To wonder whether some Welsh should be taught in English schools?

[CruCru]

I’ve just finished watching HIdden and it has struck me how alien Welsh sounds (I grew up in the south east). For most western European languages, I will recognise a few words if I hear it spoken but pretty much none of the speech in Hidden sounded familiar.

A Spanish friend speaks Castilian Spanish but also speaks and understands a couple of other Spanish languages / dialects. It seems weird to me that there is a living language within the UK that I know virtually nothing about.

I know it isn’t as widely spoken as a few European languages learnt in school. However, I did French and German and can say that I can remember virtually no German whatsoever (I wasn’t very good at it). I have tried to speak it in Austria but the bar staff laughed and spoke back to me in English.

I'm English but have lived in Cardiff for the last 5 years and love that DS will learn welsh in school when he's older. I did a welsh beginners course a couple of years ago and agree it's hard to learn, but sounds beautiful. A fair few of my friends who live west of Cardiff are welsh first-language and working in healthcare there's usually always at least one welsh speaker in the team and plenty of patients who speak welsh as first language. I can see why in England there's not much need for welsh but it would be lovely if it were an option for children in the same way that French and Spanish are.

I agree BSL would be a great skill, I can do the alphabet, woman, man and finished but would like to know more.

I would love to learn Gaelic as much of northern Scotland has Gaelic speaking areas. It’s a hard language to learn as it’s not phonetic, in English you can sound out a word from reading it as it’s written in most cases. In Gaelic it’s very difficult,for example ‘Fionnphort’ is Pronounced Finn-a-fort.

I'm all for them teaching it in Wales, but it's about as relevant in England as Russian.

Another Vote for BSL that would be an amazing step forward. Welsh person here, yes it does depend on which area you live in & can be really useful if you want to get a job in some areas of wales (no one will discriminate if you’re english as a pp funnily suggested 🙄) However it shouldn’t be mandatory in England as I can’t imagine a significant amount of English will move to these areas. Nos da.

I've thought about this before ... it does seem a bit off that Wales has it's own language - England and Wales are almost always 'England and Wales' when they get mentioned for politics and the Welsh speak English ... but the English don't return the favour. Not even a little bit. My entire knowledge of Welsh is limited to Cymru and Araf. I think my knowledge of Irish is more in depth tbh

I think it would be nice to learn... not to compulsory GCSE standard or anything but just a bit of general chit chat* (which is actually all my German GCSE was... but if I have a burning desire to find out what German people had for breakfast - hoo baby ... watch out)

*Unless the Welsh would prefer us not to learn it - so they can keep it a secret and talk about us behind our backs

As to not having enough teachers ... don't need 'em. in KS1 children have milk everyday - takes up about ten minutes. Just make a t.v programme teaching basic Welsh once a week - kind of like words and pictures in the olden days ... but Welsh, and they can watch it with their milk on the white board. You could also have a day for BSL, a day for current events etc etc.

If Scots also wanted to get in on the action - Scots Gaelic could be added in at KS2 ( I fear too many languages at once will cause confusion but by 8 they should be able to keep their old second language and their new second language straight).

It wouldn't take any noticeable time out of the day - but over 7 years of primary would leave children with a basic understanding of the other UK languages and a better idea of how the UK works.

actually
welsh is spoken in patagonia ..,
it’s the original language of the british isles ..so should be protected

Yabu on the basis that our schools are already really struggling with teaching basic English and Maths.

What's the point in using valuable teaching time for something that many children will never ever need when they grow up, when they could be learning essential life-skills such as trigonometry, algebra and loci....

Sign language would be more useful

Sign language yes in all schools and also Mandarin Chinese. I say this as a teacher in a Welsh English medium school and as a mum of two children who go to a Welsh medium school. I think it’s wonderful that they can speak the language of their country but there’s no need for English pupils to be taught it. It is a beautiful language though 😍

Yes to sign language, and yes to all native languages of the British Isles - it's just a shame teaching time is so limited. I've been learning Welsh on/off for a few years and it's a beautiful language, and not as impenetrable as it first appears to English eyes, once you get past the lls/dds/gws. My MIL speaks fluent Scots Gaelic but that's a whole other kettle of psygod.

@Fluffyears Gaelic is phonetic. Phonetic for Gaelic though not English. Every language pronounces combinations of letters differently. That's why languages sound different. For example, in Gaelic se makes the same sound as the English sh, bh in Gaelic is the same sound as v in English. That doesn't mean that Gaelic isn't phonetic it's just pronounced differently from English.