This is in direct reply to @cardibach but also in response to@marcyhermit@samarrange
"Your attitude to Welsh - that you could just move to any part of Wales and people would just deal with your English."
It's getting complicated so I'll respond quote by quote. Are you saying there are parts of Wales where nobody speaks English? What is my attitude, I still don't understand.
"What have we lost of British culture? Given you don’t really value the local languages, it can’t be the decline of Gaelic you are thinking of - so could you give me another example of something we have lost. If there’s ‘so much’ it should be easy."
Where did I say I didn't value local languages?
Like I said in a previous post, there is not one single thing we have lost that you wouldn't see as a win. Mostly the losses are a result of urbanisation and the cultural dominance of television and now digital media. The soft American imperialism that has brought. Young children speaking with American accents, the loss of regional accents. In 2017 Robert MacFarlane published a beautiful book called Lost Words, lamenting the removal of words like Acorn, bluebell, kingfisher, otter and willow from the 2007 Oxford Junior dictionary, because children don't use these words anymore. They were replaced with blog, broadband and voicemail. This symbolises a loss of connection between children and nature. A loss of literacy rates among children, a precipitous decline in educational standards particularly in Scotland, kids can barely read nowdays compared to the standards of literacy even a poor child 60 years ago would have had. They're taught nothing but the bare minimum about history, and essentially just giant violent daycare centres which focus on churning out individualistuc consumers and workers than trying to educate and cultivate virtue. And how can teachers teach when they're expected to parent them aswell - loss in school readiness. We've lost our ability to defend ourselves, We've lost our industry, We've lost our ability to build beautiful buildings or make beautiful art. We've lost our high streets, which are now vape shops and Turkish barbours. People no longer 'first foot' at new year. Everyone did it, now nobody does. The doors are locked. The rates of depression and anxiety are through the roof and continue to grow, many young people can barely function in this new utopia, drug deaths and 'deaths of despair' rising. We've lost reciprocity, mutuality and solidarity. Going to church, Sunday Best, the sabbath, we've lost our shared sense of a common good, our dignity, our manners. 'Multicultural' means no culture, just everything in the blender until you're left with beige, nobody can feel 'other' when culture has been reduced to the thinnest gruel. Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam came out over 25 years ago. And many books and studies have been written about the impact of globalisation, but nobody who spends their lives endlessly coping would read something that disagreed with their cherished world view.
"Edit: I’m confused by you citing differences being bigger before when you have talked about British culture and minimised countries’ cultures. You started by saying what different cultures in Britain, for eg."
I was trying to highlight the extent to which the cultural distinctions in between the nations of and regions within Britain have been flattened over the past hundred years. Almost completely is my point. I don't see what is confusing about that and wonder if maybe you're arguing with a caricature of me rather than what I am actually saying.