According to Duolingo, more than 1.5m people have signed up to learn Welsh and a little shy of half a million are actually actively participating on the course.
I could be wrong, but think it’s fair to assume that the bulk of the active learners are Welsh.
That’s wonderful news – I’m genuinely glad that there’s nothing now stopping non-Welsh-speaking Welsh people from learning Welsh, if they want to.
@Sunglassesonthetable
Dear I - went- to- Uni- in Wales - 30 - years - ago.
Yep.
Did you want to respond to my comment that you quoted, or just repeat and add a few random words? The few words that you repeated were part of my point to those claiming that, because of the historical attempts to suppress and stamp out the Welsh language, they couldn’t possibly learn Welsh now – even though I was able to easily access Welsh language classes nearly 30 years closer to the attempts to suppress the Welsh language.
If you want to say what your actual point/response was, it would be interesting to hear it.
I'm English... do you really, truly see the Welsh as such a completely hugely different culture from the English? Really?
🤦♀️
I know that you are English, but surely you don't expect Welsh people to deny the existence of their own distinct cultural identity.
It's insulting to think the other countries in the UK don't have their own pride and culture.
Who has said that Welsh people don’t have their own distinct cultural identity? Of course they do; but even one family will have a different culture from the people who live next door, if you want to be nitpicky about it.
The key point here is ‘similar’. If you spent a week living in Nauru, then a week in Kenya, then El Salvador, then Russia, then Slovakia, then England. Are you truly saying that you wouldn’t find the last week that you were living in a very much more similar culture to your own than the other weeks? Would you really not feel any less 'foreign' if somebody dropped you in Khartoum than if they dropped you in Bath?
The denial of the existence of an ethnic group and the minimising of colonialism by those from the colonial power is quite a big deal to those on the other end of it.
Who is denying that it happened in history? I just don’t see what’s to be gained by continuing to base your identity on it, when you haven’t even (as an ethnic group) made a serious campaign for independence, which you surely could have had if you wanted it, as the Scots could have if they had wanted it.
Do you think that modern-day German people should be forever shamed, blamed and criticised for the atrocities that their government perpetrated? And that was less than a century ago. Should a Jewish person in 2023 automatically hate a German baby?