Toby Belfield’s comments on the Welsh language have hit the Daily Mail. The total number of Mail reader comments has hit over 700. Most are from England, so you would not be surprised to learn the way the comments tend to lean. There's scant understanding of the issue. Mind you, there are exceptions from England and some fairly vitriolic remarks from those purporting to live in Wales.
What would happen were the boot to be on the other foot. I well recall the concern among English speakers in the early 1970s at the time of what was then called the E.E.C. There were fears that French, not English, was seen as the dominant European language and that didn't go down well east of Clawdd Offa/Offa' Dyke. England hated the idea that communiqués would be in French first. French was an official language from the 1957 Treaty of Rome.
The volume of Mail comments prevents our publishing the best & worst of them but here we think is an interesting sample, from both sides of the argument.
I'm pretty sure there is enough room inside the heads of Welsh people to hold two languages at the same time.
How is it that learning more than one language isn't a problem in the majority of countries across the world? The Scandinavian countries teach up to three or four languages and they're always on top of the academic tables. It isn't as if the English education system is top of the class! Sixty per cent of the world is bilingual and the majority of the western world performs better than the UK when it comes to education. In Wales, Welsh medium schools perform better than their English counterparts in subjects including English.
It's easy to target the language regarding its cost etc but annually only £20m is spent on the Welsh language compared to over £50m on English ballet! Now that is a waste!
Pilots use English everywhere... except Cuba.
If you want to learn Welsh as an option fine but the UK's language is English and that should be the first language everywhere. As everyone in Wales understands English having bilingual road signs is totally unnecessary.
Given the difficulty there seems to be in even teaching English to a level that is useful in the world of business it would seem to be deleterious to our children’s' education to add an effectively useless language to the curriculum.
Let them wallow in Welsh, while our children make useful progress. My education was similarly blighted by being forced to learn Latin, whilst I could have been doing something useful [the irony here is that till relatively recently, Latin was the second language at Schola Ruthinensis].
I am also a Welsh speaker and attended a Welsh speaking school. Out of 30 6th formers in my year, I am able to tell you that at least 5 are Drs (GP partners and one high ranking Army Dr), 4 Solicitors, 1 Vet, 1 very well-known now-retired Pro Rugby Player and now coach, 4 Engineers, and the remaining are predominantly high ranking executives. Not bad for a bunch of kids educated in Welsh!
Spanish would be more useful with welsh as an option for those that want to waste their child's time learning a pointless language for the sake of it.
Students who learn several languages and music excel in maths. They say it's because these students are more diligent and use more of their brain.
The volume of Mail comments prevents our publishing the best & worst of them but here we think is an interesting sample, from both sides of the argument.
I'm pretty sure there is enough room inside the heads of Welsh people to hold two languages at the same time.
How is it that learning more than one language isn't a problem in the majority of countries across the world? The Scandinavian countries teach up to three or four languages and they're always on top of the academic tables. It isn't as if the English education system is top of the class! Sixty per cent of the world is bilingual and the majority of the western world performs better than the UK when it comes to education. In Wales, Welsh medium schools perform better than their English counterparts in subjects including English.
It's easy to target the language regarding its cost etc but annually only £20m is spent on the Welsh language compared to over £50m on English ballet! Now that is a waste!
Pilots use English everywhere... except Cuba.
If you want to learn Welsh as an option fine but the UK's language is English and that should be the first language everywhere. As everyone in Wales understands English having bilingual road signs is totally unnecessary.
Given the difficulty there seems to be in even teaching English to a level that is useful in the world of business it would seem to be deleterious to our children’s' education to add an effectively useless language to the curriculum.
Let them wallow in Welsh, while our children make useful progress. My education was similarly blighted by being forced to learn Latin, whilst I could have been doing something useful [the irony here is that till relatively recently, Latin was the second language at Schola Ruthinensis].
I am also a Welsh speaker and attended a Welsh speaking school. Out of 30 6th formers in my year, I am able to tell you that at least 5 are Drs (GP partners and one high ranking Army Dr), 4 Solicitors, 1 Vet, 1 very well-known now-retired Pro Rugby Player and now coach, 4 Engineers, and the remaining are predominantly high ranking executives. Not bad for a bunch of kids educated in Welsh!
Spanish would be more useful with welsh as an option for those that want to waste their child's time learning a pointless language for the sake of it.
Students who learn several languages and music excel in maths. They say it's because these students are more diligent and use more of their brain.