Rarely have I agreed with an article more than this opinion piece by Tom Law featured on the Sabotage Times examining the cultural subjugation of the Welsh language and the Welsh-speaking citizens and communities of Wales. He articulates for many the frustration and anger of a new, younger generation of activists in the Celtic nations determined to have their voices heard in the face of the passivity and fatalism of too many of those who came before.
“The popular narrative is that it’s just a natural process – a stronger and healthier language replaces an older and weaker one. That the Welsh language is dying of natural causes – like an elderly relative withering away. It’s sad but inevitable. What can you do?
That’s the common explanation – but it’s bollocks.
The Welsh language has declined so rapidly because the English placed a pillow over its face and smothered it. It has taken around 150 years to complete, there have been occasional bouts of kicking and thrashing against, but it’s pretty much job done.
And it was only when the body was limp that England placed some chocolate biscuits on the bedside cabinet – bilingual road signs, a Welsh TV channel. And then started to berate the lifeless patient for its lack of appetite.
England’s policy towards Wales is not the only reason for the decline, but it’s the main one. It’s the consequence of the state treating the Welsh language as a sickness which needed to be cured.
This division of the population by language has been eating away at the country ever since. It has created two versions of Wales, two distinct cultures which view the other as a threat. What one side gains, the other side loses. What’s good for one, is bad for the other.
It has left non-Welsh speakers feeling like outsiders in their own country, forever left out in the cold and staring back in at a history and culture they can’t access; at jobs they’re not qualified to do. For Welsh speakers, they have been battered from all sides, endlessly under attack, having to justify the use of their own language – mostly to fellow Welsh people.
It’s a cultural civil war which has brought out the worst aspects of both sides. A nation which once fought for its rights, which fought against inequality and injustice has been effectively turned in on itself.
If the attack on the Welsh language was done to subdue and weaken the country, to create a servile and utterly compliant people who would accept their British medicine – then it can only be seen as a monumental success.
Wales has become a husk of a nation. The decline of the language, the stripping away of links to its history and culture, has induced a kind of dementia. It’s a country which no longer remembers who or what it is – so it simply exists. And accepts the guiding hand of its neighbour.
The removal of the Welsh personality has created a void which is being gleefully filled by the English media’s tub thumping brand of Britishness – the royal family, the Armed Forces, Team GB and all that. And there seems little hope of anything changing.
There’s no fight or energy left. No upsurge of anger. No dissent. No political will. No obvious solution. Just a blank stare, a rugby top and a grim Welsh cheeriness; a nihilistic acceptance of fate. While Scotland gains confidence and considers independence, Wales is left retreating into the arms of its abusive partner and going gently into that good night.”
One could just as easily apply some of those criticisms to Ireland, to an island nation where those who speak out for language rights are vilified while those who disdain or oppose such rights are elevated to the highest positions of influence in our society.
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
You can force me to speak foreign language to my boss, landlord or teacher, but not to my family and friends – that can be a personal choice only.
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So then we must ask, what are the factors that would influence that choice? Utility? Identity? Community? You tell me? You’re our ‘tame’ multilingual foreigner 🙂
But the elephant in this room is the mental block most English speakers seem to have against learning *any* other languages. This is surely the oddity that cries out for explanation. Many people from Northern Europe speak very good L2 English, and the explanation usually given is that they start getting it at school from age 5 or 7, rather than at age 12 or 15 as is generally the case for foreign languages in most English speaking countries. BUT what has staggered me is discovering that almost every citizen of the RoI has been taught Irish throughtout their schooling, and yet when people are stopped in the street they almost always say they don’t know a single word. I mean, most English people can at least remember a few bits of ‘school French’!
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The challenge is creating the environment where people will choose to make that choice. And part of that is people seeing a general respect and place for their language in their society at large. As the Baltic states have proven in their language revivals.
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Agreed. I used to be sceptical of token usage (e.g. road signs etc.) but it does at least make the language visible which is important once the percentage of speakers falls to a point where it won’t commonly be heard by non-speakers. And the less it’s heard, the less even native speakers will be inclined to start a conversation in the minority language, so we’re on a slippery slope.
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That is the very point I focus on. Social acceptability. The embarrassment factor does more to inhibit a language’s use than many other more obvious ones. Hell, I’ve felt it myself and had my fair share of awkward social encounters. Even a “thank you” as Gaeilge can elicit all sorts of responses from antipathy to ridicule. I know people who speak Irish at home but would never speak it in public for fear of embarrassment or being the centre of attention. This is a crucial point that people rarely focus on. Hence the importance of the language being ultra visible in society at large even at the level of signs, documents, etc.
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I’m wondering if there have been any serious studies of this, if not there’s a PhD or three there for someone. Isn’t this what we pay academics for — LOL!
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Im going to make a conscious effort to speak as Gaelige when out an about. I am so grateful for all this information on your blog! It has restored my faith in our people.
You posted this below and I couldn’t have put it better myself. Very well said.
“My own argument with Irish Republicans who oppose the continued British Occupation in the north-east of the country or any accommodation with the British colonial presence in Ireland is simply that their objectives could be better achieved by waging a linguistic and cultural struggle instead of an armed struggle. They should be fighting with words not guns.”
Go raibh maith agut!
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Compared to Irish in Ireland the Welsh Language is a great success story. The % primary kids in Cardiff being educated through Welsh must be in the 20s if not higher. The regard for and use of the language in Wales is way ahead of Ireland – even though we (the Southern bit) have had independence for almost 100 years.
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WME (Welsh Medium Education) started the trend later followed in Scotland, Ireland, IoM … The higher percentage in Wales may simply be due to their system having had a longer time to gather support. Nothing succeeds like succes!
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re. “The higher percentage in Wales may simply be due to their system having had a longer time to gather support.”
Partially – but there were a larger number of indigenous Welsh speakers left when the revival commenced and they existed in the cities as well as the more remote areas.
I dont think the main story reflects the current strength of Welsh.
There is a great ‘story’ about the IRA men (Collins and Co) in Frongoch (internment camp) and organsising Iirish Language classes and being in somewhat amazed at the (Welsh) civilians coming into the camp conversing in Welsh.
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The most important aspect in the successful creation of Welsh-medium education is the presence of a supportive civil service. Ireland’s Dept. of Education is so pathologically hostile to Irish-medium education that it has become a stereotype of itself. While children attending Gaeilscolieanna are educated in prefabricated huts children attending Educate Togethers are endowed with swanky new buildings to the cost of tens of millions of euros. It should not be a case of one or the other but one would imagine that Irish-medium schools that have been waiting to be housed for twenty years and more, schools with waiting lists numbering in the hundreds or thousands, would take priority. Instead it is the opposite.
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Reblogged this on seachranaidhe1.
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Hold on now. While Scotland may very well gain its independence from England in the near future, that doesn’t change the fact that it is a country in which less than 1% of its population speaks its native language. Wales is MUCH better off in this regard. Political independence from a colonial power is of the utmost importance of course. But Wales shouldn’t be so quick to give into despair. Cymru hasn’t abandoned all respect for its linguistic and cultural heritage, as Scotland has in all but the most superficial ways. Welsh is the single healthiest Celtic language in existence. A sizable portion of the Welsh population doesn’t simply pay lip service to a Welsh Wales; They actively support it, and direct their lives in such a way as to advance that goal. Now, all that Wales must do is convince the rest of the country that they can share in that cultural revival as well, that Cymraeg is just as much their language as it is any other Welshman’s. After that is achieved, history indicates that political independence will almost certainly follow. And it will be a truly Welsh Wales, rather than the essentially English (“Scots” if you prefer) Scotland that will emerge after the referendum.
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My own argument with Irish Republicans who oppose the continued British Occupation in the north-east of the country or any accommodation with the British colonial presence in Ireland is simply that their objectives could be better achieved by waging a linguistic and cultural struggle instead of an armed struggle. They should be fighting with words not guns. If the resources, time and effort of those in the broad Republican Resistance was put to restoring Irish as the spoken vernacular of this island nation instead of trying to wage a half-hearted insurgency they would achieve more in the next twenty years than anything achieved in the last twenty years. Liberation begins in the mind first.
In that the Welsh are indeed ahead of both the Irish and the Scots, despite their otherwise lack of political confidence.
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Séamas,
I agree with a lot of what James says about the strength of the language in Wales and I dont think this is reflected in your main article. We are miles behind Wales even if the Southern bit of Ireland has independence.
It does not follow that because a country has it independence that there is interest in the language( though I agree about your point about pursuing that) nor does it follow that if you restore your language then it is a given that indepependence will follow.
There are many issues to convince people of regarding changing their constitutional status quo and it seems unlikely that Wales becuase of its economic, geographic, historical and cultural links with Britan will change that. Probably the same unfortunately for Scotland where the SNP have made a colossoal blunder in going for poll too early – what the situation in Ulster will be remains to be seen when demographics put ‘Nats’ in the lead – probably in about 30 years.
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