AIBU to allow my children to speak my language?

[tyngedyriaith]

Have name changed to something fitting for this, I post once in a while

Just as a background...

I was brought up speaking Welsh and English at home with my grandparents having absolutely atrocious English and not learning it until their 20s.

I married a boarding school boy with a background very different from my own. He doesn't speak Welsh although clearly the family name has Welsh roots.

In my workplace we speak 100% Welsh and so naturally I still speak that more. I speak both to my children and English when husband is around. We live in an English speaking area although our small village being about 50:50 and so church is bilingual.

The children go to a welsh language school too.

DMIL.....

She resents that they speak Welsh and often comes out with comments like "oh only backward, uneducated poor people spoke Welsh when I was a child"
"It really does hold you back" - no it doesnt we have two medics at uni thanks...
Etc... it's not 1940 ffs

She always tries to prove that it's a waste of time, claims they don't speak it outside of school, frowns when she realises they speak it with their welsh speaking friends.

They pay for us all to go on a big family holiday and if they hear us speaking welsh we were once told to speak english when they are around. Ok fair enough if they are part of the conversation etc.
She makes comments when I'm around like " I find it very rude that you speak welsh around us"

BUT !!! Their cousins are bilingual Spanish and speak Spanish with their father (spanish) at the dinner table and she would NEVER dare say anything about that. I just feel like our language isn't viewed as real.

AIBU to tell them to stick up for themselves and be proud of having two first languages?!

God I want to smack that woman out sometimes...... as lovely as she is other times.....

Sheesh, it's pretty shocking to see some of the posts on here. If you want to live in North West Wales, Welsh is essential for almost all public sector/care/comms roles. You won't get any council job in Gwynedd without being a fluent speaker - most posts aren't even advertised in English. There isn't a choice of English/Welsh primary schools, they're all Welsh language only. And I know plenty of people who struggle to find the right word for something in English! If you grow up in, say, Caernarfon, speaking Welsh at home and school, watching S4C, going to uni 10 miles away in Bangor and having to speak English to other students is quite a struggle for some.

I'm a bit shocked at some of the attitudes on this thread. So if an English-speaker is in the room, in whichever country you are in, everyone is supposed to speak English!!

One way to kill minority languages dead.

My Dd is in Welsh medium school and has friends who struggle with English, they can speak it "sort of" according to Dd and they are in special classes to help with their English, in the same way Dd is in special classes for her Welsh, she's been learning since 2013 and it will give her an extra boost with work as many jobs around us do say, Must speak Welsh, especially local government jobs.
You MIL is a nasty woman OP, carry on teaching your children to us both languages, it can only benefit them in life.
My Dd pick up languages easily, she's learning French at school and has decided she wants to learn Norwegian, Japanese and German too.

I served in Iraq with a Welsh Regiment, in which some squaddies stuggled with their English. The Iraqi translators had a hard time with those welsh boys.

not unreasonable at all.. she's being a cowbag.

My dad used to know a couple who were raising their kids tri-lingual. The dad was German, the mom was English, but she worked as a Translator and spoke fluent German, English and French.

He only spoke to the kids in German, She only spoke to them in French. Family conversations were conducted in English :)

Good on you teaching them Welsh! It is no sin to speak it in front of anyone if it is the language of your home, whether they speak it or not. You are Welsh speaking your children are too so carry on. It is good to include everyone but as others have said the language would die out if that was adhered to 100%. It is the natural language of this island - do not be ashamed to speak it

As an Irish speaker, with many family and friends who are also Irish speakers, I think u need to meet some new Irish speakers bbshell... Really.

I posted on the other thread where the person was worried that the nurses spoke in their language to say that as a speaker of multiple languages, I would use the common language of all in that situation. I think on a holiday, I would try to speak the common language when at table or out together. Otherwise, Yanbu to speak Welsh, cariad, I'll join you!

Saoirse my dc1 is at an irish secondary school. She cannot speak Spanish as well as she can speak Irish which seems so counterinstinctive to me. At leadt in spain i can undrrstand valencian^catalan. She cannot absorb spanish at all and finds irish easier and more natural. I know a lot of people from all sorts of backgrounds though. Not anti languages at all.

Ps im bilingual myself so i might do duolingo irish when i have time.

I don't think this is about Welsh. I think it's about your MIL not being able to feel in control of a situation, otherwise why eavesdrop and complain you're not speaking her language when you're not with her.

My mother's family were Welsh, though I grew up in England and don't speak the language. I've travelled in Wales, though, and some people are lovely and switch to English straight away if they know that you don't speak the language and others use it as a way to exclude the other. Most have been utterly lovely. It comes down to people being people.

My partner speaks welsh and English. He is teaching our daughter welsh as unfortunately the welsh school by us was really underperforming so we had to send her to an English speaking school. I don't see how speaking two languages holds anyone back in any way, she is being stupid!

Some of the comments about Welsh remind me of my mother who when she gets into a mood tries to persuade me that English is a deficient language because she cannot say everything she says in Swedish in exactly the same way.

While it is understandable that she feels this way- her only daughter chosing to emigrate and bring up her grandchildren abroad is a kind of betrayal- it is harder to see how people in a Welsh-speaking village sitting around speaking the language that has always been spoken in that village and not immediately switching if a stranger enters could constitute some kind of betrayal. And yet so many English speakers genuinely seem offended by this.

Just tell her to wind her neck in. 'Please do not say that again; it's rude.' Change the subject.

I think there are lots of socio-political reasons around why people feel the need to belittle welsh and are convinced welsh speakers only do so to exclude others.
Its weird. But there it is.
I thank my lucky stars my child with special needs speaks welsh. It makes his life far easier than if he didn't.

It is more than a little uncomfortable, though, that people have these socio-political needs to belittle the language of a country their culture has colonised, while they are perfectly accepting of other small languages whose speakers have never suffered at their hands.

The traditional scenario always seems to be of an English speaker walking into a pub in a Welsh-speaking village and being upset at the villagers speaking Welsh as it has got to be about deliberately excluding them. How do these people cope when travelling abroad? Do they expect to be privy to every cafe conversation in France, Italy or Sweden?

Yanbu of course you should speak your language to your kids. As a non Welsh speaking Welsh person I have been excluded by ppl - maybe she had that background and as a result doesn't like it? I've also seen ppl who've got the job over someone else because of being Welsh speaker but thats another thread! You are fortunate to speak Welsh and pass this onto your kids which will open doors for them later on if you stay in Wales. So I say carry on!

You are absolutely doing the right thing and your DH needs to show that he is in 100% agreement when his mother is around.

I have friends with bi-lingual children and because they are doing OPOL, they speak to their children in the other language when I am there. I don't find it rude. If they're talking about me, then they speak English, to include me. OP on the other hand makes every effort to speak to her children in English when MIL is around, so she is doing more than enough.

Language acquisition is never more than a positive influence for children.

I am not a Welsh speaker, DH is. But we live in a Welsh speaking area and our kids go to a Welsh medium school. I am.of the thought that the more languages they have the better. It will make a third language easier:) when we are travelling my kids seem to be unafraid to give the local language a go!

I used to speak Welsh fluently but not as a first language, unfortunately I've forgotten so much asI didn't teach my children, they can say the odd phrase but nowhere near a full conversation. There is no reason that they should not speak Welsh at home as well as at school

Dear Snatched Pencil

What a mistake my mum made in sending me to a Welsh language school in wales, It would have been far more useful for me to learn Mandarin, being the only Mandarin speaker for miles around would have been much more useful. What use is learning my own language and culture when I can quite easily let it be subsumed by the far superior culture just across the border. I can fit right in with those who don't recognise that vibrant local cultures speaking in accent, slang, patois and different languages are part of the uniqueness of this country. Now all we need to do is convince, the scouters,geordies, mancs, northerners, Bristolians, Cornish and Irish to abandon their unique vocabularies and then we can all live in harmony in a sea of Estuary English. *

*I may be being a little sarcastic.

How do these people cope when travelling abroad? Do they expect to be privy to every cafe conversation in France, Italy or Sweden?

Excellent point. Plenty of people in France, Italy and Sweden speak English too; but Wales is always the target of "I walked into the pub and everyone switched language..." complaints.

I know of one incident of people changing language to exclude English speakers. It was online, and the people are known to be horrible in general (and not very clever; they've clearly never heard of Google Translate so non-Welsh speakers could easily see what they've written).

I'm amused by the arrogance of it all - the notion that a) we can spot a non-Welsh speaker the second they walk into the pub and b) we care enough to switch language when we see them. Give a Welshman his pint and he doesn't give a shit who else is in the pub or what language they speak

DH is Welsh speaking as are his family and our DC. I grasp a fair bit and can be polite in Welsh. Drives my DM bonkers Your MIL is VU.

For those interested, you can learn Welsh for free, using the Duolingo app.

I know many Welsh people of my age (30's) who express themselves better in Welsh than in English and feel slightly self conscious about speaking English.

Just as I speak pretty decent Welsh but it doesn't come naturally to me to speak it with my children. I would find it stilted to speak Welsh all the time and children will naturally revert to the language they feel most comfortable in.

There will be even more children whose English is not yet fluent.