Scrabble. It was an annoying clickbait article that drove traffic to the site, and did its job.

On a personal level, the attitude to Welsh on this forum saddens me a bit. I am from Carmarthen, and every single member of my family, on both my mum and dad's side speak first language Welsh. At my school in Carmarthen this was the norm. Therefore every wedding, funeral, christening and birthday party in my family is conducted in Welsh. This isn't a political statement, or done to make a point, it's just the way it is, because that's the language we all think in. My grandmother who died a couple of years ago was from Tumble in the Gwendraeth Valley, and spoke almost no English as she'd never had to. There is an assumption from some people that the Welsh language is a hobby, or a secret handshake, or an intellectual exercise like doing crytic crosswords in the paper. It isn’t, it’s the language I would speak to my parents and friends in.

In reference to my grandmother being essentially a monoglot Welsh speaker, I'm not saying that I want people to only speak Welsh, I'm using her as an example to show that you can live a fulfilling life through Welsh, as it's a language like any other. But bilingualism is the global norm, as around 65% of the world’s population speaks two languages or more. Romelu Lukaku speaks six. My sister has married a Muslim from Bristol, and they live in Wales. He is learning Welsh, and their kid is attending a Welsh school. That is the future.

I accept that it’s unlikely you’ll hear much Welsh spoken in the city of Swansea itself, but you only have to go a few miles west to hear a lot of it. And in terms of the cost of road signs, etc — there are 560,000 Welsh speakers and we pay taxes too. Around a third of the world’s languages are spoken by fewer than a thousand people, so in global terms, Welsh is a big player (it’s in the top 15% of languages spoken worldwide). I am trying to learn French and it’s difficult, so I have the utmost respect for anyone who gives learning Welsh a go. Having said that, I have never met a multilingual person who regrets learning a language, in the same way I have never met a musician who regretted learning an instrument. There are some people on here who won’t be convinced of the language’s value, but I wanted to try and explode a few myths.

PS. I would personally like to give Graham Potter the job.

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