AIBU regarding Welsh?

[Jelly15]

DH and I been married for 18 years. He was brought up to speak Welsh as his first language. I was brought up in the same town to non Welsh speaking parents. DSs are billingual but, despite having lessons several times, I have not been able to get a grasp on Welsh.

The problem I have is when DHs family visit and are not talking directly to me they speak in Welsh. DH and DSs answer them in English and translate for me. I have kept my mouth shut for years and understand it if I am in their houses but this is my home and I am about to tell the rude baskets what I think. AIBU?

CurrySpice it´s nice to read about your experience and your in-laws sound lovely - long term they will help you pick up Dutch, I´m sure. The OP doesn´t appear to have had the benefit of a supportive family...

At the same time you are not in the same situation. For the Dutch and most other non-native speakers of English the English language is an incredibly prestigious language. People "play" at speaking English and can be incredibly keen to improve their language skills. Fluency in English is sought after. Even in this situation though I don´t think your situation will go on indefinitely and you will gradually move over to speaking Dutch. That´s the way it should be and ime this is what normally happens. I totally agree with you re intent. The important thing in a multilingual situation is not that everyone speaks the same language but that nobody is deliberately excluded. That is unacceptable.

blewit I wanted to suggest that opinion on this is coloured by whether you are a monolingual or multilingual and that there is likely a clear correlation. Wellies shot me done immediately - she does not agree - but I wonder if she is in a minority having seen the damage her father´s insistance on Welsh with his son-in-law has been.

I agree with those saying that if all but one in the room can speak 2 languages then it is only polite to converse in the language of the monoglot. Especially when it is their home.

IME some people have no talent for learning languages, just in the same way some people have 'no head for numbers' or insert some other skill.

The OP's sound incredibly rude to me not just excluding her from conversations but making insulting comments about her ancestry and laughing at her when she tried to speak Welsh. If they had manners they would have helped her with her grammar and pronounciation.

I'm mutilingual btw.

Me too.

No not really- just kidding. Still think it's rude though.

Polyglot I doubt I will ever be fluent in Dutch :(

I visit there maybe 3 times a year and DP's English is fantastic (in fact he sometimes struggles to think of a word in Dutch!) If we had shared children, then I would make bloody sure I spoke it well, but we don't. In fact, his kids have lived in Engand since they were 6 and 8 and both admit their English is better than their Dutch. He and I both live in England so no chance to immerse myself. I can understand quite a bit and always pester him to teach me new things

I do try and get by though. My main motive was to be able to say to his dad, in Dutch "I'm sorry, I can't eat that, I don't like herring" :o

The "problem" with a minority language is that its proponents have to be seriously bloody-minded to keep it against the tidal wave of the majority language. Welsh has made an amazing come-back in the last 40 years, largely thanks to utterly bloody-minded people like my friend's parents, who managed to bring up their two sons as Welsh speakers in Mill Hill! He is married to a girl who grew up in Wales speaking only English and they are bringing up a bilingual child. That is one issue.

The other issue is the fact that they are effectively using Welsh as the weapon. They may feel (see my comments in para 1) that you jolly well ought to learn/have learned Welsh, and are bloody minded to the exclusion of any sympathy with you. That makes them sound quite rude and boorish- they are trying to foist their opinions on you. Just makes them difficult by my book. It's not really a language issue.

Evening classes won't do anything if you aren't speaking it that much at home.

Jelly, I'm guessing you're in SW Wales. I sympathise. My DH is English (yes, the "f*ing Saes"). I've had my parents and other relatives ask me seriously how I could have married an Englishman. When DH has been working in Wales (in a large public sector organisation that had plenty of Equality policies) he constantly got a barrage of anti-Saes comments. He was expected to answer the phone using a bilingual greeting though no-one bothered to tell him how to pronounce anything or even what the words meant. God forbid he had actually done so, because if the person on the other end of the line had then wanted to continue the conversation in Welsh he would have been utterly flummoxed.

I've seen a hugely talented and experienced English colleague eventually get fed up and leave as he was sick of the snide comments, the whispered asides in Welsh when the rest of the meeting was in English, the pointed "jokes", believe me it's cumulative and it's nasty and it's real.

It's your house. How often on MN have we seen "your house, your rules". You need to get DH onside for this too. I'd start by explaining to your ILs that these conversations are making you feel excluded and you'd prefer it if they didn't - let's give them the benefit of the doubt to start with. Hopefully that can resolve matters. After that, if they still do it, then you have to decide how important this is to you. I'd also give people ove r 70 a bit more leeway - they are much less likely to be fluent inEnglish and will genuinely struggle but it's important they understand the effect it is having on you.

YANBU
If they can speak better English than you can speak Welsh, it's just bad manners not to use the language that everyone in the room can understand. It's a matter of bad manners, rather than anything else.

well...I have never met a Welsh speaker who can't speak English...

They're being rude, but I would have sorted it out years ago.

Jelly, I agree with Scuttlebutter - give the folks the benefit of the doubt and take a softly, softly approach for them to include you in the first instance. If that doesn't work and there aren't any legitimate reasons to them to justify your exclusion then at least you know where you stand and you can forget about learning Welsh and maybe take up something more interesting like pole dancing instead. (Your husband will probably be more impressed.) I understand your difficulty with languages as well; I was hopeless at school at both French and German and to this day can't say anything beyond Marie Claire, Jean Paul and Claudette and Guten Tag. Also, when I think of the Welsh (and perhaps I should say my father was Welsh and I lived in Wales for a number of years) I am always reminded of the Blackadder script:

Blackadder : Have you ever been to Wales Baldrick?
Baldrick : No, but I've often thought I'd like to.
Blackadder : Well don't, it's a ghastly place. Huge gangs of tough sinewy men roam the valleys terrorising people with their close-harmony singing. You need half a pint of phlegm in your throat just to pronounce the placenames. Never ask for directions in Wales Baldrick, you'll be washing spit out of your hair for a fortnight.

Classic stuff. Maybe if you start gobbing your relatives will realise you're trying to join in the conversation and be more sympathetic :o

I'm a bit confused OP - you got engaged 21 yrs ago so presumably you are a similar'ish age to me and when I lived in Wales learning welsh was compulsory from 7-14. I didn;t even live in a particularly Welsh part of Wales and didn;t move there until I was 7 and have an English mother and I could still maange a decent enough conversation to cope with friedns families talking in Welsh when I was at their house. Not sure how 7 years of learning welsh managed to pass you by so completely!

Anyway - whilst I understand from friends that it is true that trying to speak to a relative you have grown up with in a language that is not the one you speak at home is very odd and difficult. But yes they probably started doing it to be rude because they find it offensive that you don't speak Welsh at all, not apparently one jot (and no it really isn't that difficult!), and now its a habit that you have put up with so its engrained after 21 years of it, they probably now think its normal.

I was extremely pleased that I learnt to speak Welsh as well as I did (conversational but not fluent) - it was helpful when I learnt other langugaes (particularly Russian) and I surprised the fuck out of the girls on the tube once who were discussing fellow travellors in Welsh obviously not realising that London has the largest number of welsh speakers of any town in teh world (apparently).

Haven't read much of the thread as I reckon you have got enough opinions on your actual question by now, but just dropping in to suggest if you want to have another crack at Welsh, try www.saysomethinginwelsh.com. The only words I knew before I even looked at that site were Plaid Cymru, and within a couple of months I could put together sentences it took me years to construct in French/German/Latin. It's got an approach which is so ridiculously simple but totally different to almost all other language courses. And the basic course, which is twenty five lessons, is absolutely free. You just download the half hour lessons to your computer and listen to them however you want.

Genuinely - it is brilliant. Can't regard it highly enough as a way to learn Welsh. I'm just about to embark on the intermediate course which you pay a subscription for and feel it is very much worth it.

Wow, just did ten minutes of that, Glitter - it's great! Might even stick at it.

It is only polite to speak the host's language in her home if she doesnt speak yours. Anything else is just rude.

After 20 years though they probably think you should have made some effort by now, and minority groups get very sniffy about their cultural stuff.

oh dear - surely this means that my children are being unreasonable when they speak welsh to their friends in front of my mother then! I disagree that welsh is really hard to learn - yes its difficult but not impossible. 18 years is a long time to be silent about something that apparently bothers you. Apologies for not reading the whole post - i just think that actually, if you are in Wales, people can speak Welsh, i don't expect English people to suddenly speak Welsh when i'm in a room :)

Outside yes,jonanddanby, BUT not in my own home!

Scuttlebutter, your dh's and his colleague's expereiences sound all too familiar. My husband has gone through years of this living in Wales, and I myself have had all the usual Welsh jokes/stereotypes while I lived in England. Both sides do it and it's about time everyone got over themselves, IMO. I've lived in Bosnia and seen the devastating pain and destruction that comes from conflict between people who live in the same country just with different national identities iykwim, but even there you don't see the nasty snideness that you see here day to day. Over there, they fight every few decades when they are forced in to it by greedy leaders but they can still be mostly polite the rest of the time.

polyglot you're right, the linguistic exclusion HAS been damaging, and that is what the OP's issue and this thread is all about.

I disagree with posters who feel the OP should have addressed the issue early on. It isn't always easy in the early years of a relationship to stand up to family members. Lots of emotions involved.

but if they're not talking to you then whats the problem? Welsh people don't deliberately use the language to exclude English people - its the way of thinking, living etc, if its easier to converse to another welsh speaker in welsh in wales then how can that be a problem? if they speak to an english speaker in english then they're not excluding anybody :)

OP I find it very hard to believe that you have'nt picked up a word of Welsh given that your DC's and your husband speak the language. (I would be ashamed of that fact no matter what language it was). DH and I have been together for 18 years , when we visit my family (1st language Welsh) we chop and change between Welsh and English a lot , my parents are elderly and my Dad particularly struggles to speak English (he has dementia). DH although a million miles from fluent can understand the gist of virtually every converstion and when he can't zones out and is grateful (at least he as an excuse to ignore his MIL ). When I was growing up we NEVER spoke english at home or with friends so tbh much as I try to speak english when my DH is with me at my parents I often start sentences in english only to finish them in welsh. DC's are all in welsh medium education and DH is incredibly proud of them. Even the inlaws who thought we were mad educating them in that "ridiculous language" have seen their school concerts and been impressed. I'm not being rude it's just who/what I am

Of course they are excluding if they have one person who doesn't speak Welsh and they could all speak English. I have experienced it-it is quite deliberate and rude and they mean to do it. It is extremely rude to do it in the person's own home.

YANBU, I think it is rude, especially as they know you don't understand.

Don't they want a good relationship with you?

I am not really surprised that the OP doesn't speak much Welsh. English speakers manage to live years and years in foreign countries without managing to pick up any of the local language - that is quite an achievement.

Jelly15 - it's taken you more then 20 years to find out that you don't learn a foreign language by going to a few evening classes. I suggest you take a GCSE in Welsh, then an A-level, to have exams to work towards to encourage you to learn it, and preferably a course with study weeks away, with total immersion in welsh.

It is possible that your in-laws are deliberately excluding you but I personally think they are probably not doing it deliberately, especially after all these years. They are insensitive to make fun of your accent when you attempt to speak welsh but you really have to ignore this totally, and persevere. I have had many humiliating moments learning flemish over the years but I have refused to let it stop me speaking the language.

Please don't give up on learning the language that your dh, his family, and your own children speak.