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
Foreign languages suffer from WelshWM linkSIR – I was dismayed by the letter from Mererid Morgan of the WJEC (“Languages are a skill our jobseekers need”, Nov 7). I am astonished that this year only 25% of Welsh GCSE pupils entered a modern foreign language. In 2004 Estyn made a study of GCSE uptake in Welsh schools: the study found that GCSE entry by 15-year-olds had fallen from 45% in 1997 to 34% in 2003. Estyn also found that uptake was lower in Welsh Medium and bilingual schools; 35% in EM schools and 30% in WM schools. In 2007 the Welsh Department of Education made a further study of Modern Foreign Language uptake; by this time only 28% of 15-year-olds entered a modern foreign language at GCSE and only 21 of those passed at A*-C. England at the same time entered 46% with 31% gaining A*-C. In England 40% of pupils took GCSE in a modern foreign language this year but the recent introduction of the “English Baccalaureate” has resulted in an increase in year 10 pupils taking languages. At advanced level Wales lags behind England in the main languages with 32% of English students gaining A*-A and Wales having 23% of students with an A*-A pass. Mererid Morgan is mistaken in thinking that bilingual Wales has an advantage in foreign language teaching, on the contrary, we have replaced foreign language study with compulsory Welsh lessons in all schools.In every survey of parents a majority say that they are against compulsory Welsh lessons and now even Simon Thomas AM for Plaid Cymru is questioning the utility of compulsory Welsh. Leighton Andrews needs to ask whether Wales is well served when we produce a workforce unable to communicate with the world outside Wales. J.Jones, Ynys Mon.
... who has intervened in the Scottish independence debate, claiming that nothing will be gained from breaking up the UK. Herman Van Rompuy, who would chair meetings to discuss if an independent Scotland could join the EU, said the move for separatism was a thing of the past.
Van Rompuy, who will still be president of the council in 2014, when the independence referendum is due to take place, was asked his views on Scottish independence during a recent Q&A session broadcast on YouTube. "Nobody has anything to gain from separatism in the world of today which, whether one likes it or not, is globalised," he said. "We have so many important challenges to take and we will only succeed if we can pool forces, join action, take common directions. The global financial crisis is hitting us hard. Climate change is threatening the planet. How can separatism help? The word of the future is union."
A source close to the president said Van Rompuy would not be campaigning against Scottish independence. "The president would never involve himself in a national dispute. However, Scotland will need to reapply for EU membership and he could chair the meetings where that is discussed," he said. Van Rompuy's term will finish at the end of 2014.
"I can imagine some nations would make that a difficult meeting – Spain, Cyprus and Belgium. His own view is that separatism is as described on that video. He voted, for example, in favour of devolution in Belgium, but not independence for Flanders."
The comments will be a blow to Scotland's first minister, Alex Salmond, and emerge after the UK government reiterated that an independent Scotland would have to apply to the EU to become a new member state.
Salmond has claimed that Scotland would not have to leave the EU and even erroneously claimed to have had EU legal advice on the issue. However, it has since emerged that no such advice had been sought and a former Whitehall mandarin has been asked to conduct an independent inquiry into whether Salmond misled Holyrood and so breached the ministerial code.
The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, entered the fray last week to declare that Salmond's statements on Scotland getting automatic membership of the EU "has no basis in fact".
Clegg said Scottish nationalists "don't want to face what might happen to Scotland's influence on fishing quotas or agricultural policy or the regulation of the banks. They don't want reality to bite. So they've gone into denial, preferring political assertion to legal advice."
Former foreign secretary David Miliband has dismissed SNP claims that an independent Scotland would automatically join the EU as "fantasy island". On a visit to Scotland, Miliband said leaving the UK would leave an independent Scotland "in limbo in Europe".
He claimed there would have to be "detailed and forensic negotiations" between all the current member states before Scotland could be admitted, adding that the addition of a new nation would affect the relative wealth of all other EU countries.
He also said it would have an impact on the voting weight for each country in terms of the relative influence of their MEPs – factors that would have to be reflected by an adjustment of EU rules.
"The final part is that you have to get agreement of all 27 countries, soon to be 28, of all ministers, and then it has to be ratified by each country," said Miliband. "France has said that any enlargement of the EU will require a referendum in France." (Source The Observer 4 Nov 2011.)To the SNP (Scottish Nationalist Party and its by-blow Plaid Cymru), Herman Achille Van Rompuy has given a profound judgement on the separatist agenda (Salmond and chums), Europe doesn't want separatism in its march towards a united Europe ...
