You can't put price on Welsh (From South Wales Argus)
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You can't put price on Welsh
3:45pm Tuesday 5th February 2013 in Letters
I THINK that Mr. Price (Letters, Argus, February 1) has missed my point.
Separating Wales into areas where one language or the other was the predominant one, in order to decide which of the two languages would be used for official purposes, would, I believe, be a very expensive and largely futile exercise. So, we end up using only English. It’s a small step from that to dropping the use of Welsh because it costs more to use both languages. I contend that you can’t put a ‘price’ (no pun intended) on cultural inheritance. It’s worth it. When I come over the Severn Bridge and see the signs in both languages, I feel at home and proud that I live in a part of the UK where we have such a cultural diversity. This part of the UK is different to the rest. So, if you lived in, say, Anglesey, Mr Price, would you object to having all things official in only Welsh? I bet you would. Is it not, however, ‘grotesque’ to do this for only around 10 per cent of the monoglot English population of the island? It’s the principal of the thing that counts, not the numbers.
Dr. Mike Thomas Chepstow Road Newport
Comments(7)
Mervyn James
says...
8:06pm Tue 5 Feb 13
Llanmartinangel
says...
9:21pm Tue 5 Feb 13
Mervyn James wrote:Does that actually mean anything to anyone or am I being blonde?
What price bigotry ?
scraptheWAG
says...
10:49pm Tue 5 Feb 13
I truly hope that Cameron cuts the Barnett formula and then the WAG will no longer have money to squander on this daft nonsense. I wonder what English residents would say if they really knew where all the grant money they gave the welsh was really spent.
pbhj
says...
12:45am Wed 6 Feb 13
Dr Thomas appears to have missed the point made in the financial argument at hand. Even if only 1% is monoglot English language speaking if there is a greater percentage who can understand English language in total to those who can understand any other language (to a sufficient level to understand government issued documents and such) then that majority language meets the needs of government most efficiently.
Even in the areas with the highest numbers of traditional Welsh language speakers the most understood language by population is English.
I can't see any financial argument for such fervent government support of such a minority language especially as that support leads to the detriment of Wales' mastery of English and ability to communicate with the world at large.
Llanmartinangel
says...
9:04am Wed 6 Feb 13
pbhj wrote:You'll never succeed in getting any of the 'pro' lobby on here to engage in debate about how Welsh is financed. They will throw all sorts of tripe about Estonia and Finland, spending on Trident or Iraq/Afghanistan (the old 'two wrongs make a right' argument). If you don't believe this, try this one sample question and see who responds: If the £1Billion spent on S4C in the last nine years had been spent on Welsh hospitals and Ambulance services, would they be better now? and, part 2, Would we still have approximately the same number of Welsh speakers as we have now without S4C? Answering 'Yes' to both questions means that (a) the language is being kept alive by people using it, not by a TV channel no-one watches and (b) It was real money after all, and not some unearned gift out of a clear blue sky.
>"So, if you lived in, say, Anglesey, Mr Price, would you object to having all things official in only Welsh? I bet you would. Is it not, however, ‘grotesque’ to do this for only around 10 per cent of the monoglot English population of the island?"
Dr Thomas appears to have missed the point made in the financial argument at hand. Even if only 1% is monoglot English language speaking if there is a greater percentage who can understand English language in total to those who can understand any other language (to a sufficient level to understand government issued documents and such) then that majority language meets the needs of government most efficiently.
Even in the areas with the highest numbers of traditional Welsh language speakers the most understood language by population is English.
I can't see any financial argument for such fervent government support of such a minority language especially as that support leads to the detriment of Wales' mastery of English and ability to communicate with the world at large.
Monoglot
says...
10:25pm Sun 17 Feb 13
Llanmartinangel says...
4:53pm Tue 5 Feb 13