The Welsh Government want your opinion

Great point. This is such an obvious problem with the current provision! And surely something that is relatively easy to change.

maybe. I was also wondering about increasing the amounts of small snippets here and there - normal people talking in Welsh from time to time on the English news, with subtitles perhaps. I have seen news stories where S4C and BBC have interviewed the same person, who speaks in English on BBC news and Welsh on S4C - couldn’t we hear it in Welsh on the BBC with subtitles?? (And not just BBC Wales - BBC news at 10 etc etc.)

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Sorry if this has already been suggested and I’ve missed it…

An obvious way to increase the number of Welsh speakers, would be to increase the number of Welsh medium school places. In North East Wales demand is hugh for a relatively small number of places.

I don’t think there is anything too controversial about this. Demand is there. Perhaps the problem would be finding enough teachers.

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If only that was the case.

Also, when it comes to parents making decisions about schools a lot of factors come into play - where is the school, how far away. Where do the other kids on the street go to. Welsh schools tend to be attractive based on their performance, but that is only a decisive factor if other EM schools close by are very poor, which more often than not is simply not the case. Many people can be faced with a choice between a very good EM school, that is nearby in which they will have friends living in the same street or to send a child five miles away to a WM school in an area they do not know very well and where their child will be different to other kids on the street. As a parent you would have to be very commited to make the second choice and many, many are, but for those where it’s more of a nice to do sort of thing then it will never be a valid option.

Hello!

I’m supposed to be studying for tomorrow’s English exam, but instead I decided to spend my afternoon writing this and reading through everything here. I’ll just have to accept that I will get a not-so-good grade :smiley:

So, most of the things I wanted to say have already been said here, but I guess I could mention my opinion as a Finn learning Swedish at school, and also as someone who has lived in a country where most people only speak their county’s own language, Italy.

As someone who has been in a Finnish school for most of the time I’ve spent studying, I absolutely hate Swedish. I guess Swedish is sort of our version of Welsh as a second language, and I’m sorry to say that people really don’t like studying it here. Our education system is good, but it’s not working as well as people outside of Finland say it is, or at least not in terms of languages. (That said, having also been to an Italian school, Finnish education is a lot better. A lot.)

Many Swedish people live in Finland and everyone in Finland has to learn Swedish at school. There is still the problem of confidence, though. Many - if not most - people my age, the ones who go to school and have to study Swedish, can’t have a conversation, or even give or ask for directions in Swedish after having studied it for 6 years. (Now, I could just happen to be in the only class in Finland that is bad at Swedish, but I’m assuming this is at least not uncommon). I don’t want to hate Swedish, but this is getting pretty frustrating.

I think there are many problems that contribute to this. Firstly, the way we learn makes us just cram for the next exam and then immediately forget everything we learned. Obviously we can remember some basic stuff, like the numbers from 1 to about 999,999 (which are so useful when you can’t even remember how to say “I would like two bars of chocolate, please”), how to say “hi”, “bye” and some basic verbs, substantives and adjectives. For exams, we have to learn grammar and vocab that is only relevant to that one course, so when the next course starts we forget the earlier material and start again.
Secondly, you don’t really hear Swedish that often if you don’t live in a Swedish-speaking area. My old school used to be right next to a Swedish school, so I would hear some casual Swedish conversations at the bus stop (without understanding a singe word). Sometimes you hear some people speaking Swedish on the tram, and the most commonly seen Swedish is found on road signs (usually second, though it’s first in the areas with the highest percentages of Swedish speakers) and subtitles in cinemas.
Lastly, I guess history has something to do with it. This shouldn’t really be a problem in Wales, actually it’s probably the opposite. I won’t go into much (or any) detail, but Finland has had some bad history with Sweden so we have some people who are still bitter.

The first problem could be fixed by having a more SSi-type of approach to language learning. Don’t aim for perfection and all that stuff everyone has already mentioned.

That part ended up being longer than I meant it to be…
tl;dr: Basically people in Finland who are not native speakers of Swedish, don’t have friends/family or don’t have use for Swedish (most people) can’t and don’t speak Swedish despite having “learned” it at school.

English, however, is much more common here. That is definitely because of television, movies, social media and things like that. Almost everyone can speak it to some degree and can offer customer service in it if needed.

In Italy it is not so, in my experience. I was born and have lived there for slightly over half my life, so I think I’m at least partly correct when I say that it’s very common for people to not be able to speak English at all (things might have changed a bit, I lived there seven years ago). I think this is also because of television, movies and all that stuff. In Finland, the media is mostly in English with Finnish and Swedish subtitles. For this reason people want to learn English because it is useful to them directly, even without having any friends who don’t speak Finnish. In Italy the media is completely in Italian. Everything is dubbed and nobody ever hears English anywhere. Slightly exaggerating, I know, but my point is it doesn’t feel useful to Italians.

Points that I was trying to make:
-As others have said, give people reasons to want to study Welsh. More movies, TV, books and things like that in Welsh. Sindarin, from the Lord of the Rings is based on Welsh! Welsh is easier to learn than English! This one actor from Game of Thrones speaks Welsh! (Not gonna lie, that last one is the reason I started getting interested in Welsh…)
-Forcing people to speak/learn it is bad. People will hate it and will not want to speak it when they don’t have to.
-Change the way second languages are taught in school. I like the point about not calling it a second language, but it would still be taught like a second language. It honestly needs to focus less on perfection, because the way it is now, everybody is having mostly bad experiences with the language and no confidence to speak it.
-Use history to your advantage since you have the chance.

I apologize for the length (didn’t mean for this to be this long, I can’t summarize) and the lack of new stuff. This started turning into a rant at some point. I guess what I was trying to do was just to back some points other have made and possibly offer a different point of view. I don’t know, I tried.

(Side note: Reading these has strengthened my desire to move to Wales and become a teacher :blush:)

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5 posts were merged into an existing topic: A quick collection of off-topic stuff from the Government opinion thread

Apparently, Anglesea Council has got plans along these lines…

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A quick thought on what I think could be a very modern twist on studying the so-called classics and a subject that could be very useful for students applying to certain universities. What about something in the curriculum to inspire an interest in languages and how this links to culture, national identities and communication; covering the history of languages - Indo European and Non-Indo European.

This is something that could give context to languages and create a lifelong interest in languages. You could look at language families on the Indo-European side of things - including Greek, Latin, Celtic, Slavic and Germanic - also linking to things like Sanskrit etc.

Tolkein provides a great role model for someone who loved languages and became one of the most influential authors of the twentieth century - his love for languages created immense value on a global scale - once ranked by Forbes magazine as the fifth top earning “dead celebrity”. Google translate provides an example of how knowledge of languages can lead to the creation of technology outlets that create and derive value, leading to career opportunities for those who have high level skills in understanding of linguistics and related IT skills.

You could also include people like Edward Lhuyd from a historical perspective and many, many more. A lot of the early linguists were also scientists - botany and physics, people like Thomas Young - famed for Young’s Modulus in science. So many links it could be a very rich subject in terms of science, history and communication, not to mention the workings of the brain and psychology.

Being one of the few survivors of the Celtic languages, Welsh would have a prominent role and it would be a very useful subject to have alongside other languages as more discrete subjects.

This would be a very contemporary and valuable subject in our modern world of mass communication and social media - it does link very nicely in my mind. Things like coding at the end of the day are just contemporary languages, very, very useful, albeit never spoken. In my eyes, sciences are also languages and any subject that can consider all of these things from a language perspective would be a very valuable thing in the current era.

How does this link to the goal of 1 million Welsh speakers, well the key thing to learning languages is the motivation to learn. This provides a motivation to learn which is very outward looking in terms of understanding the importance of all languages. Students doing a subject like this should be motivated to learn languages from different language families and appreciate that this enhances their knowledge of communication and appreciation of other cultures. It is possible to export using solely English, but you can export better knowing local languages and cultures. Surely it is important when trying to understand other cultures that we also have in-depth knowledge of our own; this is surely a foundation step.

All of the worlds knowledge is wrapped up in languages - it is a part of the knowledge economy and it is important to understand that no single language can possibly encapsulate the breadth of human knowledge. Celtic languages have a place in understanding the modern wold and learning Welsh has significant importance, beyond our communities and our borders.

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I don’t believe it’s been mentioned earlier, but Y Lolfa’s bilingual book ‘Gwneud y Pethau Bychain/Do the little things’ edited by Ffion Heledd Gruffudd could be good source of suggestions for what could be done to boost the language. While it’s principally aimed at what individuals can do in their own lives, this includes persuading schools, colleges, businesses etc to take on board a variety of suggestions which perhaps the government could equally press for ‘top down’.

More than likely any suggestions contained in the book would find their way into the consultation process anyway, but it’s usually wise not to take these things for granted!

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I think your thoughts on micro-commitments is a great idea. It allows people that may feel ‘beyond the learning years’ to be more comfortable with bite sized pieces of Welsh to learn.
I am Canadian and one thing that we do is have any mandatory information on labelling (warnings, directions for use etc) in both english and french. That way it becomes part of everyday life in an unobtrusive way but it reinforces the bilinguality of the country. I don’t know if the labelling is the same in Wales, but it is a handy way to pick up vocabulary.

I think that it is very exciting that the Welsh government is looking at this. I wish that I was there.

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I agree. Welsh needs to be seen everyday everywhere in Wales. If not Wales then where else? There needs to be more Welsh websites, popular TV, music etc all in Welsh and promoted by the Welsh. This can’t just be a quaint movement. I think there should be programs on TV for pre-school children in Welsh only. I don’t live in Wales so I don’t know if you have these programs or not. But shows similar to Sesame Street that are in Welsh only. Ingrain it early and subliminally as you mentioned.

Fight the good fight people. For what little it is worth, you have my support.

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29 posts were merged into an existing topic: A quick collection of off-topic stuff from the Government opinion thread

Some great suggestions in this thread and I am glad to say that I had already seen and responded to the consultation.

I largely echo what has been said previously; important points which I feel could help achieve 1,000,000 speakers:

  • A Welsh first approach on public announcements/correspondance

  • An emphasis on conversational Welsh in English-medium schools over formal written skills (which will inevitably develop from speaking and listening)

  • Incorporating Welsh language history and Welsh history (i.e. pre-England/UK) into Welsh language lessons

  • Make Welsh more interesting by recognising the global influences it has had e.g. Tolkien’s Sindarin, World of Warcraft etc

  • Using ‘Cymraeg’ instead of ‘Welsh’

  • A positive Welsh media to counter the current England-dominated media which we overwhelmingly hear in Wales. Which, incidentally, seems to jump on every chance it gets to patronise the Welsh and our language (views which accurately reflect White middle-class English attitudes in my experience).

  • Promote resources such as Duolingo and SSiW which make learning in your own time far easier than commiting to classroom sessions

  • Promoting cool contemporary music artists such as Kizzy Crawford, Swnami and Candelas (particualrly on English language programmes in Wales) which I think are fantastic adverts for Cymraeg and could appeal to young people

  • A Welsh subtitle option on Welsh language programmes

  • Using Welsh language interviews on BBC Wales news with English subtitles would definitely help normalise hearing Welsh

  • Welsh speakers continuing to be supportive of Welsh learners and recognise that many of us weren’t fortunate enough to be brought up with Cymraeg spoken at home etc

  • Promoting all Welshies (learners and first language alike) to try to use Cymraeg on Dydd Dewi Sant

That’s my two pennyworth - if you agree with any of these points, please feel free to add them to your own when completing the consultation form :slight_smile:

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Reposted from another thread.

I’ve been learning, or have learned Welsh over the past several years, starting on my tenth year now. So I started before SSIW existed, possibly even before it was a twinke in @Iestyn and @aran’s eyes.

So in that time I’ve met dozens if not hundreds of people learning Welsh on the way. Over the past month, as we are getting to ‘start of term’ time, I’ve been asking if they have signed up for classes.

No, I’ve given up.

No, the classes are too far away.

No it’s too hard.

Somebody told me that for every 100 people who start at Mynediad 1 only one gets to Uwch. Now I know that some get to a level that they are happy with, but so many fall off the wayside thinking they are failures.

They are not failures. The system is failing them.

Now I know I am preaching to the converted here, but by golly it’s making me angry.

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With all do respect, I believe you who of those authorities are checking this topic, it might worth to check this topic too. You might get some suggestions and picture of the whole situation with classes and courses for adults.

Maybe it comes the time for just doing something not calculating too much if your country is about to get that 1.000.000 speakers in the future. Implementing Welsh in schools in Wales, teachers training for doing that job … all this opens new jobs and gives perspective to the language. What about to go from this point on rather then looking into the past and calculating how many teachers there was/is to teach the language and how likely would kids and their parents agerr with learning Welsh. It’s Wales so the country of the language …

(will not go further as it was all said already …)

I think that a hypothetical schedule will help with decision making, because if we need a certain number of additional pupils enrolled per year, we can look to see which areas will be the easiest to start with, where there is likely to be the most support and focus our efforts and resources there initially, rather than spreading things thinly over the whole of Wales.

Some parts of Wales simply won’t want it initially, so don’t force it when there is no real need. Also get people in areas that buy in to this, to tender and campaign for it to happen in their area.

doing things this way, we will be reponsive to demand and not flogging dead horses in places like Tredegar for example and risk stirring up resentment and vocal opposition.

Ladies and gentlemen, please leave this thread for your actual submissions to the Government, and put any discussions over in the other thread (it’s very tricky for me to unpick discussions which may have elements in them which you’d like to submit formally).

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-encourage buy-in from younger people by promoting Welsh websites run by young Welsh speakers dealing with topics that interest their generation

-promote Welsh poetry submissions by youth in public spaces ie buses, bus stops, in local newspapers etc

-promote local Welsh talent with contest submissions for skits, singing, music etc, all in Welsh on TV. Winners can get 30-60 second spot on TV or some such.

-ensure labelling on products is in Welsh and English
-ensure tourism industry is bilingual

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3 posts were merged into an existing topic: A quick collection of off-topic stuff from the Government opinion thread