Posted on 06/20/2017 12:53:24 PM PDT by Cronos
"We’ve been told we are anti-Welsh bigots and even fascists,” says Alice Morgan in her soft Welsh accent. The comments she is talking about began when she and other parents raised objections to a plan to turn their primary school in the village of Llangennech into one that teaches only in Welsh. They are worried that some children used to being taught in English won’t cope.
Feelings are running high. On one side are those who want to increase the number of Welsh speakers in the country. On the other are campaigners who say the evidence shows this method is futile and that children’s education is being sacrificed for politics.
...The decision, voted through in January by Carmarthenshire council, will mean Llangennech school will join 479 others – just under a third (31.9%) of all schools in Wales – that teach exclusively in Welsh.
...Despite efforts to bolster the Welsh language over the past two decades, its use is in decline. The 2011 census found that the number of Welsh speakers had fallen from 21% of the population to 19% over the previous 10 years. In Carmarthenshire, the drop was steeper – from 50% to 44%. The Welsh government is trying to double the number of Welsh speakers to a million by 2050. In Carmarthenshire, led by Plaid Cymru, it is the council’s intention “to move every primary and secondary school along the language continuum” – meaning that schools will teach only in Welsh.
This is the already the situation in Gwynedd, a county where around 65% of people have Welsh as their mother tongue: here the only education on offer is in Welsh. But in Carmarthenshire, just 44% of the population speaks Welsh as a first language.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Tribalism.
I beg to disagree. Wales is technically a separate nation with a separate language
And this will trap those kids. English is the lingua franca of the world.
Wales has enough economic problems without the schools producing kids who cannot function in English.
Beautiful country, Welsh ESB will always be a favorite, but way too far to the left.
Around the world people are allowed to have their own national languages too. In Wales that language is Welsh.
Welsh is a very bad form of Ebonics. And for the same reasons.
Not very good at transmitting any form of abstract thought.
Language is the key to national identity. If they want to remain Welsh, they need to encourage the language. That, and discourage the entry of millions of refugee jihadis.
Of course. Teach them Welsh. But also teach English.
I don’t think Welsh nationalists are advocating for the exclusion of the English language in Wales. They are advocating for Welsh to remain the native tongue of the Welsh people.
Exactly!
Students taught in Welsh are perfectly capable of functioning in English. In fact, their fluency at the junior high level far exceeds that of 1st year U.S. college freshmen.
FLUELLEN
Your grandfather of famous memory, an’t please your
majesty, and your great-uncle Edward the Plack
Prince of Wales, as I have read in the chronicles,
fought a most prave pattle here in France.
KING HENRY V
They did, Fluellen.
FLUELLEN
Your majesty says very true: if your majesties is
remembered of it, the Welshmen did good service in a
garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their
Monmouth caps; which, your majesty know, to this
hour is an honourable badge of the service; and I do
believe your majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek
upon Saint Tavy’s day.
KING HENRY V
I wear it for a memorable honour;
For I am Welsh, you know, good countryman.
FLUELLEN
All the water in Wye cannot wash your majesty’s
Welsh plood out of your pody, I can tell you that:
God pless it and preserve it, as long as it pleases
his grace, and his majesty too!
KING HENRY V
Thanks, good my countryman.
FLUELLEN
By Jeshu, I am your majesty’s countryman, I care not
who know it; I will confess it to all the ‘orld: I
need not to be ashamed of your majesty, praised be
God, so long as your majesty is an honest man.
KING HENRY V
God keep me so! Our heralds go with him:
Bring me just notice of the numbers dead
On both our parts. Call yonder fellow hither
Since when did the mentality get so toxic in Europe that preserving one’s customs, culture, and language is now “bigoted”.
I’m half-Basque. The local soccer teams have been reduced and threatened to sign half-breeds and aliens in Basque country over native sons.
Asians are lauded for preserving their cultures, but Euro’s...not so much.
Same can easily be said for English, which is about the worst language in Europe for expressions and feelings.
Unfortunately the best languages for those two traits, Classical Latin and Koine Greek are no longer used.
That’s not what this article said.
“...The decision, voted through in January by Carmarthenshire council, will mean Llangennech school will join 479 others – just under a third (31.9%) of all schools in Wales – that teach exclusively in Welsh.”
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