Wednesday 8 November 2017

Why the 'Tourette's' Comment in Lampeter should Wake Wales Up.

This is now the second time in a few months that a Welsh-speaker in the town of Lampeter has been insulted by a non-Welsh incomer.  This time a Welsh-speaking customer in the Ceredigion town was told by an English employee serving her in Greggs that she sounded like she had 'tourette's' when she tried to order in Welsh. 

Not only is this the second time in two months, it is also just one of many such instances of Welsh-speakers being insulted by strangers for speaking their own language in their own country.  This has happened not only in places like Lampeter, where Welsh-speakers have rapidly become the minority, but also in areas where they are still very much the majority such as Blaenau Ffestiniog, and not to mention Tudweiliog, where there was racist anti-Welsh graffiti on the beach only earlier this year.

 Being racist towards the Welsh or towards the Welsh Language in Wales is not like being racist towards Pakistani or Polish immigrants in England.  A better comparison would be if you had foreigners in England being racist towards us English, or foreigners in France being racist towards the French.

Such a situation in either England or France would be absolutely unthinkable, and so it should be equally unthinkable in Wales.  There needs to be an honest debate about why such racist remarks are thinkable to some in Wales. 

2 comments:

  1. Sadly,it is a simple matter where ignorant Welsh folk with little or no pride in their homeland, consider it so difficult to comprehend that the most important element of being Welsh is of their different nature and realizing that the 1st language of Wales is of course Welsh. Naturally the "Anglos" are apparently brain dead to this simple fact :-) along with the failings of supposedly some native Welsh folk! Wales is a friendly Country with being unfortunately in close proximity of the English system, resulting in a common virus :-) ! Nevertheless "Yma o Hyd"-Cymru am Byth !

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  2. What makes it worse is that we are a conquered colony of England, which is happy for Anglicised 'Wales' to exist as it feeds off dominating us, and is probably jealous of our language and culture as well as our resources and status as true Britons, but wants to destroy Welsh 'Wales', i.e. Cymru.

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