I think William should have learned Welsh?

[antelopevalley]

William is the new Prince of Wales. He has known for years he will be, but still only knows a few Welsh words.
Charles learned to speak Welsh and can have conversations with people and has given many speeches in Welsh.
I don't understand why William has not done the preparation his father did for this role?

If you look back at how children were treated in school, English kids were getting caned and humiliated too - it was standard 'teaching' in schools. There were a lot of sadistic bastards whose bullying and abuse went unchecked. But I also think it was likely that these methods were used because that's how the teaching system thought it would get children to learn English. And the truth is they did need to learn it because that was the language of business. Fortunately society has evolved to realise that preserving language is a valuable thing to do and that children are important, their wellbeing matters and that hurting people is abuse, not a teaching method!

Also many people in Wales don't speak Welsh because it was never their language - many people came from England during the Industrial Revolution, so while they may consider themselves to be Welsh, they are of English descent.

But I still believe that a Prince of Wales should learn Welsh because for parts of Wales it is the first language and if he's going to take the privilege of a title, then it should come with a duty to preserve the language and culture of Wales.

Yes Roussette I was being sarcastic.

PW has more time, money and access to the best tutors and learning materials that any of us could ever have. So the logical conclusion is that he hasn't learned any Welsh because he doesn't want to. That's fine and it's also fine for people to have an opinion on that.

It was actually me who mentioned Harry. For some reason, several posters were stating that William isn’t very bright. I was saying I wasn’t sure why they were supposing he wasn’t bright as he did well academically. It is Harry who is famously thought of as not being bright, probably because he isn’t very academic, and I wondered if they were getting mixed up with the brothers. I brought up the grades to back up my claims as evidence that William
is the more academic of the two, and again highlight the fact that I think people are mixing them up.

RandomPenguinHouse merely corrected me on one Harry’s grades.

Of course people can have opinions - the world would be a dull place without them.

No one is getting stressed or angry though. Just frustrated that there seems to be a proliferation of pointless snide threads. And some are taking the opportunity to do so very seriously indeed.

You said Be nice to each other. I’m off to live my life !

The same could be said for folk taking a poke at strangers they know nothing about eh? Only it is reserved for those who question it.

Thank you @TheTantrumoftheToddlerIsThere

It's the same nonsense posted again and again, then when those posters go (off shift?) someone else takes their place.

I don't really care about all of that, but I do care about the lies that are presented as fact. And I find it offensive when people say that the working members of the Royal Family don't work hard - as if the Court Circular is all they do. It's insulting. The Queen was working until two days before she died at 96. I know she had a lot of privilege and help, but she also had responsibilities until her death at the age of 96. That deserves respect!

Have to remember that these comments are made out of ignorance or spite, as they certainly don't come from a place of knowledge.

Accusing other posters of being 'upset' or 'over invested' is a typical response from someone who's been shown to be ignorant of the facts on a subject they repeatedly chose to post about.

This being a classic example.

@TheTantrumoftheToddlerIsThere , PW might be bright. He's had the best education, and they were hardly going to award him a Third at uni.

If PW was as thick as pigsh*t, nobody would say it, but as PH was not likely to become king, they could.

@ImAvingOops
If you look back at how children were treated in school, English kids were getting caned and humiliated too - it was standard 'teaching' in schools.

This is true. I know my parents were in the 1950s as well as myself and my siblings in the 1970s. At the junior school our Headmaster had a display of different canes on the wall on the hallway to his office. He was a bit of a connoisseur as canes come in different lengths, thickness, colour, different wrappings around them. It was like a torture instrument display in a museum. You’d sit in a chair in the hallway staring at them wondering which one was going to be used on you. Especially humiliating as a girl too having to lift up your skirt…

The music teacher was this tall elderly woman and she was incredibly violent. We’d sit in our semicircle with our instruments and she’d stride around behind us whack whack on the head or hands or arm with a long wood ruler that had the metal strip in it if we got a note wrong. Once she was doing dinner supervision and a child at another table didn’t eat his cabbage and reached for his merengue pudding. She picked him out of his chair, tossed him to the floor, flung the cabbage off the plate into his face. Squashed the merengue in her hand in front of his face (she was screaming at him the whole time). It was only when she picked up his chair and was about to dash his brains out with it that a member of staff held her back. I thought ha she’s done it now, they’ll sack her for this. But no, a few days later she’s back in the music class whacking away with her ruler. Never saw her at dinner again though.

And we had it easy and were lucky according to my parents and the things that went on at their schools.

@KirstenBlest If you believe or know William didn’t earn his 2:1 degree through his own merit I would highly recommend that you alert the correct authorities/board to highlight this.

As it happens, Harry was also accused of not obtaining his ‘B’ in A-level Art on his own merit. He was actually accused by his own teacher, who said she “claimed she ghost-wrote his A-level course work” during her employment tribunal against Eton. The exam board cleared Harry of cheating, as did the tribunal, but the tribunal accepted “but it accepted the prince had received help in preparing his A-level "expressive" project, which he needed to pass to secure his place at Sandhurst”. It was obviously seen as a very big deal at the time.

I believe it’s fair to say that Harry isn’t very academic, it’s not a criticism, he has other strengths where William has weaknesses. I do believe it’s unfair to call ANY ONE “as thick as pig shit” however.

I’ve also included a link about Harry’s art teacher employment tribunal which is the article I’ve quoted from.

amp.theguardian.com/uk/2006/feb/14/schools.publicschools

Just re-editing this section from my previous posts as I’ve not set the quoted extracts properly into the sentence and therefore it doesn’t read correctly (mumsnet please get an edit button!)

As it happens, Harry was also accused of not obtaining his ‘B’ in A-level Art on his own merit. He was actually accused by his own teacher, who “claimed she ghost-wrote his A-level course work” during her employment tribunal against Eton. The exam board cleared Harry of cheating, as did the tribunal, but the tribunal “accepted the prince had received help in preparing his A-level "expressive" project, which he needed to pass to secure his place at Sandhurst”. It was obviously seen as a very big deal at the time.

fingers crossed that reads better 🙂

I think William should get a grip of conversational Welsh and also be able to read a speech in Welsh. I have a Welsh breed of sheep and it's wonderful to see the farmers conduct their business in Welsh. That's the sort of situation where William speaking a bit of Welsh might be appreciated.
OP's hatred of William and Kate is hilarious 😆

Out of curiosity I checked to see how long it takes to become proficient in Welsh and found this:

“New research has reveals it takes a native English speaker an average of 1,040 hours to learn Welsh compared to just 550 hours to become fluent in French”

😬

Good luck, William!

@derxa , Lleyn?

Yes. And I have difficulty knowing how to pronounce Lleyn. I'm alright with 'Ll' but the vowel sound is a mystery. Please help!

“New research has reveals it takes a native English speaker an average of 1,040 hours to learn Welsh compared to just 550 hours to become fluent in French”

Indeed. I commend anyone who can find that kind of time and dedication to learn. More so when you cannot totally immerse yourself in it. I found it much harder learning a language in my 30s than I did learning French in school.

Maybe if the folk who are so insistent about it could teach him? Some can be so gifted in that respect and clearly think it should be easy enough.

Although I would wager they would find it equally challenging. Despite them being fairly fluent in speaking rubbish.

“New research has reveals it takes a native English speaker an average of 1,040 hours to learn Welsh compared to just 550 hours to become fluent in French”

Well doh 🙄 Between a third and two thirds of English word come from French according to experts - English speakers have a huge advantage when learning French.

A more relevant comparison would have been the amount of hours it takes an English speaker to learn Irish Gaelic for example.

Well yeah, that’s kind of the point. It takes 550 hours for a native English person to learn French. It takes considerably longer to learn Welsh because it’s a completely different language and considerably more difficult to grasp.

I don’t get your point. Are you insinuating that Irish Gaelic is easier than Welsh?

Sorry, I missed it
Do agree ☺️

Sorry op must’ve been someone else but yes he obv doesn’t see it as important to bother learning. It’s a supremacy thing definitely not due to lack of time and resources

It is less than 3 hours a week for a year.
But lets be generous and say he needs 6 hours a week for a year. So one hour lesson every day - tutor coming to him, so zero travelling time.
Trust me he could squeeze that easily into his schedule.

It’s a purely symbolic and meaningless gesture, to absolutely no end. It feels more like a sort of punitive exercise that you want to inflict on him rather than anything useful to Wales. I have several Welsh family members (first language is Welsh), they’re fine with the RF and don’t really want to change anything.

I love how others can account for someone else’s time.

And can show a such stunning command of arithmetic.

Surely that's 3 hours a day for a year, not a week!

Are you going to acknowledge that you made a mistake @antelopevalley by repeatedly saying William was working part-time at his job in Wales when you were incorrectly thinking of his job in Norfolk?

Surely you wouldn’t want to be guilty of unfairly distributing incorrect information with a pejorative slant about a public figure.