To not want my ds to have to take Welsh for GCSE

[slushy06]

He is only 3 but it has started bothering me the thought that like me he may not want to take and may be no good at it and may have to take it and get a poor grade when to be honest I just don't see the point of it and would much rather he learn something more useful if he doesn't like it.

I would have no issue with if he wanted to and I have no problem with Maths English and Science being compulsory but I just don't think Welsh is as important as those subjects and should not be compulsory.

I am posting this but I have to go out then so will reply when I get back. But I will be very interested to hear responses and maybe a reason as to why it is compulsory.

Agree that it's become a bit weird now macdoodle!

oh yay I wondered how long it would be before someone said

'the english stole our language'

my all time favourite insult from the welsh! This was hurled at me by a senior nurse ona busy ward 'you stole our language' she hissed at me .
I dont remember doing it, must have been a bad day!!!

Agree this thread is silly given that OP's child is 3 and has about 10 years before he takes his GCSE's

I am interested in partially redressing the balance and learning a phrase of Welsh which I can use to tell my children off. Please could someone (maybe LostinWales since you mentioned it and are upset that Welsh speaking communities have been so overlooked) teach us one?

PS we will need phonetic pronunciation too.

Why is a language so important though to Welsh communites like mine that don't speak welsh. I accept that there are some areas that do speak it and I wouldn't force them to learn English and I always try and speak some Welsh if I meet anyone with whom Welsh is a first language.

My Welsh community is happy not speaking Welsh and I would much rather my children learn about their fore fathers persecution and being forced not to speak Welsh.

but mosschops - lots of us on this thread are NOT Welsh or don't live in Wales but feel more strongly than someone who does that the language is important!
SO many more important things to worry about though than a 3 year olds option choices I must agree!!

Here in SE Wales The WElsh medium schools have become grammar schools by stealth
Most parents that send their children there tend to be better educated/ better off and quite often dont sppeak Welsh themselves.
In return they get smaller class sizes and free transport to and from school.
Agree with Moss chops about the elitist thing.
Am not criticizing, if I could teutn back the closk I would send my DS's to the Welsh school as they woulld prob get a better education.

Now you have lost me slushy. Why would you rather your children learn about their forefathers' persecution? If that is the case, I think learning the language is more important. What is wrong with simply learning the facts and building on our current understandings rather than dredging up old wounds?

It is a bit silly owing to how young my ds is and I do accept that my son will learn Welsh as a subject for GCSE. I do read Welsh books to him and as I said I dont lose sleep over it so it is not really that important to me and didn't mean for the thread to turn nasty I just wanted some honest opinions as some people get very heated up in real life at the mention of the word Welsh language I will retire now.

mice if you read my posts regarding the teaching of wales in schools I said there should be a choice.
I dont deny people should be able to choose, nor did I say that language wasnt important.
I just feel that for my dd there are languages i would prefer her to learn

My emphasis is on choice!!!!

I live in Switzerland so my DC are learning French, are in a French speaking school.

Before that we lived in Germany so they spoke German in school.

We speak English because I am British.

Languages have been PROVEN to aid cerebral development, particularly when learned from a young age.

It is an advantage to speak the language of the country that you are living in.

Dumbledoresgirl if you want to here are a couple of satisfying ones;

Na! No, but just more fun to bellow without the soft 'o' on the end.

Pied! don't do that (not sure of spelling only ever heard it) - sounds as it lookes pie'd

Mas! should be shouted across a rugby field preferably, come here right now.

I'll see what I shout walking the boys home from school and put more on when inspiration strikes!

Just to pause all the aggravtion for 1 moment since oompa loompa comment have been unable to stop singing bloody song from charlie and the chocolate factory! And to think I used to be a sane person and now I wander round my house singing like an oompa loompa . Must go and take my medication

We have chosen to send our DD to secondary school in Wales even though we live in England. We live in the Forest of Dean only a few miles from the boarder with SE Wales She seems to be enjoying learning Welsh and goes to Welsh club after school. My Gran is Welsh and I always wanted to learn Welsh but there wasn't much chance growing up in Buckinghamshire! Planning on learning myself now as I work in Wales.
Like some others I think learning another language is useful what ever the language.

OP - is you don't want your child to learn Welsh & take a GCSE in it may I suggest you live somewhere else? I'm Welsh and it my 1st language (& its very important for me. My 3 kids are also Welsh & proud of it.

Welsh also comes in handy when you want to say things to those how CBA to speak it when living here - twll dy din di yr ast hunanol.

Yankeecandlequeen, I think you'll find you are about 2 years late for this debate , but it is lovely to see someone happy to deffend the language, I was reading through it thinking 'FFS not this one again' and then noticed I'd already posted on it! Was thinking though 'you might want to pop to the pub and tell DH and his friends to stop speaking a dead language over their pints'. Hold on to your annoyance, there's a thread like this every 6 months or so. (mother of 3 bilingual DS and wife of a first language Welsh speaker)

InterruptingKid we only laugh at English folk who can't even write in English

Dumbledoresgirl
"Paid yn bod yn Hogan drwg" don't be a naughty girl. "Pied un bord un hog an droog" or Hogyn for a boy.
"Fynd I gwely rwan" Go to bed now "Vynd e gweli ruan"

If you wanted to be a teacher,GP or similar where I live then Welsh is a distinct advantage,I hear welsh spoken every day here and many locals and plenty of small children are more profficient in welsh than in english.(I am near Cardigan,the wild west). If your child wants to work in any media based job here, then again,welsh is needed. Not all of wales is like the south,where you may only rarely hear welsh spoken .My DH isn't welsh speaking and I am not fluent,but I am happy my dds are at a welsh speaking school (as are all our nearest primaries).I think its great for them to learn the language of the country they may stay in,and if they move away then they are still at an advantage to have learnt a second language at all.

sut'mae!

Have only skim read the thread but am interested by the number of people saying the OP should go and live elsewhere. Have we established whether she was born in Wales and therefore has as much right as anyone else to live in her own country? Speaking Welsh does not make you more Welsh than someone who only speaks English.

But apart from that, yes, it's a long way until he's doing GCSEs.

Increasingly though, Welsh is not just an elitist language for the yummy mummy middle classes. There's a new Welsh language school in Splott in Cardiff.

"Welsh also comes in handy when you want to say things to those how CBA to speak it when living here - twll dy din di yr ast hunanol."

I can't begin to express how wrong that statement is.

YABVVVVVU.

In my opinion Welsh is an absolutely brilliant language and if I were given the opportunity I would have chosen it as a GCSE and A-Level subject. My DP's whole family is first-language Welsh, and we're currently in South Wales, near Swansea. Everything around here is Welsh, and I have to go out of my way to explain that "rhydw i'n ddim siarad a cymraeg".

Since having DS though, we've decided that he'll be taught Welsh and English, so I've started learning along with him. I'm getting quite good too! I know all sorts of phrases relating to babies and their needs, I know all of the numbers up to 100, I know all of the colours in the spectrum and I can recite the Welsh Alphabet! I'm enjoying myself as well, as I can understand what someone is saying to me in Welsh... even if I can't reply!!

Besides which - HE'S THREE. Chillax!
And what everyone else said. Don't like the Welsh culture? Then go away :) I love every inch of it and I think we should stay true to our roots, regardless of where in Wales you live. Welsh and proud :)

If your child has the chance to learn welsh from an early age, take it. spanish is very easy to pick up at a later stage. french is harder than spanish. both these languages can be picked up anywhere, welsh cannot. it never hurts to be billingual.

YANBU.

Actually, reading this back, some people are being so incredibly offensive!!

So, OP. You think that because "not many" people you've met can speak Welsh, that it should be abolished completely and we should spend even more millions deleting Cymraeg from every signpost, public building, road surface, school and household?!

What absolute rubbish. Are you seriously telling me that Welsh shouldn't be compulsary... IN WALES?! What next, are you going to move to Africa and then complain about all the "darkies" and their "gibberish" too? For Gods sake.

We're a culture as much as anyone else, and if you don't like it then really - please leave. Because it's people like you that contribute to the bigotry against Wales and it's language, and it's people like you who make Welsh a minority language.

Interestingly enough, you're completely against Welsh as it's a "dead language" but you wouldn't mind your child learning Latin or, as you claim above, "Ancient Egyptian"?! At least Welsh would be a LOT more useful than Ancient Egyptian!