I think I've just experienced what it's like in England..

[Builtthiscityonsausagerolls]

To not be a native English speaker.

My natural first language is Welsh. I went to an English university and obviously have a native proficiency in English but when chatting im more comfortable in Welsh.

So... I'm on a train in the Midlands with a friend. Had a chatty conversation with the conducter in English, guy sitting across from us very friendly. The we switched to Welsh and the difference in attitude was immediate. Felt very hostile. Very hard to explain, but as soon as we switched languages it became almost threatening?

I'm used to speaking Welsh in maybe more border towns (mainly chester) where its quite common, but thinking about it not in 'deep' England :) 😀

We keep going over it, but the change in attitude was definitely when we changed language. Is this really the experienced of non-English speakers? The hostility really was quite overt

I've carried on reading.

Amazing.

This is a 'bash the English' thread???

You couldn't fucking make it up.

Nobody is EXCLUDING anybody. They are speaking their mother tongue. Most people who get on a Welsh-bound train in Chester, Shrewsbury, Wolverhampton, Euston will have experienced this.

By the way, I have heard Welsh EVERY SINGLE TIME I have been to either Chester or Shrewsbury. This is more than I can say for Cardiff.

(just in case I need to remind you, I am writing in my 2nd language, my 1st being Welsh)

I speak excellent French, ok Spanish, a bit of Polish and Italian , fluent English and Welsh.

I'm only one person, but as far as I know, people are not speaking other languages to exclude anybody else.

In all my varied experiences I have never, ever, come across this.

My partner is not Welsh speaking. He is from a region of France.
We walk into pubs in all areas of Wales speaking English or possibly French together.
The staff would therefore have no way of knowing whether we speak Welsh or not and indeed, if we were speaking French, may assume we are tourists.

May I reassure you that the staff in the shop, the pub, the cafe, the chip shop, or wherever you may have had your 'bad experience' are doubtless exchanging mundane info about dishcloths, clean glasses, or how many folks are on table 6.

If anyone's interested in reading about the research done into Brexit votes in Wales, this article is a good place to start.
discoversociety.org/2021/06/08/what-about-wales-brexit-and-the-future-of-the-uk/

I unfortunately can't add anything except I've never been offended if people speak a different language in front of me.

I've learned something from this thread, not being from the UK I didn't know Welsh people didn't speak English. I thought the whole of the UK - England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales - all spoke English as their nations official language. Every day is a school day on this site, I learn a lot.

@ClaudiaJ1

I unfortunately can't add anything except I've never been offended if people speak a different language in front of me.

I've learned something from this thread, not being from the UK I didn't know Welsh people didn't speak English. I thought the whole of the UK - England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales - all spoke English as their nations official language. Every day is a school day on this site, I learn a lot.

Welsh people do speak English! For some it’s a second language though.

I would be very surprised if this was the first time that the man in Birmingham had ever heard a non-English conversation before! Get over yourselves, I doubt he cared. You say it is unreasonable for you to converse in English for 2 hours (agreed), but yet you expect a stranger to sit grinning at you for 2 hours while you have a conversation with someone else?! Why does he need to be friendly to you if he isn't part of things? Can't he just listen to his music/read his book/stare out of the window/sit and think?

Sometimes people just get freaked out when something changes and is at a difference with their expectation.

They might not know you were speaking Welsh or ever heard it spoken before

Maybe they feel out of control when they don't understand.

It's probably because English is one of the majority dominant languages people have such attitudes. Quite likely monolingual as a pp mentioned. I speak several languages and I don't care if people speak in their most comfortable language in front of me
Anyways you can always tell if someone is speaking about you through the international language that is body language!

Can't he just listen to his music/read his book/stare out of the window/sit and think?
Apparently he couldn’t, because he didn’t do those things, he stared at the OP and her friend in a hostile manner, and directed his body language to focus hostility on them. If he’d read a book or fiddled with his phone or looked out of the window, there wouldn’t be a thread. FFS.

Oh goodness. I’m sorry - i honestly was trying to be really fair in my reply. I never made any suggestion that anyone was being stupid. I said I believed that some people had genuine experiences of rudeness by some welsh speaking people. I just also mentioned that I believed some of the experiences would have been due to misunderstanding of the situation, not outright rudeness.
I was trying to show that Welsh people on the thread needed to be open to believing those people who had experience of it, but that some of the English people, particularly those with no first hand experience, also needed to be open to the fact it may not have happened quite how they thought. Just trying to keep things balanced.
Sorry if you understood my post otherwise.

[quote madisonbridges]@CounsellorTroi
Also, those who think this has happened to them, do you think you were the only non Welsh speakers to have gone into the pub or shop that day?

In the present day only 30% of people living in Wales speak Welsh. When I was there it was close to 10 -15%. It was a minority. But I lived in North Wales which is where it was most likely spoken. I flat shared with my English friend who had a welsh-speaking boyfriend. I heard Welsh being spoken. I learnt a few words while I lived there. I have nothing against the Welsh or the Welsh language.

The majority of the people going in her shop didn't speak Welsh and they were Welsh. I don't suppose the shopkeeper had a problem with them. I didn't imagine it happened to me. I saw the faces of other people in the shops.

those who think this has happened to them
I don't think it happened to me. It flipping did.[/quote]
The thing is though, you can’t be sure it did. You’ve decided that’s what happened but how can you know for sure that they hate the English so much that the very second one rocks up (despite only 20% of their own population speaking Welsh!) they immediately close ranks. Why would they?

I have no problem with someone speaking another language in front of me, but I found it interesting that the OP interpreted the non-Welsh speaker as hostile when they started speaking Welsh.

He might just have been annoyed that they were having a conversation he wasn't a party to but was at the same time was disturbing him from whatever he was trying to do. The other day on the train there were four women speaking English and they were in the seats in front of me. They were quite loud (as groups can be) and in spite of having my earphones in I could hardly hear my audiobook. So my face might have looked a bit - I suppose the OP would have interpreted this as being "hostile".

They might not know you were speaking Welsh or ever heard it spoken before

He probably could have guessed. Unless OP and her friend had completely lost their Welsh accents.

Apparently he couldn’t, because he didn’t do those things, he stared at the OP and her friend in a hostile manner, and directed his body language to focus hostility on them.

Must have taken some stamina to keep that up for 2 hours. I’m surprised he didn’t just move.

I’ve also experienced language xenophobia before, although it was much more blatant but also by kids, so maybe it doesn’t count (although I can guarantee my girls would never behave like this towards somebody ‘foreign’. We were in a swimming pool in Mallorca, me and my sisters (all of us half-German and, though British born and living in Britain, German was our home language) chatting away in Sherman, when two British (English-speaking) girls started saying mean things to us and laughing, saying “you don’t understand us”. We were not the quickest of wits, so just looked at them, probably gormlessly, the. Went back to our chat and play. We were just kids in a pool, speaking our own language and we’re made fun of by other kids, also speaking their own language, in a country that didn’t belong to any of us. Some people are just rude.

@madisonbridges
Far, far more likely is that they'd slipped into a couple of phrases of English (super common) as you walked in, greeted you in English and then carried on in Welsh - for no reason other than that's what felt comfortable.
We don't always "choose" a language to speak and stick with it for the whole conversation. We switch back and forth.

Also possible that they had been having a personal conversation and wanted to finish the conversation in Welsh, which they judged it was unlikely you would speak. Is that so rude? I don't think so. Maybe they were talking about embarrassing medical symptoms or something?

I'm really not sure why anyone would think speaking a language in front of someone was rude. When I go into the kebab shop, they speak to me in English and then call my order over the people cooking in another language. The cleaners in my classroom at the end of day chat with me and then carry in chatting with each other in Spanish. I don't think anything of it.

I live in Wales. I understand basic Welsh, but don't speak it cos I'm crap. My experience is exactly as @Stellaroses has described - that Welsh speakers switch amongst Welsh and English quite frequently, with no real rhyme or reason that I can discern - maybe when they hit an English word that's been adopted or something?

If it happens when you are in a shop, I can tell you, they aren't talking about you, and they'll probably switch back if you wait long enough. But if they don't, so what?

I'm assuming all these people who think OP shouldn't have spoken Welsh in her situation, are people who continue to speak Spanish to other English people in Spain, so as not to exclude the Spanish people around them?

2 of my DGC are Welsh but also half English . Their DM split up with my DS several years ago . They are bi-lingual with Welsh being their first language. They speak Welsh all the time but of course speak English around our side of the family .
Even though the children could speak English they don't actually learn to read or write it until about 8 years old. Their education is entirely in Welsh for the first few years, as it should be , as it is their primary language.
A couple of years ago my 13 DGS decided to rebel at school and refused to speak Welsh at all . It didn't last long because he didn't like having detention every night 😂.
It doesn't bother me when I go into a shop or pub when in Wales and everyone is speaking Welsh . They may start talking about me but I'm not bothered as they probably have much better things to talk about .

What an absolutely stupid thread this is. Beyond stupid.

The OP didn’t even give any indication as to what the man actually did. “Almost hostile?” What does that even mean?

Of course there nothing wrong with speaking any language on any train anywhere.

This goes without saying.

But some people just crave attention and need to be “different” (even though nobody cares). They look for reaction where there is none.

If I speak my first language on a train - I don’t need to make a song and dance over it. In 29 years of living in London or travelling across the U.K, I can honestly say it has never occurred to me that anyone is even noticing. Nobody cares!

Find me a train carriage in England where nobody is speaking another language ffs! There won’t be many.

But some people need to make an issue out of being Welsh, Northern or whatever. They wear it like a badge and crave a reaction.

Just speak your language like everyone else in the world does and get over yourself OP.

And don’t start a thread entitled “I think I’ve just experienced what it’s like in England....” and then claim it wasn’t meant to be goady.

YOU LIVE IN ENGLAND. You live in Chester, Ffs! So it only dawned on you yesterday what it’s like to live in England? Really??? Stop talking such bollocks.

Even if the man was giving you a death stare or whatever (we don’t know as, funnily enough, you don’t say) - so what? There are idiots everywhere in all trains across the world.

As for reports of unfriendliness in Wales - it’s not so much an ENGLSND v Wales thing, but more of a a village v urban thing. Most London / city people (especially if you are a different ethnic group) may have experienced a subtle shift in terms of “standing out” when you visit a rural village where everyone knows everyone and the demographic is quite homogenous. This happens in villages all over the U.K. - including yes, Wales , believe it or not, where there are a lot of villages! It’s the whole “incomer” mentality. But who cares? They can have their villages. I’m only passing through and I couldn’t care less.

@coffeecats

It’s just whinging and deflection ChargingBuck and well you know it.

So what if you have people in Wales who once lived in England. How many Welsh are in England. How did they vote? Who bloody cares? They live here now and they are part of society and that’s that.

You sound like a whinging xenophobe. Straight up.

How did they vote? Who bloody cares?

Anyone interested in voting behaviour & how it is influenced by demographics, campaigning, & policymaking. So ... that will be a few million people, some of whom will be experts in the field & conducting studies for organisations like universities, think tanks, & the ONS.

Paying attention to facts & being interested in analysis isn't intrinsically linked to xenophobia as far as I'm aware @coffeecats, but as you haven't come back to me to expand on your previous (if somewhat bizzare) advice that I "take responsibility" for Wales' voting record, I'll assume that you are more interested in posturing & insulting PP's than you are in fruitful debate & positive outcomes.

You say (and I queried): " Must have taken some stamina to keep that up for 2 hours. I’m surprised he didn’t just move."

Nobody said he stared at them for 2 hours, you just made that up. And now you're trying to justify it. No, it's not a natural assumption. That's simply more bullshit.

I didn’t say ‘he stared at her for 2 hours’. You’re the one making that up! I quoted an other poster who I thought summed up his behaviour, (only a small part of which constituted staring) as gleaned from OPs’ posts, most succinctly. I then speculated it would be hard to keep that up for 2 hours. So I agree he probably didn’t? Perhaps OP could come back and clarifiy!

@sendingsamosas

I don't think the OP actually lives in Chester .

Aside from that I agree with your post .

My son lives in a shared house (of 11 people) in Hull and until recently 2 other residents were Welsh. I will add that these 2 people did not know each other before moving into this house, so there's no pre- existing friendship here.
Regularly, any number of them would be chatting away in English (in the house or the pub) and suddenly the 2 Welsh speakers would break off and chat in Welsh (sometimes laughing) whilst still looking at their other housemates, then after a minute or 10, they'd switch back to English and include everyone else in the conversation.
My son tells of this happening when he's been out for a drink with just one of them and the other has come along, butted into their conversation and they've then ignored him chuntering on in Welsh.
It's rude and clearly gives off an air of "we don't want you to know what we're talking about and yes, we probably are talking (and laughing) about you but you'll never know for sure, ha ha".
It's horribly being that person who's effectively being snubbed.
I think it might be a bit different if people are already talking in their native tongue and stop for a couple of minutes to include someone who doesn't speak it, then when that person walks away, to continue in their native language, I don't think that's rude.