Pretty short piece wasn’t it?
I didn’t think that the Commissioner’s answer to the “why do this”? question was particularly clear. Perhaps the programme just didn’t allow her enough time to answer.
I was listening to Huw Williams on the lastest Desolation Radio podcast; https://soundcloud.com/desolationradio/welsh-language-with-huw-williams. His reasoning for the importance of language is much clearer, in summary, “Languages don’t describe the world, they create worlds”. I think this understanding is lost from much of the debate.
However taking this on board raises the question, why do we wish to promote a Welsh worldview over the English worldview? The simple answer to this is - it isn’t either or, or about promoting one over the other, but by having both languages, we have an external view point which can help us understand both worlds.
Language on it’s own doesn’t seem to make sense as a spending priority alongside the NHS, education or the economy that Nick Robinson mentioned. That is until you realise that language is more important than all of those things, because it forms our attitudes towards them all. Language is about culture. And not just ‘culture’ as an expensive arty add on, but culture as the very basis of our society.