Aibu to feel sad that welsh is not compulsory in schools in Wales .

[Dowser]

Says it all really.

It's part of the heritage and it's a worry it will die out.

Don't understand it myself.

Annielouise as I said earlier in use Welsh every single day in work. In fact I would say I exclusively use Welsh in work. I make English translations of thingso like contracts and terms of conditions etc. But all phonecall, emails, reports, meetings all in Welsh.
I work for a local authority and this is true of pretty much every job there.

yes, mama, there are obviously going to be jobs like that - as I said in my last post. Especially in an area that is more Welsh speaking than Cardiff.

I know my point was that it wasn't some jobs, it's every single job in the authority. Which is by far the biggest employer in the county.

I thought it was compulsory too, that why forces families posted to Wales can send their children to private schools running the English curriculum (with no Welsh language classes) on the taxpayer.

Leonardo. Yes. i should have inserted "some of" at a key point of course...

Then wherever you are mama Welsh doesn't need to be compulsory, most probably speak it naturally anyway or would decide to take it if they wanted to continue to live in the area as adults and work there - they'd be daft not to. Where I am it's really not needed and I very rarely hear it out and about.

Judging schools only on exam results is part of what's fucked education in the UK.

Or at least work for local government. Not everyone wants to though. Some won't have a choice I suppose. But if jobs are few and far between people will move for them.

What prompted my question and the incorrect information that i used is that I'm English, born and bred in England and will probably die here too.

I come to Wales regularly. I just love the place and the people. I'm envious ( not jealous ) of your strong identity. I think it's wonderful. You have such a gift there. Something i feel we English seriously lack. In fact I that my country has the least identity of all four of us and possibly of all Europe.

As we travel around Wales with my relative I ask her how to pronounce the welsh names and frustratingly she can't if she hasn't heard them before or just takes a guess as she didnt have to take welsh, which made me presume it wasnt compulsory now.

Whereas pedantic old me likes to know all the rules, how to pronounce. Double ll, double dd, double ff and so on.

I'd love To be welsh. I'd take great pride in that and id fight tooth and nail for my language.

I don't know if it differs between authorities, but here in Neath it is not compulsory as a full GCSE, though of course that option is there. They do have to continue with the language as a short course however. Dd1 is thankful that she doesn't have to use an option on a subject she dislikes, dd2 loves it and will do the full course.

I'm Welsh and I think the Welsh language lobby are far too powerful. It is a minority language, and one that the vast majority of Welsh people don't speak. I work in a school with SEN kids who can barely write a sentence in English let alone Welsh, and you are going to confuse them even further by pushing a minority language that none of their friends and family speak onto them? It's not right IMO.

Unless you live in bloody Anglsey or Carernarfon Welsh is useless, and thats the truth that a lot of people don't want go head.

Annie once again, I never mentioned the language dying out as being my argument for it being compulsory. My argument was that Welsh is one of two official languages is Wales and that, for me, is enough to make it compulsory. Maybe my crap, bilingual, education is making my posts hard for you to understand? (Mind you, I did learn about paragraphs.)

Your statement about speaking Welsh not helping job prospects outside of Wales is completely untrue in my experience and that of many of my acquaintances. I have worked both in England and internationally and all of my employers have commented on my ability to speak Welsh as a positive thing. Some people value a sense of history, culture and national identity regardless of their understanding of a language.

There are also plenty of jobs outside of the Welsh government where speaking Welsh is valued. Where I live, people want their services delivered in their first language. I'm a child therapist, and could not work effectively with Welsh language children in English. My friends who work locally include solicitors, retail workers, hairdressers, bank mangers, GP's, social workers and many other professions. I doubt there is a single one of them who would tell you that speaking and having been educated in Welsh has hindered their careers.

It's a shame that your experience of living in Wales has been so negative to you. Maybe it would have been more positive if your opinions of the language, culture and heritage were a little more respectful? I hope you find your utopia back over the border soon.

I agree Judgey The Welsh language lobby is far too powerful! It's quite concerning how budgets are being cut all over the place here'- except for the Welsh language budget.
The amount spent on translating documents alone is astounding. So wastful and pointless.

So let's have all Welsh translators on the dole then. Fab idea.

We lived in Cardiff for 7 years and our next door neighbours were Welsh speakers (first language) and it was lovely to hear it spoken. We knew several native Welsh speakers so there's still lots of people who speak it daily. DH is Welsh and did GCSE Welsh, he's not very good but can pronounce place names etc as most of the language follows set phonetic rules. I was pretty rubbish pronouncing things (being English).

The only thing that annoyed me about Welsh (particularly in South Wales) was that it wasn't more inconvenient to speak English. All my bills came in English (if you wanted Welsh, you had to ring up and ask), lots of signs or announcements are in English first, then Welsh. I sort of expected to need to learn a little to make my life easier/quicker, turned out I didn't need to at all.

I would have liked DD to learn both Welsh and French/Spanish in primary school though, as now we're in England, she's learning French from year 1. Not sure how you'd get the time in the curriculum though, to do both.

Obviously DD to learn Welsh and French/Spanish in her (Cardiff) primary school, not expecting her to learn Welsh at her new school in England.

mamapants Am I right to think that you'd probably be out of a job if you didn't spend your time translating documents into Welsh for people who are perfectly capable of understanding English? The last mono-lingual Welsh speaker died ages ago.

I'm in support of protecting the Welsh language but requirements to produce everything bilingually is a complete farce.

Celticlass the Welsh language lobby are obsessively militant, and I think the powers that be are scared of them. The NHS in Wales is a fucking mess, and personally I'd much rather that my taxes went towards preserving and protecting that than a language that is useless outside of Wales.

My grandfather was a fluent Welsh speaker, he didn't learn to speak English until he was in his 20's. He wouldn't allow his children to speak Welsh because he felt it would hold them back. I can well believe the comment from a poster earlier in this thread about first Welsh language speakers who can't articulate themselves in English, because I've met people like that. I live in the North East, at college when I was a teenager we had a lot of girls from Bala on my course and they had to have extra support to get their English up to standard because they genuinely struggled with it.

I find that quite shocking really. You'd be fucked not being able to speak English properly in most of Wales, but especially in the North East, the Valleys, Cardiff, Swansea and the industrial South.

Well said Jewel

X post with Celtic

And again

jewel no that's not correct. I'm not a translator.
All my work is done through the medium of Welsh. My job is not public facing, I work with the staff. The administrative language of the council is Welsh so all internal documents only need to be in Welsh. I translate contracts into English as a matter of courtesy as some people prefer to read things in English. Also if I'm releasing something publicly I will do it in the language requested.
The council where I work therefore doesnot have an internal bilingual policy it has a Welsh only policy.

PurpleCrazyHorse This is what worries me. We may move out of Wales and I see problems for my dc because primary schools in England teach French.

I do have two problems with compulsory Welsh at school. One is that children/schools have a degree of choice of foreign language taken away from them because of compulsory Welsh.

The other problem is that the Welsh language teaching in schools is pretty basic and I haven't met anyone yet (with non-Welsh speaking parents) who speaks Welsh with any fluency or confidence. In my opinion, if you teach a language, teach it properly. (Disclaimer: I went to school abroad where language teaching is taken very seriously).

There's loads of evidence to show that the more languages children learn, the better they are at languages into adulthood.

I did (compulsory) Irish for 14 years, French for 6 years, German for 6 years, and then studied French at uni along with one year of Italian.

I do find the comments about the 'militant welsh language lobby' rather amusing - as opposed to the violently militant English language lobby ie central government in centuries gone by...

Apologies mamapants, didn't think those jobs existed (not near where I am in any case). Just goes to show how diverse Wales is and maybe a once size fits all Welsh language act isn't helpful in promoting Welsh.