Comment on ESL homework
davidagain@lemmy.world 14 hours agoIf you are born in Wales and never moved away, it might look like this:
English English English Welsh
If you are born in Wales and never moved away, it might look like this:
English English Welsh Welsh
Welsh is an official language of the UK and most things in Wales are in Welsh first and English second.
Away from the south and the more touristy areas, you’re likely to find people speaking Welsh in everyday life (education, shopping, workplace), rather than just at home.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
I lived in Wales for a year and I managed to learn some very basic Welsh myself. It’s been about 15 years now, but at least back then it was mainly old and very young people who spoke Welsh. Most people aged 20-60 didn’t speak Welsh at all, with the younger ones learning it at school.
But I guess with that generation being up to maybe 35 now, speaking Welsh is likely much more common than it was back then. So yeah, my chart above is likely outdated.
davidagain@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
My central point is just that Welsh is one of the languages of Wales and so can be third on your bullet points.
I think it’s at the very least rather undiplomatic to argue that it shouldn’t be called a national language of Wales.
I’ve had people swear blind to me that they visited Wales on holiday and Welsh people are rude because they speak English in the shop until an English person turns up and then they switch to Welsh to exclude the English. I think they were mistaken that English was being spoken before they went in (how would they know?) and just assumed they were speaking English until they started paying attention, when they realised it was Welsh. I’m willing to bet £10 that any such people cannot accurately tell me the content of the English that was being spoken until they “switched to Welsh”.
Culturally, ignoring Welsh or downplaying its relevance to real people’s lives is similar in offence to telling British people that they don’t speak American properly, that they spell words like colour incorrectly, and that they should stop putting on their absurd British accent and just speak normally.