Jeremy Miles, the minister for education and Welsh language, said: “For the Welsh language to thrive, we need sustainable communities and good job opportunities in the areas where it is widely spoken.
“This isn’t about imposing solutions, so everything we do will be in line with local communities’ aspirations.”
It’s imposing those aspirations of the local community upon those within it that may not share them. The tyranny of majoritarian democracy rather than the liberal freedoms of civil liberty.
Right, but doesn’t economics impose aspirations of rationality and growth on me that I may not share?
What about if the Welsh don’t want to learn Welsh, because it adds little value to their lives?
Sometimes things cannot be sustained no matter how much *other people* care.
That’d be me Chester.
Indeed Be Real. Reality does impose things on people that they may not share. Booze or drugs might solve the problem for a while.
So private property relies on might makes right, because Locke’s proviso has been violated and printing money faster than prices rise is capriciously out of favor?
Why not legalize drugs and suicide to make it easy for us to noviolently not cooperate with capitalism?
Is it because you fear so many would opt for suicide, that no one could maintain that capitalism benefits everyone (or even most)?
Why not legalize drugs and suicide to make it easy for us to noviolently not cooperate with capitalism?
Suicide may not be legal but there is little to stop you if you fancy topping yourself…?
Also, I’m led to believe that drugs, if not legal everywhere, are very easy to obtain…
Kids in Wales learn Welsh. You need to speak Welsh for a public sector job, in Wales. You need English for everything else except watching S4C. Welsh keeps you in prison, the ability to speak and write English is still vital in the modern world, think of it as a tool which opens access to everywhere that isn’t Wales.
@rhoda klapp
Exactly. I was about to write something like that, but you did it first and better.
Are there people whose only language is Welsh?
Suicide is not (now) illegal in Britain.
I have a few friends whose first language is Welsh, they all speak excellent English but use Welsh at home. Their complaint is that in attempting to preserve the language the fanatics have been allowed to set the agenda. As a result, one of their sons had to do his Physics “A” Level in Welsh – no mean feat as it would appear that the language stopped evolving a few-hundred years ago. He passed, but it made his transition to studying the subject at Cambridge more-than-usually difficult.
IMHO it’s great to see Welsh being preserved and encouraged, my niece is a fluent Welsh-speaker, but sometimes a bit of common-sense wouldn’t go amiss.
TMB,
“Are there people whose only language is Welsh?”
No. The last of those died about 40 years ago. There was a time when people rarely left their village, when knowing only Welsh was fine, but that’s unrealistic.
It is ridiculous to try and keep a tiny minority language alive in an era of global communication. If your job relies on talking to English people, or reading English, you have to learn English and at a certain point, your tiny language is just a waste of time. And it then becomes a vicious cycle that as people find it useless, they stop learning it, which keeps making it worse. No amount of government dicking around is going to stop that. The gravity is too powerful.
I was watching a Wales footy game on S4C some time ago, when I still had a licence. I was surprised to see John Hartson ( ex West Ham and Wimbledon forward ) as a pundit speaking Welsh. That explained a lot, because he couldn’t string a sentence together in English.
Must admit I agree with you BoM4.
And BJ. There’s no point in causing people quite unnecessary problems by insisting they study in a language that’s only going to cause them grief.
Thanks, BoM4, that’s what I suspected and if that’s the case the Welsh language has no value as a means of communication and is simply a quaint by-product of a disappearing or vanished culture. I hope no tax-payer funding will be hurt promoting this nonsense but as there is a minister for Welsh language the chances of this being the case are poor.
Travelling in Wales one sees many signs in English or in both English and Welsh. The difference is that when someone (say a business owner) has to pay for it himself, it’s only in English. When the taxpayer pays for it, it’s in Welsh as well.
From an 1847 government review “The Welsh language is a vast drawback to Wales, and a manifold barrier to the moral progress and commercial prosperity of the people. It is not easy to over-estimate its evil effects.”
It’s interesting with the rabid woke to sometimes mention ‘colonial’ actions, get a reaction about evil racists etc and then tell them you are talking about other parts of the U.K.
People learn languages that are important for them where they are living. I used to be fluent in Farsi when I lived in Iran. Now, having lived in the UK for many many decades I have forgotten most of it since I never had a need to speak it. I can still understand it, but not able to speak at a conversational level anymore. Welsh speakers will be in the same boat. If English is used all around them and the opportunities to speak it limited, then they will get rusty in using it.