The price of identity
SIR – Your report on the demise of the Welsh Language in the 2011 Census is alarming (“Language is in crisis, says Cymdeithas, as proportion of Welsh speakers falls to 19%”, Dec 12).
The writer pens with a certain passion, a passion that holds dear his need to protect the Welsh language, he also assigns language to culture, an integral part indeed, and finally tells the readers of Wales Online that the culture that is Wales is dependent on the Welsh language for its very survival.I was born and brought up in a Welsh speaking mining valley, couldn’t understand or speak a word of English before the London evacuees of 1940s arrived; and pretty soon we had converted them to Welsh Speakers.
Following the discovery of anthracite coal, migrants had arrived not only from many Welsh counties but from England, too, but the language sustained its position. Primary school was Welsh speaking – but as the “scholarship” paper was mostly English we had to learn it, and then all lessons (apart from Welsh!) were in English, but the language outside was Welsh.
Our forefathers built grammar schools to ensure their sons didn’t follow them down the pits, but when “children” qualified for universities, most couldn’t find professional posts in the country and had to migrate to the open arms of England. Most never to return to Wales, their parents’ homes sold – very often to migrating English.
The age of the chapels’ domination is also history; before television, the car, and Sunday opening, it was colleges, religion, entertainment, where poorly educated older people gained knowledge and language from the pulpit, Sunday School, choir singing and all in the one language Welsh.
Apart from The Western Mail, Wales on Sunday, local papers and Y Cymro, the English media really ignores Wales. The constant drip-dripping of their editions is Anglo influential as is television: Coronation Street, Emmerdale, drown out Pobol y Cwm. Similarly the English radio programmes Radio Cymru, their prolific influences controlling to a large degree an Anglicisation of news and events leaving Wales to a great measure in a poverty of Welsh/Celtic aspiration retaining it in talk and thinking and behaviour and we’re too idle to realise how our thinking to a large extent is accustomed to an Anglian perspective.
Until we awake to change and revival, this power will continue to influence our non Welsh thinking.
Destroy one’s culture and language and you destroy a nation’s pride. Too often, sadly, one doesn’t realise the value of something until it’s lost. One’s language is part of one’s culture. Lose that and how do you know who you are! You don’t destroy a nation’s pride!
The price of identity is eternal vigilance. The same must apply to one’s literature. To honour this one must understand this: Silences are the allies of enemies, detrimental to democracy.
The past can be a heavy burden to be sure, but it is heaviest of all when hindsight told you what had to be done and you did nothing.
ADRIEN JONES of Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire
... and this diktat is :
... become fluent in the Welsh language, in the face of linguistic evolution that is marginalising the language year on year.
... I prefer a free society, it doesn't have to be pretty, I prefer it to be multicultural mess reflecting the reality of society in the 21st century.It doesn't matter to the "old elites" of Wales that an overwhelming majority live their lives without the Welsh language.
It doesn't matter to the "old elites" of Wales that an overwhelming majority are indifferent to the Welsh language.
It doesn't matter to the "old elites" of Wales that an overwhelming majority prefer Hollywood to the Welsh language television.
It doesn't matter to the "old elites" of Wales that an overwhelming majority do business without the Welsh language on the international stage.
to experience the hideous vision of Wales read the Welsh language group's 'manifesto' call after census
