What is wrong with the Welsh......

PURELY BECAUSE it is just about the most useless language out there. Who speaks Welsh? Just Welsh people. What do (just about) all Welsh people also speak? English. English also facilitates communication in maaany other countries.

What anarrogant and ignorant replies of many. The Welsh langauge is the oldest language of the British isles and part of the history and culture. The Welsh have long been forced by the English to speak English, children were forbidden to speak Welshs in schools. Kids got punished if they didand even beaten. Same happened in Scotland with Scots Gaelic. That is the reason so few people speak these langauges still, not because they decided to just traded their langauge for English.

In terms of Scotland - and I suspect Wales too - that's utter rubbish. Scots Gaelic has been in decline for the best part of 900 years. By the 14th century, English was effectively the national language of Scotland. While in the late 19th and early 20th century there was some discouragement of Gaelic-speaking in some schools, this was not some sort of foreign influence: this was local school teachers, governed by local school boards and (prior to that) by local parish boards. Many of them saw it as backward and insular in modern society.

Indeed, since the 19th century, Scots Gaelic has seen official encouragement in an educational setting. Central government was not hostile to it - the worst charge that can be levelled is that they showed a limited indifference and that attempts to support it were modest.



Again, in terms of Scots Gaelic, it itself supplanted the status of pre-existing languages - namely the Brythonic languages (previously, as you mention, spoken across Great Britain, particularly if you include Pictish within this family) and Anglic languages too: Gaelic itself tried to supplant the Northumbrian-speaking tradition of the Lothians at points in history.

There's a deeper point to all this: cultures are inherently changing. Language is one aspect of this - although, of course, there's very rarely a straight switch: there are Celtic words in modern English, and obviously many placenames across Great Britain.

We have a great deal of ways to preserve culture. For me, however, language is - most importantly - a tool of communication. Ultimately, I think those dusty old duffers on school boards in the west Highlands and the Welsh valleys had broadly the right idea: the use of the English language created great opportunities.



Well, it did happen. The Norman Conquest squeezed out Old English and replaced it, gradually, with the mish-mash we speak today.

If people are particularly attached to some cultural aspect of their lives, they will cling to it. I think the mistake often made by sentimentalists is to cling too tightly when, ultimately, the populus is changing around them. Once change has happened, people are rarely sitting around yearning for the old ways.

Thank you for your reply.

Of course languages come and go. And Gaelic has been in decline, but the last 200-300 years it was mainly because the people were forced to abondon their languages. The British (or the English one should say) forbade the people to speak their language and where severely punished if they did.

Yes they (the Scotch) are. They have Gaelic language roadsigns at the Boarder when Gaelic was never spoken at the Boarder - excluding perhaps Galloway. Prior to the arrival of the Angles in Scotland in the 5th century when Old English became the common language, Cumric i.e. Welsh was spoken in the Boarder and much of the Lowlands.

Yes they (the Scotch) are. They have Gaelic language roadsigns at the Boarder when Gaelic was never spoken at the Boarder - excluding perhaps Galloway. Prior to the arrival of the Angles in Scotland in the 5th century when Old English became the common language, Cumric i.e. Welsh was spoken in the Boarder and much of the Lowlands.