Linguistic genocide — why kill the Welsh language?
The new Apple emoji update could not have come at a better time. There is now an eye-roll emoji that portrays my exact feelings towards blog posts belittling and berating the Welsh language, or as some like to call it, the “dying language”.
It’s gotten quite boring listening to arguments about how my language is an unnecessary expense to the people living in the UK, as if they forget that Wales is also part of the UK. It’s tiring having the language that I have lived my whole life through being called a waste of money. Welsh must be one of the only languages in the world that is hated simply because it exists. Simply because it defies Anglo-Saxon and Norman history. Simply because its existence seems to be such an embarrassment to some of the English. The angry blog posts written by monolingual students are almost embarrassing enough to not warrant a response. Because it is only a monoglot who cannot understand the importance of language, because they have never made the effort to learn another.
My response is not a message about those who write these blog posts, the same people who probably go on holiday to Spain and get annoyed when the waiter speaks to them in Spanish. Instead, I want to tell you how the Welsh language is alive.
I have lived my whole life through the medium of Welsh. My education, my first memories, my first friends, my birthdays and Christmases and everything else in between have all been experienced through the medium of Welsh. Tell me then, exactly how I have managed to live my life through this language if it is dying?
The historian Gwyn A Williams asked “Os na chaiff cenedlaetholdeb ei ganolbwyntio yn yr iaith, ymh’le caiff ef?” (loose translation: “if nationalism is not concentrated in language, then where else is it found?”). The problem with anti-Welsh language rhetoric is that it doesn’t take into account the fact that language does not exist in a vacuum. Whether that language is a majority language or a language fighting for survival. Language is weaved into culture, into literature and into people. The Welsh language is not useless because people speak it. But, it is also so much more than that. When people are anti-Welsh language, they perhaps do not understand that they are anti-Welsh. Because nationality and language and culture are all entwined. As long as the Welsh culture is alive, then so is the language. As long as rugby is played and people swarm the city to watch, to sing, to celebrate, the language lives on.
Onto politics. I know the anti Welsh-language lot use the money spent on the language as an argument against the language itself. But honestly, doesn’t the fact that the government spends money on the language support my argument, and not the contrary? If the language was dying, then no money would be spent at all, because we would all be in agreement that it is actually a waste of money. The government does not spend money in sectors where it is not needed. We spend money on education to improve the education our future generations receive, we spend money on health to improve the standard of healthcare we receive, but we spend money on the Welsh language because it is dying? The argument lacks logic, and it lacks originality. The fact that money is spent on the Welsh language means that the language is important. Daniele Conversi argues that “no country’s politics exists independently of its culture.” The Welsh language is part of Welsh culture. We respect different cultures because it is people’s beliefs, people’s history, people’s knowledge. We respect cultures because we are taught to respect each other as human beings.
I feel equally as Welsh when I live in my student house in Cardiff as when I live in my parent’s house on Anglesey. I felt equally as Welsh when I lived in the South of France. I feel equally as Welsh when I speak to my friends in English as when I speak to my friends in Welsh. The Welsh language is not the unique factor of my existence, but please do not try to deny its importance. If the language is truly dying, then why do we as a nation come together to sing “o bydded i’r hen iaith barhau”?
