Should Welsh and Gaelic stations be dropped?
Charcole911
Posts: 6,353 Forum Member
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So does anyone speak Gaelic or Welsh but can't speak English? I highly doubt it. Now I mean no disrespect to either language - people can still learn them if they want to - but the cash could be put to better use, creating more drama on TV and better quality playlists / programs on radio.
These languages are like Latin - an ancient language past its sell by, not really necessary in 21st century UK where we speak English from lands end to john o groats..
BBC Gaelic radio and S4C are 2 services, does anyone know anymore?
These languages are like Latin - an ancient language past its sell by, not really necessary in 21st century UK where we speak English from lands end to john o groats..
BBC Gaelic radio and S4C are 2 services, does anyone know anymore?
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Welsh stations are funded entirely by the population of Wales and similarly Gaelic stations by the population of Scotland.
Why should people in England fund these?
Sorry - but you couldn't be more wrong. I use Welsh as a first language, my parents do, my friends do and my children do. It's my right to be able to speak and carry out my life through the medium of Welsh.
Having one channel out of dozens dedicated to Welsh is hardly asking for much - actually I want more.
I don't know where your ignorance comes from, but it's very worrying.
Gaelic is much more restricted to the Western Isles and few other areas though it is said that there are more Gaelic speakers in Glasgow than in the whole of the Western Isles even if it is only a small percentage there. The big difference is that Gaelic was not the national language of Scotland as Welsh is in Wales but for political reasons it is being imposed on some areas that don't want it - there has been very vocal opposition in Caithness particularly because of Highland Council's policy on Gaelic. Huge amounts of money are being spent on bilingual road signs when there is often no money available for road repairs and road safety measures.
Because of Henry VIII.
What an utterly disgraceful thing to say.
In today's Europe, we should be celebrating the survival and revival of regional languages and cultures. If Welsh is drowned out by by English, or if Catalan ones again becomes dominated by Spanish, Europe as a whole loses some of its remarkable diversity and heritage -- precisely the things that make Europe what it is.
By the way, my country -- Slovenia -- exists only because countless generations stubbornly refused to give up their language, even when it would have been far easier to simply adopt German (during Austrian rule) or Serbo-Croatian (under Yugoslavia). Thanks to their perserverance, Slovenian is now an official EU language.
Only an person who is both uncultured and uneducated can refer to any language as "unneccesary". Language -- any language -- is not just a means of communication. It's an irrepleaceable object of culture, identity and profound beauty. I pity the inner poverty of those who refuse to see this.
Every euro (or pound) spent on keeping regional cultures alive for posterity is a euro well spent.
I wouldn't judge whether Welsh language programming is relevant. What I would say is it does appear to be the country's chosen national language, and that S4C - as much as it must have been a pain in the arse for people in Wales who just wanted to watch English Channel 4 programming - has helped to keep it alive. Whether this is now sustainable without the advertising revenue brought in from those programmes is questionable.
Gaelic is a very different issue. It is not the defined language of Scotland - lowlanders used Scots, much of which survives in the English language up here. In Aberdeenshire many people use Doric. How exactly Gaelic was chosen is a mystery to me. Being the majority language, if that is the case, is not good enough. Gaelic programming has always been a waste of cash in my opinion - if you're going to do that then you'd better do programming in all other languages that were once spoken in Scotland as well, which would of course be a ridiculous waste of money.
As it stands I'm quite pleased English is our national language, and I really wish this debate wouldn't always turn into: "Why should we English pay for it?" You'd be surprised quite how many people in Scotland and Wales don't want this programming as well.
Let's get real here, we are talking of one out of dozens of channels (on Freeview - hundreds on Sky). The old arguments of analogue TV are no longer valid.
Yes. I spent a lot of my childhood in Gwynedd in North Wales (which is the county with the highest proportion of Welsh speakers) and in that time I met a few people who couldn't speak English.
Not at all. the english regions are by and large similar to the devolved nations. The mainstream channels provide a basic service to all the home nations. If some of them want minority language programming, they should fund it themselves.
I can't vouch for Gaelic but in Wales there are plenty who have had to learn English as a second language and as they hardly ever use it in daily life do not speak it very well. All administration, commerce and banking is through Welsh so their knowledge of your foreign tongue is somewhat sparce.
Welsh was spoken in these islands before Latin arrived with the Romans. It is the language of the original British people. The language you speak in contrast is a germanic tongue that was once as alien to these islands as Punjabi or Polish is now. Welsh is still widely spoken and vibrant throughout Wales so when did that sell by date you talk about occur exactly?
Not that that excuses the nasty and hurtful opening comment. Some people are scared of all diversity, some people (maybe even worse because they pretend to be liberal - Polly Toynbee comes to mind) are scared of "the wrong kind of diversity" - i.e. diversity that existed in these islands before 1945 (while curiously defending views among Muslims which they would call neo-Nazi were they held by Christians). They are all contemptible, and for once I agree entirely with DocumentaryFan on this one. It shouldn't be a case of either-or.
What a flawed argument. As taxpayers we have a choice its called democracy.
Welsh channels should be funded without public sector help.
If you had your way on this matter, the UK might well break up. As I've always said, you *should* want this because it would strengthen your politics no end, but for those of us in England who don't want a *complete* neoliberal takeover, keeping the Scots and Welsh in the union is the best way. I can appreciate it may not seem that way to some in Scotland and Wales, but I see no reason why English people should not pay a very small amount to, perhaps, keep the union together.
Of course, some English people *want* a complete neoliberal takeover, and I suspect that's the main reason for the hardline anti-S4C etc. stance - they'll do anything to make it easier.
They deserve there own programming if they are commercially viable.
It may be to you but what Charcole says is true, such languages are dead in today's world, sure keep the language for cultural/prosperity reasons but in communication across frontiers it is of no use/importance, much like your own.
Why can people not speak in their own language, and take pride in the fact, while simultaneously using an international language when they need to? Welsh or Gaelic speakers are privileged in that they already know an international language through being in the UK, but you will find that speakers of minority languages around the world often know *several* bigger languages - in Europe, often French, German and English. This isn't a contradiction, it's just code-switching and working in multiple contexts - something we could all do well to do more of.
DocumentaryFan certainly does recognise that you need more languages than Slovenian to communicate internationally - why else would he communicate in such good English?
I just despair at this kneejerk "either-or" attitude that tends to prevail in much of the UK, especially England. I personally would love to have a smaller, more rooted culture of my own which I could enjoy at the same time as being part of the wider culture expressed through English. I think that having a clear line between these two cultures you experience - the sort of code-switching that young people in continental Europe, even if their first languages are big ones like French or German, pretty much *have* to do in the modern world - is a thoroughly healthy thing, because if you know that two cultures can co-exist because you divide your life between them and enjoy them equally, you are more likely to know that *multiple* cultures can co-exist, and thus be less afraid of "foreigners" and "incomers" and "outsiders".
I believe passionately that a lot of the fear of these things in England is caused by the lack of clear water between the "traditional" culture and the global, mass media culture - because both are in English - and the resultant misguided belief that those two cultures are the same, and subsequent identity crisis and belief that because you only have one culture (even though you don't) anything else must be a threat to it. Some of us in England *envy* Welsh speakers. Just because you speak a minority language doesn't mean you've turned away from the world - Slovenia, trapped within the old Yugoslavia for so long, is precisely a case in point.
Sorry for this long post but the "either-or" mentality really enrages me, because it seems to miss every possible applicable point.
Some friends' son went to University in Wales, a group of them shared a house. They were mostly non-Welsh but one was from North Wales. He had come through the education system being taught solely in Welsh and recognised that his English was very poor so wanted to live with non-Welsh speakers to improve his English rather than live in a Welsh speaking hall of residence.
One thing that annoys me about Gaelic speakers on the radio is when Radio Scotland have a Gaelic speaker with poor English reading the news in English as can happen from Inverness. They would never consider letting a non-Gaelic speaker read the news in Gaelic so I don't think it is too much to expect the converse to be the case.
Why should I fund your local BBC news and radio stations?
I'm sure there are still people who have a poor command of English - very few, I'm guessing, but I recognise that they are out there. It does show the persistence of the Welsh culture which, as I stated, I applaud and rather wish I was part of something similar. I do think there is a psychological disconnexion between heavily Welsh-speaking and mainly non-Welsh-speaking parts of Wales, though, as is probably inevitable. Maybe with the old half-and-half S4C gone (except perhaps in HD on Freeview) that resentment will decline.
timboy,
again, why the either-or tribalism? You don't make intolerance any better by being just as intolerant from the other side - in fact, you make it worse. Fighting fire with fire just creates a much bigger, more dangerous fire. I think the union as it stands is unnatural in many ways, but I cannot help thinking that it needs to continue if only to hold England's worst aspects back.
Either-or tribalism? I was asking a question.
I speak no Gaelic apart from the likes of hello, goodbye, please and thank you but am still happy for my licence fee to go towards those that do just as I am happy for my licence fee to go towards BBC local radio in the south of England. I get absolutely nothing from either of them and will never use them but I realise that is the way the licence fee works.
Not Scots Gaelic. According to the 2001 Census there are fewer than 60,000 Scots who speak it as a second language and NONE who speak it as a first language. Scots Gaelic is therefore officially a dead language.