to think that most welsh people should speak some welsh

[mumof2children]

i am no way fluent in welsh by know very basic welsh.

but sould more welsh people speak some welsh

But hairy, everyone in the world should speak English. Simples! Diversity is unnecessary. Goodness me.

No I am blaming it on the billions of pounds spent double siding all government leaflets and books all health and pregnancy information for a smaller minority that speak solely Welsh than people who speak solely portugese, find a figure on the amount of people who speak solely Welsh, you cant because the number is too small to count.

But we have to pay billions of pounds double siding everything and paying for translators when there are more people in Wales who speak solely Portugeise but there is no double siding for them.

"BILLIONS of pounds"??????? Perhaps you have a few suggestions for cheaper printing companies for the government, who apparently are being fleeced!

Not to mention the enviromental aspect look at that pregnancy book you were given consider how many pregnant women recieve one a year and look how much extra paper was needed.

Ah so it's an environmental, tree saving argument now is it? Well you'll be relieved to know that all publications last year were made on FSC certified paper.

Actually, the amount wasted in double printing everything is circa £13-14m a year. I know this because I work in the printing industry, and I happend to know exactly how much they spend on this, and I know how much they could save if they didn't do it.

That includes only the actual assembley, and not any local authorities or the many subsisdiary government funded authorisations, but I'd guess you could add about 50% onto that for all the others. So we are talking about £18-£20 million pounds of taxpayers money spent on double printing everything for the tiny amount of people who can't speak English.

My paternal Grandfather's family were native Welsh speakers, but my Dad grew up without the language, thanks to English discrimination. (His parents knew it would 'hold him back' and his mother was from England.) Granddad was educated in the days when you were punished at school for daring to speak Welsh.

My father learned Welsh at university and picked up more from friends and relatives in Welsh-speaking areas, so he's able to have a conversation in Welsh. We spent all our holidays in Wales with family as kids so I picked up a few phrases but not anywhere near enough to have a conversation. The first word I ever read, however, was cattle grid in Welsh (from a road sign).

What really gives me a lump in my throat is that the generation who called me 'edambach' as a matter of course have all died out. No-one calls me that any more and I miss it. Ds gets called 'dsbach' occasionally as he has a Welsh name (his other Granddad was S Welsh but didn't have the language and lived in England so dh never learnt any).

(Mind you, edammawr would be more appropriate these days, sadly!)

But it's not for those who "can't" speak English. There are hardly any of those left. It's for those whose first language is Welsh, for whom English is a second language, who would prefer to conduct their affairs in their own tongue.

"edammawr"

For the record, the Government prints everything on recycled material, not just FSC (which means that the paper is certifiably harvested from sustainable sources - where 3 trees are normally planted for every one that is cut down). Although they are allowed to print on FSC Virgin pulp material, they order everything on recycled material.

However, as we were actually on the subject of money. recycled paper is generally 30% more expensive. But that's a totally different arguement that we weren't really going into here, were we?

Presumably double printing = more work for printers and stationary suppliers so has some economic worth as well as cultural significance.

Recycled, that's even better than FSC. Because it was the environment that BigOfNoorks was so concerned about after all.

I see millions spent on double siding because some (13% fluent) prefer to read in Welsh while hospitals are closing due to lack of funds.

Soo glad my hospital is closing so you can read in your prefered language just like those who speak fluent Welsh watch tv in their prefered language. Oh wait they don't S4C had zero viewers many months as shown in my link up the thread.

Actually no I was more concerned about the money, it is just that your reading in your prefered language effects numerous things.

The factory still has to run twice as long to make double sided than single sided which use up natural resources.

What did you choose to get cross about during the boom years, Noorks? When there were hospitals and schools opening?

'Presumably double printing = more work for printers and stationary suppliers so has some economic worth as well as cultural significance'

Good point perhaps the Government should double their overheads that is paid into buisness

Then it wasn't such a big issue then everyone else is making cut backs, why not the Welsh language instead of hospitals and schools exactly?

edam, when you say that your dad never learnt welsh due to English discrimination,do you just mean that English was perceived by your dads family to be the most 'useful' language or do you mean that somehow England is to blame.

Forgive me if I have misunderstood, but your dad is half English, therefore it makes as much sense for him to speak either(or both) languages. If he didn't learn Welsh then that is because no one in his family deemed it important enough to teach him.

I don't think that non Welsh speakers are less 'Welsh', but I would be ashamed to not be able to speak it if I was Welsh. Even if Welsh had been the main language of the UK, I would still have been taught English by my family and would, in turn, have taught it to my DCs.

Given that Welsh is actively promoted in Wales, I think there are limits to how long England can be blamed for peoples failure to learn it. The fact is, many people just don't want to!

Don't know. I don't work in government. Write to your your AM. Ask for a breakdown of costs. Appeal to the Welsh Office. Lobby Parliament for a reversal of the Welsh Language Act. While you're at it, perhaps you could ask why billions of pounds are being spent on servicing debt. That too could be spent on old people and hospitals.

'They dont answer any good questions like why should S4C waste loads of money when hospitals are closing (even one of the mners who agrees with reviving the language said her maternity department was closed) and many programs have zero viewers.

blimey I hate being misquoted!

I said i woudln;t comment on S4C as we cannot get it where we are so I have never paid any attention to it or anything about it.

Apologies for being so unwilling to give an opinion on things I know nothing of

Do you know I know hundreds of people who know hundreds of people who agree I may just rally them.

Thanks for the idea .

No one else has bothered too answer either that wasn't directed at you. You were honest and answered you have never had any use out of it.

When I'm in Wales, I don't watch S4C because the programmes are awful! Not because they're in Welsh. But then it's no worse than other rubbish which masquerade as TV channels. I thought S4C was more closely aligned to C4 than the BBC. Certainly there are loads of adverts.

I think the point is not we print material in another language - we already do that for a lot of material for the very good reason of inclusion and that is a good thing.

I think the question should be, why are spending £Xmillion printing material in a language when the target audience of that material - in all but the tiniest of cases - already speaks the original language of that material - i.e. English?

For example, why spend all that cash on Welsh road signs when 99.99% of drivers can already read those in English?

We don't do it for any other dead / dying languages (like Pictish for example) so why Welsh?