To me we’ll never know the real facts we can read Gildas, educated by St Illtyd (or Lord Ruhys as he’s known in Brittany), like many of the Saints educated here who travelled to Brittany and Ireland and maybe infer things from the hundred year period that Bede omitted to write about, but we’ll still never know.
To me there is good reason to suspect that there was a period of ethnic cleansing - maybe not in the sense of a genocide, but in terms of cultural and ethnic cleansing through power and wealth. The departure of people to Brittany and the highlands to me suggests that change occurred through force - which can be as much through power and wealth as much as anything else. We can’t judge people from that period using todays values - there’s something inherent in people that seems to mean these things happen frim time to time, but we can reflect and try to understand why certain awkward feelings and ideas towards Anglo-Saxon things might still persist.
I heard an Indian woman in conversation in Welsh with four Welsh children she was with on a train from Chester to Bangor In September. There was no ignorant monoglot telling her to speak English, though.
Glad to hear it! Mind you, as Huw Jones pointed out after my earlier post, that story about the “foreign”-language speaker being told “you really should speak English” has done the rounds in various forms (and in different countries, with different languages involved) — it appears to be just one of those reassuring but unfounded stories that people like to hear because we want to see xenophobes getting their comeuppance. Good to hear your true story, though, especially without there being any ignorant monoglot involved.
Cornish and Welsh didn’t emerge, and diverge, until well after the settlement of Brittany, Mike. At the time of settlement, both nations were still speaking Proto-Brythonic.
Yes, the economic and social links between Cornwall and Brittany were maintained until the annexation of Brittany by France in the 16th Century. They thought of each other as the same race as themselves, which is why many Bretons fled to Cornwall as political refugees after the annexation (they were ‘going home’). Wales had dropped out of the equation by then.
I gather too, back in the 11th century when the Normans conquered England, a good number of William the Conqueror’s men were actually Bretons and many of them ended up settling in Cornwall, precisely because they were of the same “race” and still spoke essentially the same language as the Cornish. There is a long-standing and totally unsubstantiated legend in my family that our Cornish ancestors were descended from William the Conqueror’s vice-chancellor — which is most probably not true, but perhaps they were descended from one of his Breton supporters and the story got embellished a bit?
You may well be right about the apochryphal nature of the ‘Speak English!’ demand, Courtenay. A bit like when a visitor or settler claims “They switched from English to Welsh as soon as I walked into the pub” - it never happened. How would the Welsh speakers know that the person in question wasn’t Welsh, before he’d said a word?
However, on a wider political level, there are occasionally demands that English be used as well as Welsh.
There’s also a woman from England living in a village near Bala who wrote to the Supreme Court demanding that her community council translate the reports of its meetings into English. The Supreme Court backed her up.
Thankfully those attitudes don’t exist on this forum where we have many learners of English backgrounds enthusiastically learning Welsh and rejoicing in the language. I think it’s better to ignore the negative reports as much as possible and focus on the positive.
You’re right, Dee. Many non-Welsh people are now sympathetic to the cause of the Welsh language. Consider the large number outside Wales who signed the petition to retain S4C online.
Just a small correction, because these things have a tendency to become ‘facts’ simply through repetition, but it was the Public Services Ombudsman, not the Supreme Court. Also, I don’t think the woman’s origins were ever detailed, just that she was (maybe still is) a non-Welsh speaker.
There are lots of English people living in Ceredigion, and as much as some of us might love to speak Welsh I’d feel a bit upset if someone looked confused and said oh when I said I didn’t speak it. I wish I had been born speaking Welsh, gosh I really do but no, now I am slowly trying to learn, not my fault I was born the wrong side of the border ;D I mean that with love
I think welsh should be taught in all English schools alongside English. Or maybe schools in the south of England. I feel really bereft that I never had to learn Welsh and slightly guilty when I go to Welsh speaking areas in Wales and have to speak English The guilt is probably a bit daft but I’ve got a bit of a flag flying for Cymraeg at the moment and wish I had some background in it having only really started looknig at it properly now age 47
I would not want to comment without knowing the whole story, but this woman seems totally obnoxious, not the way to be accepted in a community. I don’t know what her beef was, and it’s not wrong that she would want to understand the community council minutes/reports if they were relevant to her, but if she ws that bothered she could have got herself a private translator. It looks to me like she’d slating the Welsh for using their own language, which is disgusting and a primitive attitude.
The language is key…else why does it so fundamentally change hearts and minds?
In Irish that would be Tiocfaidh ár lá…our day will come. Tiocfaidh ár lá
I have always thought along the same lines. At least children should be made aware of the languages which also exist (or existed) alongside English within the British Isles (which includes Ireland, since this is a geographical term, not a political one). Made aware of all the languages, and taught to respect them, and perhaps given the chance to learn at least one of them to a reasonably good level (using SSiW principles would be a good start, of course).
I don’t think it need be restricted to the south. After all, northern England and southern Scotland has a connection with Welsh via Cumbric
In the south-west of England, Cornish might be the more natural choice for children to be encouraged to learn to a good level, but it would be good for them to be exposed to Welsh as well, and indeed Breton.
I think a lot of other things beyond just the awareness of the languages could be touched on as well, if people want to understand why these languages exist at all. I heard a clever bloke yesterday saying Winchester used to the old capital of Britain in the 9th century.
