{Truth in Cultures [continued (7)]}[29th October 1988]

[Redbook6:30-31][19881029:1905c]{Truth in Cultures [continued (7)]}[29th October 1988]

19881029.1905

[continued]

I have no objection to my children learning Welsh, and I still hope to learn it myself, although even the County-subsidised lessons have turned out too expensive in fees and travel.* But I do object to two things:

(1) the use of language to boost political, cultural and racial separatism; and

(2) the attempt to make English-speaking children primarily Welsh-speaking, which is the intention of bi-lingual education as I perceive it.

If it be asked why, having come to Welsh Wales, I do not wish to help preserve its linguistic Welsh uniformity, my answer is that among the languages of the World, there are perhaps four which can be described as languages of freedom and choice: English, French, Spanish and probably German, in that order** (German for its conceptual power more than its universality, if that is a valid qualifying property). Welsh, by contrast, is{,} for the Individual, through no fault of its speakers, a language of parochialism and limitation; and the same is true of Gaelic. Individuals may choose to learn and speak inward-looking local languages if they wish, and if they care enough they will continue to do so in their own homes and between each other. But children are done no service by the substitution of (say) Gaelic as a second language, instead of (say) French or Spanish.

The survival of languages is a matter of choice by Individuals. All languages die out or change beyond recognition eventually: no one speaks Middle English now, and we are none the worse for it. Very few of us can really understand Shakespeare without a crib.

*{I have just started them [& became in due course, until several years after a move to a less Welsh-speaking area, able to hold an everyday conversation in Welsh, at least with with Welsh-speakers who spoke clearly.]}

**Why not (for example) Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, or Russian? – because these are not languages of Individual freedom and choice, by reason of the relatively monolithic nature of the cultures of which they are a part, and are therefore (in my view) in the second rank.

[continues]

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