to not teach my DS any English

[DewinDoeth]

Ok, moved from another thread as it seems to have got people going!

DS is two and speaks quite a lot, but only in Welsh.

I live in a Welsh-speaking community, I'm a native speaker and Welsh is my first language (in fact I'm a lecturer in Welsh lang&lit), my entire family are Welsh. DS attends a Welsh medium nursery 2 days a week, and is cared for by my mother 2 days a week. And me the other days! None of the carers speak English with him.
My DH has learnt Welsh to near-fluency, and only speaks Welsh with DS: it gives DH a chance to improve (slowly, with an nonjudgmental speaker ) and has given him a massive confidence boost when it comes to it.
I am not teaching DS any English at all, and I never speak English with him. DS will learn English quite naturally, mainly from the television, or from hearing it around when there are people who don't speak Welsh. It's how it was with me and my English is of a very high standard (no doubt there will be grammatical errors in this post now - but I have an Oxbridge PhD so it can't be all bad).

PILs are not Welsh, live 250 miles away, and have expressed sadness that 'they can't communicate with him'.
They learnt to say hello and thank you in Nepalese when they went on holiday, but despite knowing me for 10 years and my family for 6, they have never learnt any words of Welsh at all, not please or thank you, and say it's pointless because it's a dead language, and it's not an useful language.

posie was that aimed at me? Achos o'n i'n cyryd bod pawb a oedd yn darllen yr edefyn yma ddim yn gallu deall Cymraeg, felly oedd hi'n gwrtais i siarad Saesneg. On os wyt ti am parhau'r sgwrs trwy gyfrwng y Gymraeg dwi'n digon fodlon

I think you need to admit to yourself that you don't feel comfortable about the idea of your son spending an afternoon with his grandparents without you and that his not being able to understand English gives you a good excuse to not let this happen.

I read the first hundred or so posts and then got sidetracked.

I'm half Welsh and half English. My mum with her parent anbd brothers and sisters were the first generation of my maternal family to move out of Wales since time began.

I was raised bi-lingual - didn;t even realise it, only when I got to school did I realise I could do something the others couldn't .

As I grew older I spoke less and less Welsh, to the point now when I can get the gist of a conversation but can't join it.

Encouraging your child to be bi-lingual is a very good thing, making a conscious decision not to speak English is IMO a tad strange. English is part of your DS's culture - embrace it (and never forget that England is called Lloegr in Welsh for a reason )

hmc - Op won't appologise as she conveniently picks and chooses the points which suit her POV and ignores the ones she can't really defend. oh, she also 'cleverly' twists what others are saying, as in that the nast posters don't think I should speal my language to my DC etc. Nearly every poster has said great that she speaks her language but DH should speak his. Obviously the majority of bosters are wrong, biggoted and ignorant.

Only point is that she shouldn't necessarliy take the heat about the 'english' thing. It's her DP who should be adressing this not the OP.

The point, which you have clearly missed, is that you need English. It's an international language, taught all over the world. I think preservation of the Welsh language is great, shame Cornish and others didn't get saved, but the OP is very clear that she doesn't want her son to be bilingual but to have him have English as his second language....which is bizarre.

Haven't read every single post in this thread (yet - am on a night shift at work tonight, saving it for then) but YANBU to only speak Welsh with your DS at home. YABU to use the fact that his grandparents don't speak Welsh to deny him a proper relationship with them.

I note on your other thread that you didn't even want them to take him to the bloody zoo FGS but you state in your OP that your own parents look after him 2 days a week. Hardly fair, is it?

Agree with other posters that you seem to despise the English language and don't want your son to learn it. Why should your grandparents learn Welsh when their DGC is half-English. As you say, he is going to have to learn the despised language at some point.

Agree, this is nothing to do with language, just a MIL bash.

Dewin
I only glanced at the other thread. I do think that you need to make more effort, not to teach your DS English but to allow your PILs to take him out for the day.

I have had children here for playdates who do not speak a word of English or German and my French is pretty abysmal. We managed.

And since your DS is exposed to a bit of English, he will understand them and they will get on fine.

You sound like you are needing to take a step back and let someone else look after your DS for a couple of hours.

It is not about you. It is not about having a couple of hours alone. It is about your DS's relationship with his GP.

"The dragon has two tongues" - RS Thomas I believe.

As far as I am concerned (as an English resident in a very English-speaking area of South Wales), English is as much part of Welsh culture as Welsh.

I understand that you might want your son to learn Welsh through picking it up from his environment, but I think it's probably better to teach him 'correct' (awaits flaming) English.

My 4yo DD has a cracking accent - for some reason she has only just started saying 'yurr' instead of 'here' - which as far as I can see is just as 'Welsh' as siarad Cymraeg.

(Although DH is insisting she supports England in football - he says he doesn't want to condemn her to a life of total misery )

oops on my awful spelling mistakes! Really should proof read before pressing post!

I have just found the zoo thread and see that I was right in my first assumption and it is nothing whatever to do with language and everything to do with maternal control.
Lighten up-he isn't a possession.

I'm confused that the PHD was used as point of how good mum is in English as she studied in England - the phd is in welsh!

helyg any chance of a translation pls

singsinthebath: my point entirely. It was picked up that the post stating that speaking only Welsh to a DC in order to preserve the language was written in English. I replied (in Welsh) that I had posted in English as I didn't think that all of the readers understood Welsh, therefore it would be rude to post in it on this thread. However if the poster would prefer to continue the discussion in Welsh I would be happy to oblige

use both, kids absorb languages so fast, he will never have to 'learn' either if he is young enough. he will just 'speak' both.

the more languages he can speak, the better.

I wouldn't rely on the environment and british media to teach my dc english.

My mother teaches my girls phrase like: 'oh my goodness me' and 'oh crumbs'; it balances out the 'f**k you' they learned in the playground.

Thanks for the translation.
Yes, of course, it's a (mainly) English speaking forum.

But you don't have to rely on the environment or the media to teach your child English!

Once they get to Year 2, even in the Welshest of Welsh medium schools, they have to start learning to read and write in English. So they are taught by teachers. With real teaching qualifications. A few years later down the line they will have to study an English GCSE (AFAIK, you did when I was in school).

There is absouloutely no question that a child will not be taught English properly.

no probs singsinthebath

helyg....you do realise the point was that you need english too...

and if the child learns english from an english speaking parents and grandparents, this will put them at an advantage for when they study it at school.

helyg - out of interest, how much English would a 4-5 yo have typically picked up if from a totally Welsh speaking family?

By Yr 2, they will be about 6-7.

You need English to converse on this thread, yes.

But very few 2 year olds would be posting on it.

Nobody is saying that you don't need English, although I could easily go a whole day without needing to use it as it is not spoken in my workplace, I speak Welsh to all of my DC's teachers and most of my friends, I read Welsh books, can watch TV in Welsh, can even read BBC news updates online in Welsh. But nor is anyone saying that the OP's DC will never learn English.

This isn't about language. It's a MIL thread. And that's the one thing Dewin hasn't replied about - here or on the other thread.

Sorry I realised I typed Yr 2 when I shoudl have said Yr 3 (DS1 is currently in Yr 2 and so about to start being taught English next year).

DS1 is 7. He attends a Welsh medium school, where all of the lessons are through welsh. he speaks Welsh at home, and before primary school he attended a Welsh medium nursery school.

Not all of the children in his class are first language Welsh, many do not speak Welsh at home. So, as a consequence, there is a lot of English spoken at playtime etc. He has spoken English as well as Welsh from birth as my mum isn't Welsh speaking, but some of his friends only spoke Welsh until they started school and started mixing with children who spoke English. They can all now speak English though. DS1 has been taught to read and write only in Welsh, but he has learnt to read in English himself. his written English is a bit dodgy as he tends to spell things in the way you would spell them in Welsh, but I'm confident that that will progress next year when he starts to have some English in school.