Even English dialects (not just in Wales) have been until recently, frowned upon. So, this would also have to be the case with other languages, eg Cymraeg.
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I first started (and gave up) learning Welsh 30 years ago. Way back then, and I am sure things are no different now, Welsh speakers would say how well I spoke Welsh, which was a surprise because I hardly knew any. What I think they were saying was that I was speaking like a text book and they recognised the difference in the ‘non proper’ way they spoke. What may have been a little more different then was the fact that they were highly unlikely to have had any of their education through the medium of Welsh which must have had an impact on how they perceived their Welsh to be. But it seems to continue in the psyche. How this is dealt with is open to debate.
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Perhaps the woman at Checkout No.2 will become the bellwether of how the ‘ordinary’ Welsh speaker promotes the language to learners and others. When whoever is staffing Checkout No.2 greets everyone with a Sutmae hoping for a similar response then, perhaps, we will have cracked it.
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I think there’s a tendency to link the assertive promotion of the Welsh language with divisiveness and with nationalism (which is linked in many people’s consciousness with xenophobia, rather than with freedom fighting). From a different perspective, I read an article recently which suggested that the expectation for teachers and other workers to speak Welsh results in a less diverse workforce, since most Welsh speakers are white. This, of course, doesn’t acknowledge the fact that black and ethnic minority people are equally capable of learning Welsh (and, recent events have shown, can learn it to an amazingly high standard in just six months 
).
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Sorry to come late to the party. First of all I would say, and anyone who’s met you will agree, that this had nothing to do with the quality of your Welsh. You speak very, very good Welsh, very naturally. I would also guess that this had absolutely nothing to do with the colour of your skin. This has happened to me a few times over the years and I’m a white, middle aged man. I now have the confidence to demand a Welsh response, so …
Realise that this isn’t your fault.
As soon as you get an english response ask them, in Welsh of course, if they speak Welsh and then carry on in Welsh.
Don’t back down.
If they carry on in english, and if you have the nerve, ask them why they won’t speak Welsh with you.
Turn the shame onto them.
Sorry, but I get worked up by things like this.
It’s not you, it’s them.
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That’s a really neat way of going for the jugular - I like it. 
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Take no prisoners! 
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Actually, this might be a time to re-share an old story of mine, which I think overlaps in some interesting ways (although without the minority language thing).
I was sitting in a cafe in Masvingo in Zimbabwe once, patiently slogging my way through my current book in Shona (which I didn’t speak - at least not well enough to have a proper conversation).
I was, as always, asking for my food and stuff with as much Shona as I could manage - and, as often happened, the waitress was answering me in English - which I was putting down to my Shona being rubbish, or her thinking it was unacceptable tokenism, or something like that.
Then, towards the end of the meal, the same waitress came back, and noticed the book.
‘Ah!’ she said with a new level of animation. ‘What is this? You can’t read Shona?!’
I thought hang on - you have at least HEARD me speaking Shona to you, haven’t you? Even though you stubbornly answered me in English?
So I answered - IN SHONA - that yes, I was reading this book. I mean, what are the alternatives? You think I carry this book around with me for FUN??
‘If you read Shona, tell me what it says, then!’ She wasn’t being nasty at all, just highly entertained by this crazy murungu who was telling lies about speaking Shona (IN SHONA).
So, as you would, I quickly picked a passage I’d more or less got the hang of, and started translating it for her, to show that I understood it.
‘AHA!’ she cried, vindicated. ‘That’s English, not Shona! You can’t read it in Shona!’
So apparently every single thing I had said to her in Shona had been processed by her as ‘language coming from a murungu = English’. She genuinely had not noticed that I was speaking Shona to her, because that was a ‘not possible therefore not happening’ thing. So of course she’d answered me in English, because everyone knows you have to speak English to a murungu…
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There is another factor, which is that once you have established a relationship with people in English, it’s rather hard to switch to another. It can seem forced and unreal. I have had this with German friends, who speak 110% good and fluent English, but knowing I like to practice speaking German, offer to speak it with me sometimes, but it can feel very artificial. (It works better when I’m visiting them in Germany, especially if they have friends or relations with them, so the common conversational currency is naturally German. The situation in Wales is obviously more complicated, because except in certain communities, you can never be sure that the common conversational currency is going to be Welsh.
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Yes I get used to get called up for my southwest accent all the time in all sorts of situations. So much so, I managed to get rid of it/unlearned it at uni and while living in london. I’ve started taking it back and don’t care if people think I sound like a mudfoot farmer with straw between his ears!!
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The best accents are from the SW!
It’s well known that white people can’t speak African languages 
When my (white) mum would speak Krio while we were visiting Sierra Leone, people would gather around to listen in disbelief, but also delight that she’d taken the trouble to learn. (She once even got a round of applause when a group of young people were told that she’d gone a step further and managed to produce me, which I’m disappointed to say isn’t the usual reaction.)
That’s almost exactly the opposite of my experience, where people would sometimes learn my name and then bark Mende at me in the expectation that I would instantly absorb it and burst into fluency.
Books, covers, eh?
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Yup, this.
[Which always makes me pretty shame-faced about the fact that I pretty much only buy books if I like the cover… ]
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Right, next time I meet a first language Welsh speaker I am not only going to tell them NOT to use English (as it seems some do!?!), but I am also going to tell them to shout at me as loud as they can. Just in case your Mende speakers were on to something…
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I should warn you that this is the approach my mother takes when travelling abroad… she just points at whatever she wants and speaks LOUDLY and S L O W L Y in English to the poor sap behind the counter.
Unfortunately she’s one of those people who, when you suggest “why don’t you learn a few phrases before you go over?” will reply with “what’s the point? Everyone speaks English”.
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That’s a very important point. At the extreme, what might be going through their mind might be something like: “Hey now, here am I just trying to do my job and get through the day, and here are you inflicting your “hobby Welsh” on me, and then expecting me to understand what you are trying to say, and offer polite corrections like a language teacher. There are people out there paid to do that sort of thing. I on the other hand am paid (and not very well) to serve bread/petrol/groceries/beer/whatever, and as we both know perfectly well that you can understand my English far better than you can understand my or anyone else’s Welsh, kindly let me finish the job in English, and get on and serve the next customer…”
Of course, most Welsh people are probably far too polite to actually say anything like that, but I wouldn’t totally blame them if they did. The above is about service situations, and purely social situations would be a bit different. There is also a difference between someone who has moved into a Welsh speaking community and is doing their best to integrate themselves, and someone who is just passing through.
I think I’ve said this before, but this time I’ll try and do it with Welsh/English in place of Catalan/Spanish:
Me, in tourist office: 'Sgynnoch chi fap o’r ddinas, plîs? [Have you got a map of the city, please?]
Tourist office lady: [something in English]
Me: Mae’n ddrwg gen i, dwi’m yn siarad Saesneg. [Sorry, I don’t speak English]
Her: O, pa iaith dach chi’n siarad? [Oh, what language do you speak?]
Me: Huh?
OK – it would be more surreal if it happened like that, but you get the idea. It was the Quin idioma parla? (“What language do you speak?” – in Catalan!) that got me.
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Reminds me of a couple of odd things that have happened to me. One, after stumbling across a piece on the web written by a S American friend protesting about political interference in her institution’s work, I read it to find out what was going on, believing it to be written in Spanish, and I understood, it but it wasn’t until I’d finished that I realised it wasn’t Spanish at all, but written in French - gave me a strange feeling I’d lost my bearings (or maybe my marbles 
).
The other thing, on a recent trip to Welsh Patagonia we were kindly invited to a service - a mix of Welsh and Spanish - in Capel Bethesda, Dolavon (followed by a tea - and more cakes than I’ve seen in years! 
). At the end of the service someone stood up and gave a sort of speech of welcome and talked about the place of the chapel in the community etc etc - I more or less understood what she was saying but I couldn’t work out at the time whether she was saying it in Welsh or Spanish - definite feeling of loss of marbles there! 
I guess my take home message is that all those brain cells working away in the background do know what they’re doing, even if we don’t! 
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Those are both rather brilliant…
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get one of those orange cymraeg badges, and a lanyard thing for your neck, they have cymraeg all over them. i’ve had similar problems til i routinely started wearing these, now welsh people start conversations with me in welsh as they assume i’m welsh and work for the council! it’s made a big difference. and don’t be put off by your experience. i’ve had so much support from o many people who’ve made me feel 10 feet tall, while other welsh people have admitted they are too lazy to speak welsh to english people and ‘must try harder’, and only one person has been actively discouraging to the point i was so upset i almost gave up, spent a week feeling low (and tearful!!! haha) about it, but then got angry, i would say the experiences with this one person still rankle, but is fueling me on! so turn this bad experience to your advantage and let it keep you going! (is the best advice this awkward woman can give you lol that path to fluency will never run smooth, but that’s part of the fun isn’t it? xxx
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