I learned via watching Welcome to Wrexham that the English suppressed the Welsh language because reasons, probably principally because suppressing language is a tool of governments to oppress minority groups. In or around 1982, a Welshman wrote Yma o Hyd (“We’re Still Here”) about the perseverance of the Welsh people against centuries of oppression. He specifically name-checks Margaret Thatcher.
I’m to understand that Thatcher’s conservative policies generally were unfavorable to the Welsh, likely because of economic and political reasons that I’m too far removed to understand. But was Thatcher herself keen to see the Welsh language suppressed? Was her government? Or was she just generally a bad PM when it comes to the Welsh, but the language was “free” (for lack of a better choice of words) by that time?
There was a language aspect to the launch of the UK’s fourth national television channel, which took place on Thatcher’s watch in 1982. While this was being debated and planned in the late 1970s, Welsh language activists pushed for the Welsh verson to be a Welsh-language channel — Welsh-speakers were badly served for television up to this point. Both Tories and Labour promised a Welsh language channel if elected in 1979 but, after the election, the Tory government changed its position and proposed that Wales would be served by the same, Engliish-language, service as the rest of the UK, with occasional local opt-outs for Welsh language progamming. I think the change of policy was driven not so much by hostility to the language as by the cost implications of running a largely separate channel for a relatively small group of viewers. A campaign of civil disobedience ensued, including a licence fee strike and a threatened hunger strike. The campaign was successful; eventually the government relented and provided a dedicated channel for Wales, programming predominantly in Welsh.
The point the poet is making may be a wider one, though. The health of any language depends on the health and vitality of the communities that use it. If those communities degrade and decline, the language will wither. Conversely if a language is healthy, that tells you that the people whose language it is are also in a good condition. Policies that affect the health and welfare of Welsh society will also undermine the language. So I think the poet is making a point, not so much about the language policies of the Thatcher government, as about economic policies and positions that affected Wales adversely.
The 1988 Education reform act made it compulsorary for school pupils in Wales to be taught up to the age of 14.
This is FQ so there is no real answer, is making if compulsory that Welsh is taught in schools compulsory promoting Welsh or not doing it supressing it. Is it suppression of the Welsh language to allow lessons to be taught in English? However usage of the Welsh language increased during the Thatcher era and in my opinion she opinion she did little to surpress it.
Beetween 1981and 1991 the percentge of Welsh speaks was pretty static (down from 19.0% to 18.9%). Since 1891 there has only been one decade that has not seen a decline so if she was trying to oppress the language she was not very successful.
The Government was not in the business of suppressing the Welsh language by the 1980s - that was really a pet project of the Victorians and early 20th century politicians. Thatcher was despised in Wales because she’s a right wing ideologue who closed down the mining industry - with the consequent devastating impact in Welsh mining communities.
As Jeppeg notes above, the Education Act of 1988, during Thatcher’s term in office, actually made the teaching of Welsh in Wales compulsory from age 5-14, so her government was doing the exact opposite of suppression.
Indeed. A local friend who emigrated from Wales to Canada was among those who had Welsh language lessons during that era. He’s not fluent, as he admits, but he can do the typical (hello, good-bye, please, thank you) and put together some phrases in the Welsh language. It certainly is an interesting-sounding language, on the occasions when he demonstrates it to his friends.
And heaven help the person who says, after hearing him speak English, “You’re English, aren’t you?” Trust me, he does not take that kindly.
Poor guy. The Welsh I know have a noticeable different pronunciation of some words than England yet I’d not expect a Canadian to pick that up.
Most of the Irish I know or am related to have an uncanny way of asking fellow Irishmen “are you from Galway” or Limerick, Dublin, etc… and they’re often right or close enough.
When I saw Brannagh’s “Belfast” or Danny Boyle’s “Trainspotting” (set in Edinburgh) I was glad to have subtitles. Oddly, didn’t need them for Alan Parker’s “The Commitments” and (years later) as I mostly lived in and around Dublin I heard that accent lots.
ETA: And in “The Englishmen who went up the hill and down a mountain” poor ol’ Hugh Grant is befuddled by the Welsh language intentionally and that did have on-screen subs.
In the later 20th century and 21th century, rights of autochthonous minorities in European countries usually concern the following issues:
(a) Minority language taught in school (referenced upthread: Welsh mandatory since 1988)
(b) School taught in minority language, i.e. also other subjects - was that ever the case in Wales?
(c) Minority language getting its share of public broadcasting (referenced upthread)
(d) Minority language and culture associations, theatre etc. getting appropriate share of state subsidies
(e) The right to interact with administration and courts in the minority language.
There are two aspects that are not relevant to Wales/UK but that I note for the sake of completeness:
(f) The right to register personal names of the minority culture for one’s children (not relevant in the UK because apparently there is no bar to register any name)
(g) Administration accomodating the script of the minority language (not relevant because Welsh is written in Latin [a-zA-Z] with no diacritics needed).
How was/is UK policy to Wales/Welsh with respect to the issues (b), (d) and (e)? Are there any monoglot Welsh speakers?
(b) and (e) - yes. (d) depends on what you consider “appropriate”, but this is an area devolved to the Welsh Senedd and government, do presumably also yes
,
Closing down mines sounds like the opposite of something a conservative would do. Ask any American conservative - more mining, more pollution, more jerbs!!! What was the Thatcher government’s reasoning?
I can think of two ways in which being a speaker of a minor language is a benefit.
Non mainstream ideas have some chance to flourish among the language speakers.
In a war, it may be easier to keep secrets from your enemy, if they have no or very few translators.
And one hypothesized (but, even if true, probably only barely so):
Particularities of the language - whether it has future tense or not, whether it has masculine and feminine tenses, etc. - may subtly influence the way that you think about things and lead you to having novel ideas.
Outside of those three things, there’s really no upside to minority languages. You’re really just isolated from the rest of the world if you’re all mostly monolingual speakers, and limited to a smaller selection of talent that you can recruit from elsewhere. You need to waste effort with translation to move information across the barrier and then the quality of the translation choices are often going to be lower because, odds are, the person making the choices on what to translate over aren’t the best choices because you’re a small population and most people aren’t impressive. You’re picking the things needed for running a small community, not for building rocket ships. It would be harder for the children to get access to things that might encourage them towards more grand pursuits.
It’s less bad in a majority bilingual community, but you’re still wasting time and effort on the second language. Realistically, it doesn’t have much value outside of scientific/historic interest.
The one exception might be the case of Switzerland, where the natives are multilingual in fairly major languages. That gives them access to lots of stuff and talent, and they have done well for it.
That’s not the case of Wales.
Now this isn’t to say that minority languages should be suppressed and outlawed. I’m just saying that, most likely, there really is very minimal advantage to being a member of a small language community.
It was more a case of privatising the state-owned industry and letting market forces loose on its successors.
And because her despised Tory predecessor had caved in to a miner’s strike, whereas she was ready and organised to resist when there was another strike over the proposed “modernisation” of the industry - the union walked right in to the trap, and they were split where her majority in parliament didn’t.
Well there’s always the Joni Mitchell Principle - you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.
But you’re right that technical and social developments can overtake a minority language’s capacity to develop itself. My utterly unscientific perception* is that there can be a fair amount of relevant English loan words for anything to do with, e.g., the internet.
*From TV programmes. The BBC is currently showing an Irish-language murder mystery and the loanwords for all the technicalities of investigation, podcasting, etc., fairly ping out. Plus the hefty swearing is mostly English.
She had a science degree and was early to grasp the general issue of the environment and sustainable development. She argued to a major conference that earth wasn’t ours to do what we liked with it, we had it “on a full repairing lease”. I don’t think climate change was yet on the agenda, but with her background, I think she’d have got the general point.
Also, the idea of using up one’s resources as fast as possible without thought for the consequences would have been anathema to her brand of small town/small business conservatism (the clue’s in the name, after all).
All living languages have loanwords. English itself is famous for borrowing from other languages — as I can’t remember who said, English doesn’t so much borrow from other languages as follow them down dark alleys, beat them up and go through their pockets. Notwithstanding many loan-words in modern Irish, there are far, far more words in modern English that do not share the West Germanic roots of English than there are words in modern Irish that do not share the Celtic roots of Irish.
I don;t think we can argue that English’s extensive borrowings from other languages are a sign of vibrancy, but other languages that borrow from English are evidence that they lack the capacity to develop themselves.