An Open Letter to All Welsh MPs from Rhydian Fôn James
Dear Member of Parliament,
I’m very happy about the Welsh Language LCO, but I can’t quite shake off that feeling of dread that the Welsh Affairs Select Committee, and a handful of anti-Welsh language MPs, will perhaps trip us up. They will certainly try.
Their arguments will fall back on that old chestnut of Wales suffering economically if the LCO passes and the Assembly moves ahead with legislation. Except that this is probably the weakest argument of any that have been made against the proposed legislation.
The point about the economic argument is that it is laughably flimsy – like trying to build the Taj Mahal out of cards, on the moon, whilst using a robotic arm. The argument goes like this: the burden of translating and providing services in Welsh will reduce profits, discourage investment and drive business out of Wales. This is clearly flawed.
Economic models tend to assume homogeneous customers: everyone is exactly the same. But the very best models and the deepest thinking agree that it is difference that is important: in people, in firms, location, and in culture. These differences are the foundation of trade, the basis for buying and selling. They are what drive economies. If everybody spoke the same language in a uniform world, economic activity would slow down drastically. And this is not considering the personal utility of individuals: that bit of happiness that comes not through economic activity but, for example, those priceless moments with your family and friends.
Our Irish cousins have their minority language enshrined in their nation’s constitution as the first official language. This is despite the fact that a smaller proportion of the population than in Wales speaks Irish fluently. However, the numbers who have some ability in Irish has rocketed as people realize that learning the language is a useful skill in the workplace.
The Irish Dáil and Senead both unanimously passed the Official Languages Act in the summer of 2003. The act is binding upon: * Government departments and offices; * Local authorities; * Health Service Executive; * Universities, other third-level institutions and vocational education committees; * Agencies, boards and state companies (commercial and non-commercial).
These state companies are the public and privatized utilities, or any private company substantially funded by the state, or a company given a mandate by the state. No equivalent of chippies in Chepstow here, and this is basically the same stuff as is outlined in the LCO.
Are businesses discouraged from investing in Ireland because of the Irish language?
The Celtic Tiger was the 4th richest country in the world by 2005 estimates, 2nd in the EU behind Luxembourg. The economy of Ireland is going through a rough patch, that is certain, but unless one is making an innovative economic link between the international credit crunch, over-leveraging and Irish Gaelic, I think we can safely ignore that argument.
There’s the Irish example, but also the Basque nation and Catalonia. Both have minority languages; both protect those languages; neither is on the verge of economic collapse.
What about the economic gains of a New Welsh Language act?
For starters, some companies who don’t currently provide much service in Welsh will have to hire Welsh speakers and translators. Job creation? As more people are encouraged to use Welsh services, more jobs could be created in this way.
There’s also the likelihood that more big shops and retail shops may pick up on the fact that service in the medium of Welsh encourages the custom of 20% of the population of Wales. Attracting new customers – I think they call that enterprise?
As more people learn Welsh, more Welsh service jobs are going to be created. And this never hurts the chippie in Chepstow, or the market in Monmouth. They have nothing to do with this legislation. In due course, they may profit by voluntarily providing Welsh language service but for now the people affected will be huge private corporations. The ones who make massive profits and then dodge paying tax on them. Let them use a tiny proportion of those billions to provide services in Welsh.
The economic argument has no merit.
So my request is this: if you actually believe that Welsh deserves a second-class status or that Welsh-speaking people really speak English except when a monoglot’s around, please come out and say so. If you support the LCO, please sign EDM 680, tabled by Elfyn Llwyd MP, parliamentary leader of Plaid Cymru.
Yours sincerely,
Rhydian Fôn James, a member of Plaid Cymru
It is down to a few things. Do the 79% of Welsh people who don’t speak Welsh have the will to see their money being spent to make the other 21% feel superior to them?
Statistically speaking – every single attempt to sell Welsh services ends up being thrown back in the faces of businesses. Look at the number of people who use the Welsh Gas Helplines, the Banks Welsh cash machines the Welsh Websites and the figures are minute!
Translation costs are a great place to start. Do you know what the cost is? Official WAG guidelines highlight 8p a word as an acceptable cost. As a single A4 sheet normally contains 400 words, that means every page of work within a business is going to cost £32 to translate.
That is £32 that the business is going to have to find from the extra customers turning Welsh is going to bring them. Considering that the average staff handbook is 30 pages long, if they go down the route to translating everything, as the law wants – £960 out of the profit of the business before they even start!
These costs may not be of any issue to WAG who get funding through the EU minority language programme, but most small businesses cannot justify spending £960 to translate a document nobody actually reads!
The truth of the matter is that this whole concept is a scam. Welsh speakers, when given the option, still choose to read the English text. This is very obvious on Council websites which have both languages available throughout.
There are between 1 and 10% of people who will choose to read the Welsh page, but that means that 90% of customers are not doing so.
There is no business reason here to give special treatment to this 1-10%.
Any fool who thinks that a company will willingly spend money on translations which are not going to bring in AT LEAST what they cost to offer, is mad!
If this policy is made live, without a huge hole which allows companies to ignore it – while allowing the Assembly to pretend they are doing something about it – I can’t see Wales having many private companies within 10-15 years – but maybe that is what the assembly want!
I really don’t know what Bob Jones is talking about. Seeing as he’s happy to make assumptions about Welsh speakers let’s make an assumption about him – he’s well over 50.
A few years ago in the Swansea area where I live, Lloyds Bank decided to cut a load of jobs and shift them to India. All the jobs went – except in the Welsh language unit. Surprisingly enough, few people in India (if any) speak Welsh – and so the jobs had to stay.
Lloyds Bank (a hard-headed commercial institution) obviously saw VALUE in retaining the unit, implying there was demand for the language, otherwise they would have just shut the unit down.
So in this instance the Welsh language protected local Welsh jobs – and in an English speaking area too!
Bob Jones: You’ve obviously not read my letter before replying, or misunderstood both it and the LCO. My letter underlines the futility of the ‘economic argument’ against the LCO – yet you repeat that very argument!
No small business is involved and neither are any large private companies that do not provide services formerly in the public domain. Why repeat the same completely nonsensical argument? If you have a reasoned response, do let me know!
Why do the anti Welsh language people make the cost an issue. I don’t see them complaining about the cost of translations into Asian, Eastern Europian, Arabic and other languages which you are asked if you want copies of in every official letter and forms you get from Government Departments.
Also road signs and liturature in Polish, Companies taking on foriegn workers having to translate workplace signs and documentation into thier foriegn employees own languages.
That’s OK ,but in Welsh, oh no !!
What about the services for deaf people who’s first language is Welsh, aren’t they allowed to have Welsh language translations.
In an increasingly globalised world the majority of the planet enjoys the advantages of multi-lingual ability. These include a richer life – both psychologically and socially, as well as metalinguistic and metacognitive advantages (i.e. better at all languages and higher I.Q. ). Having an unique identity and “brand” also gives a huge economic and business advantage in a competitive world – we should use the Welsh language to our advantage in all these areas. Vandalising your own culture and language is an absurd, nihilistic act that only the trully ignorant could advocate. Where minority languages have been weakened through processes such as colonialistation, they must be supported to function socially. The Welsh language, like all the other remaining 7000 or so world languages, is precious to human kind (it is predicted that 5000 of them will become extinct by the end of this century). It deserves our care and support.
Dr S.Moseley
It is a pity that anyone who criticizes measures to encourage the use of Welsh gets labelled as “anti-Welsh”.There are many people who love the language and want to see it thrive who have doubts about the way the language is promoted.
Until recently Welsh has benefited from a benign indifference by the non-Welsh speaking majority to compulsory Welsh lessons,bilingual signs and forms and “Welsh desirable” job descriptions ,but this can’t be taken for granted.
In the present economic situation where expenditure on all sorts of things is coming under scrutiny,the cost of Welsh language projects can’t expect preferential treatment. Welsh speakers and non-Welsh speakers have a right to ask,without being called anti-Welsh,how much will it cost? Could the money be better spent on something else?Where is the money coming from, what is it meant to achieve and what evidence is there that it will work?
“Do the 79% of Welsh people who don’t speak Welsh have the will to see their money being spent to make the other 21% feel superior to them?”
At this point one stops reading Bob Jones becaus one realises that 1 ) he hasn’t understood the issues and 2) he’s displaying another case of gross prejudice against speakers of Welsh, and wallowing in the usual minority-bashing claptrap about how they’re better treated than the rest of us.
You’ll have noticed that his figures ar e invented, his charges of arrogance against welsh speakers trumped up and his evidence non-existent.
And to think people with these views are taken seriously.
As for Mr Madoc Jones – please might he tell us in what way Welsh gets ‘preferential treatment’? Where are these ‘Welsh only’ jobs they bang on about? I know for a fact less than 10% of public services jobs in Wales require Welsh.
Come on anti-Welsh bores, where’s your evidence?
Whether or not Welsh should be essential or desirable in a particular job depends mainly on the nature of the work and where it is. For example it is not essential for surgeons in Carmarthen or Bangor to speak Welsh,but it would be nice if they could. A social worker and her clients in Anglesey would be seriously disadvantaged if she spoke no Welsh, but if she worked in Deeside or Newport it would not matter.
My reservations about positive discrimination for Welsh are that it will be extended to parts of the country or to occupations where it does not matter, and good candidates,possibly born and bred in Wales, will be ineligible for certain jobs. I can’t provide chapter and verse at this minute for my “Welsh desirable” comment, but I stand by it. Public sector jobs advertised in the Daily Post and Western Mail often say this. I don’t dispute the figure of under 10% but it depends on which posts the 10% are,doesn’t it?
Mr Rodway has ignored the main theme of my comments regarding the danger of losing the goodwill of English speaking Wales and their right to question the cost of language promotion projects. Without their goodwill the days of the language are numbered. If they feel that certain jobs and careers are closed to them or that their taxes are being wasted then they really will be “anti-Welsh”.
I have no real problem with Welsh becoming the official language in Wales .If however Wales seeks in the long term to be politically and fiscally independant then there are very important issues to get clear now.
1–have the courage to say Welsh is the first language.
Use it throughout the country as the first form of address for a calculated period then the only one through out all aspects of life.
2– All children to learn welsh from nursery and be taught in welsh.
3–All children must be offered English and a second language from primary to leaving school.
4–Universities to teach in welsh from a specific date and taking responsibility for the teaching of welsh to adults.
5– Conduct this transition in the light of the position of an english speaking person resident in a non English speaking country.ie what help would be PROVIDED over language issues.
6–Move as soon as maps are updated to use of CORRECT welsh place names, not made up ones and road signs welsh only.
7–Start now, planning for making Wales tourist user -friendly as English is phased out.
8–Research carefully and evaluate honestly if welsh were to be the first language which business indigenous or coming to Wales would have see serious economic problems .
9– Consider would thisl anguage action have a detrimental effect on mobility Wales to the rest of the world for young people would we as a nation become insular as a result.
In conclusion
If we are serious about the language issue then the slanging matches must stop and only intelligent considered issues and opinions should be listened to.
If Wales is to be taken seriously then it must consider all issues not just the emotional ones.If this will not happen then as a nation we will look to be without stature.
Should it be decided after careful study that the problems the use of Welsh only is not viable then a way of bringing the fine literature we have to the forefront and how it can become an integral part of every welsh persons life should be considered.
Sue – you’re very confused: Wales has 2 languages, not one. So I don;t know what you mean by ‘the official language of Wales’. Other countries manage with more than one official language, and do very well. Are you saying that speaking more than just English is actually detrimental? Because if you are, you’re way out here, and contradicted by pretty much every educational expert in the world.
Your list of options has nothing to do with reality, and is just an unrealistic loonybins scenario. I speak English. Some of my friends and family speak. Welsh. You’re the one who has a problem with that, not me. I believe in bilingualism and biculturalism. Not sure what you believe in.
Evidence please for companies leaving Wales because of Welsh? None. Indeed evidence was presented at the recent LCO debate which showed a survey of companies, and not one of them – NOT ONE – said they’d leave if there was an extended Welsh language Act.
However, the Wales I grew up in was monoglot English-speaking, Tory and Labour ruled, and there were no Welsh language rights, no welsh schools and no welsh language act. We lost all our steel, coal and industry. Our employment and health records were the worst in the UK. You going to blame Welsh for that? What are you on about?
Christopher – I’m still waiting for the evidence that Welsh speakers are positively discriminated against. But at least you’ve accepted my point that fewer than 10% of them require Welsh.
I’m and English speaking Welshman, by the way. You’ve no right to tell me what ‘English speaking Wales’ thinks or wants. I am part of that English speaking Wales, and have a different opinion from yours. Deal with it – don;t invoke convenient so-called majorities to your argument.
What an interesting debate! Most of the major arguments are being aired here. There are one or two points I would like to add.
I believe it is in the interests and to the economic and cultural advantage of Wales to encourage the use of Welsh language wherever possible. I do not believe the existing blunderbuss approach is helpful however. Much of the post that arrives from what used to be known as public services – that is Utilities and Government agencies of many kinds have the whole message repeated in Welsh either in a separate copy or in a reverse section of the booklet. I think it is economically perverse to assume everyone wants this. I am all for communication in Welsh where it is wanted . It is surely not beyond the modern technological wit to have either an opt out or an opt in (there’s another argument!) and distribute these communications appropriately from the likes of SWALEC, DVLA, HMRC, Companies House, Local Authorities etc etc .
A couple of further points of interest. I used to work for a major bank and we had most of the main leaflets available in Welsh placed in the Public Space. In SE Wales in all the branches I worked the only time they were taken was when children scribbled on them.
As a business consultant I helped and advised a Welsh speaking secondary school as part of a scheme where there was a business plan competition. They (not me) decided the plan needed to be presented in English. The plan was good, the ideas were good and the English was not. There were words that would have sounded right but used the wrong version when written. The grammar was ’spoken’ and of course the spelling was all over the place. They could not communicate effectively in English. It was “English, as she is spoke”.
I note the comment about place names cobbled in to spurious Welsh. I happen to live in a Welsh place that until the late 1800s was Welsh speaking. However its name is derived from Old Norman French for many reasons. You can’t do much with that. There are a number of Welsh place names that appear to have been manufactured. To a non Welsh speaker that just seems fatuous and trying to make a silly point.
There are areas of Wales where the demand for Welsh is seen as an obstacle. No one has yet raised the argument in this thread about compulsory Welsh in schools in the border towns. To accommodate such feeling in some secondary schools the compulsory lesson is given lip service (no pun) and scant regard. Where is the sense in that? One thing the University in Newport does have a good reputation for is Teaching and the students all have Welsh lessons starting from zero. How many recruits from that bigger place next door or abroad are going to be put off I wonder? Important income for the University shot in the foot it seems to me. Perhaps they should have an opt in or opt out and award a different degree accordingly.
These comments are all observations and I do not pretend to a debatable opinion. They all stem from an in- principle opposition to positive discrimination of any sort. I find it usually equates to a negative discrimination against a majority view. Historical and cultural facts of life should be influenced and encouraged one way or another for all sorts of good reasons and if valid will find their own substance in a modern alternative. Trying to force the issue is always wrong.
As an Aberdare born Welshman who spent the first half (30 years) of his life in England I feel duty bound to bring to the attention of many of the proponents of Welsh Language promotion the feelings of the vast majority of UK citizens, including the Welsh. We are utterly fed up with the enormous expenditure to promote a language used by a tiny minority. The cost of translation, postage and transport of heavier mail and documents, greenhouse emissions, waste of resources (trees etc)staff costs and costs to private industry must by now have run into hundreds of millions. S4C alone gobbles up tens of millions of taxpayers money each year to transmit to a few thousand viewers. It’s about time the Welsh language intelligentsia and the Pontcanna/BBC ‘elite’ grew up and entered the real world. Thousands of animals/birds/insects go extinct every year. Hundreds of languages also expire naturally. It’s called evolution. If there is a need for a language to continue – it will naturally live on. It is not for a small political elite to force UK taxpayers to artificially prolong a dying language or tradition. Instead, the Welsh should look to their appalling inferiority complex and huge chip most of them wear on their shoulders against the English and the apparent lack of recognition in the world. Send your brains across the bridge once in a while and smell the coffee. This puerile attitude and lack of self confidence makes us Welsh the laughing stock of many intelligent and fair minded people. Why do Welsh rugby players kick penalties in silence in Twickenham but their English counterparts are booed loudly in Cardiff? (Because of this I now support England.) In these straightened financial times there has to be a bonfire of the quangos, a kicking into touch of all political correctness and a complete stop to all financing of promoting outdated and internationally useless languages. If you want to learn Welsh, then great, do it. But don’t ask UK taxpayers to fund it. And once in a while just listen to a North Walian speaking Welsh with what must be one of the most grating and irritating accents in the whole world. And they wonder why millions of UK citizens – including the majority of South Walians – cannot but help laughing and taking the mickey out of them. Is the above prejudiced, puerile nonsense? Pontcanna will think so – but the vast majority of the rest of the population will not.
John Llewellyn-Jones has covered much I agree with and in particular the near Jesuit re-cycling Pontcanna set whom are happy to waste half the printed material from Welsh & UK Government bodies and Agencies and utility companies working in Wales e.g. DVLA. What he missed is that in common with 100% of Welsh people in 2010 I can use one of the two official languages in Wales – English. The difference I find is that wherever I go in the world I can find someone whom I can speak to in English with very little chance of finding someone who even knows where Wales is. Welsh is a language that countless that millions of pounds are spent on promoting so that those who learn it or use it can, as a result of all that effort, speak to fewer people – that is madness ibn any language !!