Language revival revisited

[sirdanilot]

It has always suprized me how Ireland has completely and utterly failed to save its language from extinction, in contrast to Wales in which Welsh is thriving.

Sure, Irish is not extinct yet, but it can be regarded as a matter of time until all the traditional dialect speakers are gone. Though there is limited revitalization in schools this seems nowhere near as succesful as what people are doing in Wales.


I also love how Irish has been used as a political tool in Northern Ireland yet the language is virtually extinct there.

[linguoboy]

It has always suprized me how Ireland has completely and utterly failed to save its language from extinction, in contrast to Wales in which Welsh is thriving.

Because delighting in others' failures is a source of pleasure to you?

The situation is so farcical these days, it's beyond what Ireland's most talented satirists were able to imagine. Case in point: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics ... -1.2207202.

[sirdanilot]

Do you want me to feel sorry for you guys that you have completely failed to instate adequate means of preserving the Irish language, even though your neighbours the Welsh have done the exact same thing succesfully?

Heck you've got your own independant nation, with ORIGINALLY a significant amount of native speakers, and education in the language, etc. etc. YET the language keeps on dying. Isn't that insane?

[----]

I think it is pretty sad when people fail at reasonable goals. I can't imagine why it wouldn't be.

[linguoboy]

Do you want me to feel sorry for you guys that you have completely failed to instate adequate means of preserving the Irish language, even though your neighbours the Welsh have done the exact same thing succesfully?

"You guys"? Where exactly do you think I'm from? It's not like I've ever had any say in the language policy of the Irish State.

Furthermore, you can be close neighbours and still have very different histories. (You might want to look up "Cromwellian Invasion", for instance, or "Great Potato Famine".)

Heck you've got your own independant nation, with ORIGINALLY a significant amount of native speakers, and education in the language, etc. etc. YET the language keeps on dying. Isn't that insane?

No, it's completely understandable. Independence is far from a panacea. Do you think separating Flanders from Wallonia would solve all of the problems of either region? Or would it simply create new ones?

Wales profits well from its attachment to England, netting it about 10% more per capita in social spending than the UK average--something it could never do if it were forced to live within its own means. But how could anyone have foreseen a century ago that the English were on the verge of ending a thousand year campaign to wipe out Celtic identity? There's as much dumb luck involved in the survival of Welsh as there is good planning.

Ah, but who am I kidding? You're not interested in an actual discussion of the reasons for the difference in outcomes between the two nations. You're must looking to mouth some smug generalities about situations you know next to nothing about. Well, feel free, and I'll just leave the bait there to rot.

[Salmoneus]

What's the Welsh comparison meant to be, exactly?
Irish has been far more succesful at getting speakers: around 45% of Irish residents are reasonable competent in Irish, compared to the 20% of Welsh residents who can speak some Welsh (and a quarter of those are illiterate in Welsh). In terms of those who speak the languages fluently, percentages are fairly similar, but a bit smaller for Irish - 8% to Welsh 12%. On the other hand, Welsh-speaking (as the fluent-to-competant ratio also suggests) is more concentrated, so the claim that Welsh fluency has been maintained better basically amounts to "Wales has been better at keeping people trapped in isolated rural poverty". As a result, the figures for Welsh-speaking have been falling rapidly in recent decades, whereas those for Irish have been rising. So what is the Irish comparative failure exactly?

[sirdanilot]

Do you want me to feel sorry for you guys that you have completely failed to instate adequate means of preserving the Irish language, even though your neighbours the Welsh have done the exact same thing succesfully?

"You guys"? Where exactly do you think I'm from? It's not like I've ever had any say in the language policy of the Irish State.

As you have posted more about Ireland I have assumed you're from Ireland, perhaps living in the US or so.
My bad.

Furthermore, you can be close neighbours and still have very different histories. (You might want to look up "Cromwellian Invasion", for instance, or "Great Potato Famine".)

Yes the Great Potato Famine is sad, but it's not like Welsh didn't endure great pressure from English during the last century and before.

Heck you've got your own independant nation, with ORIGINALLY a significant amount of native speakers, and education in the language, etc. etc. YET the language keeps on dying. Isn't that insane?

No, it's completely understandable. Independence is far from a panacea. Do you think separating Flanders from Wallonia would solve all of the problems of either region? Or would it simply create new ones?

Wales profits well from its attachment to England, netting it about 10% more per capita in social spending than the UK average--something it could never do if it were forced to live within its own means. But how could anyone have foreseen a century ago that the English were on the verge of ending a thousand year campaign to wipe out Celtic identity? There's as much dumb luck involved in the survival of Welsh as there is good planning.

Okay, this is a good argument.
Still successful bilingual education projects are being carried out in far worse circumstances than even the poor Ireland, in developing countries amongst small indigenous populations. It's still no excuse for the failure of Irish.

What's the Welsh comparison meant to be, exactly?
Irish has been far more succesful at getting speakers: around 45% of Irish residents are reasonable competent in Irish, compared to the 20% of Welsh residents who can speak some Welsh (and a quarter of those are illiterate in Welsh). In terms of those who speak the languages fluently, percentages are fairly similar, but a bit smaller for Irish - 8% to Welsh 12%. On the other hand, Welsh-speaking (as the fluent-to-competant ratio also suggests) is more concentrated, so the claim that Welsh fluency has been maintained better basically amounts to "Wales has been better at keeping people trapped in isolated rural poverty". As a result, the figures for Welsh-speaking have been falling rapidly in recent decades, whereas those for Irish have been rising. So what is the Irish comparative failure exactly?

You know of this documentary 'No Bearle' (not sure how it's spelled) with the annoying Irish guy going around Ireland speaking only Irish and pretending not to speak English?
It shows a problem that lies much deeper than the numbers you provide. Namely that the amount of domains in which Irish is appropriate is very very small. AT least what impression I gained from the documentary is that it's a no-no to just walk into a shop and start a conversation in Irish. If you can't even use it for such basic things then what is the language good for? This day-to-day Irish speaking seems to be confined mostly to the Gaeltacht regions which are the 'isolated in rural poverty' regions you speak of.
As for the numbers you provide, even they are far from overwhelming. That 45% comes mostly from the Irish education in schools, but I doubt that it's of any good quality. Again I base myself mostly on the documentary here. The waitress was struggling to address the annoying Irish guy even in very basic stuff. She probably belongs to that 45% who learned Irish in school.

I have even seen images of people spraying over the Irish-only road signs in the Gaeltacht regions with the English place names. Go figure.

The number of Welsh speakers is actually rising as younger generations succesfully acquire the language through a well-organized educational system.

[marconatrix]

Here are some videos about people learning Irish, the state of the language etc. Often funny ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXhDlYREJyo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymjsAAyEykg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqYtG9BNhfM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXrjouPxuAo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbfUpfS4n_Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPqoKpyhzP8

[Yng]

You know of this documentary 'No Bearle' (not sure how it's spelled) with the annoying Irish guy going around Ireland speaking only Irish and pretending not to speak English?
It shows a problem that lies much deeper than the numbers you provide. Namely that the amount of domains in which Irish is appropriate is very very small. AT least what impression I gained from the documentary is that it's a no-no to just walk into a shop and start a conversation in Irish.

yeah you try doing that somewhere in Wales where people don't speak Welsh natively and see how far it gets you

The number of Welsh speakers is actually rising as younger generations succesfully acquire the language through a well-organized educational system.

I understand why you are making this mistake, but it's still a mistake. Our Welsh-language education is as bad if not worse than Irish education (it's based on the same model, but is only compulsory to a lower level for second-language speakers). I genuinely doubt that even out of the people who do the most intensive and difficult compulsory second-language Welsh to the highest level and succeed in it - i.e. get an A* or A in GCSE Higher Welsh - could have conversations with waiters or e.g. about the football without enormous struggle, even just after they come out of school, never mind later on. The situation for first-language education is slightly less dismal for obvious reasons - people are forced to speak Welsh in certain contexts for a long time, so they could at least hold a basic conversation - but in a lot of areas a lack of native speakers to use the language voluntarily/on which to model your speech means that the Welsh that people come out with is so much an English cypher that native speakers find it difficult to understand or at the very least very much wrong. True, Welsh language policy in Wales has perhaps destigmatised the use of Welsh for people so that there's less of the old 'let's not teach our children or they'll never get a job', and has meant that in areas where Welsh is still spoken natively and in many contexts, children are allowed and encouraged to speak it in school. It's also allowed areas in the Northwest where there are high percentages of native speakers to force Welsh on the children of people moving into the area, which is a Good Thing. But other than stemming the decline in places where the language was very strong indeed to start with, its failures are numerous.

whilst I'm here I should probably defend sirdanilot

I ask because these variations are not consistent across morphemes. One of the most common words spoken, ماذا, has /ð/ across dialects and regions.

wrong! ماذا is not a common word spoken - in fact as far as I know no major dialect has a reflex of it as 'what'. When pronouncing MSA, many Syrians and Egyptians cannot produce D T and pronounce them as z s in all words, including maadhaa. North Africans, if they can't pronounce the fricatives, tend to have d t instead.

[linguoboy]

You know of this documentary 'No Bearle' (not sure how it's spelled) with the annoying Irish guy going around Ireland speaking only Irish and pretending not to speak English?

No Béarla is not a documentary. Manchán Magan has cheerfully admitted in interviews that he went out with a certain agenda in mind and manipulated the encountres to get the results he wanted. In other words, it's as much "documentary" as, say, The Real Housewives of Orange County (another heavily-edited entertainment programme purporting to document actual events). Magan is not only annoying, he's not actually a native speaker of Irish. (He learned it as a second language from his grandmother, who literally had to bribe him to speak it.) Fluent natives have criticised many aspects of his language use, in particular his pronunciation. You'll notice, too, that he deliberately speaks very quickly without adapting his vocabulary or use of idioms. If he were willing to do this, he'd find more comprehension. But, as mentioned above, he consciously set out to demonstrate the notion that Irish is not widely understood and so that's what he captured on video.

[marconatrix]

You can understand the disappointment among other language groups though. Ireland, with 100 years of independence behind it and a commitment from the start to restore the First Official Language, ought to be a shining example, a guiding light for everyone else. Instead it's something of an embarrassment all round. Their Language Commissioner resigned last year after 10 years of constant obstruction by the government and its various agencies. There used to be a joke that the only way to restore Irish would be to make it illegal. But then when you look at the Basque country where for a long time it was illegal to teach the language, there might be some truth in that.

[linguoboy]

You can understand the disappointment among other language groups though.

I totally can. I've long considered Ireland the poster boy for What Not To Do when reviving a language. Which makes it even more depressing that (a) they still haven't made substantial positive changes to how the language is taught (outside of the Gaelscoileanna movement, which the government supports grudgingly at best) and (b) others are imitating their example instead of running in the other direction from it. Brittany, even more than Wales, I feel is making many of the same mistakes, teaching its own version of Cymraeg Byw and completely cutting off learners from traditional speakers, to the detriment of both.

[marconatrix]

A recent report in Wales more or less said that 'Welsh as a second language' that is Welsh as taught in English medium schools was pretty much a waste of time. So that might lead to Welsh Medium Education becoming near universal, to cries of 'racists, nazis' etc from the usual astrotruf organisations, no doubt. The problem is that while WME produces people who are able to speak Welsh, they still speak English in the school yard and out in the wider English-language community, when as in most cases they're not already embedded in the few remaining Welsh-language districts. The only solution is build a language community along with teaching the language. (I was going to refer to a paper I read the other day from New Zealand, but I can't seem to find it again).

NB. We've got into some discussion re Cymraeg Byw over on the Middle Welsh thread under L&L, not sure how, but this is ZB!

[linguoboy]

The problem is that while WME produces people who are able to speak Welsh, they still speak English in the school yard and out in the wider English-language community, when as in most cases they're not already embedded in the few remaining Welsh-language districts.

I actually think this is something of a point in its favour when it comes to selling immersion to the majority-language community. The experience of Catalonia (a much better model for minority language revival than Ireland) shows that Catalan-medium education produces full bilinguals whereas native-language instruction supplemented by Catalan language classes doesn't. Most of the bilinguals produced by this system may still prefer the majority language, but the difference is that there is a societal expectation that everyone can and will make use of the minority language when asked. Meaning that native Catalan speakers can go out into the wider society and interact with everyone (except tourists) in Catalan, if they so choose. (Ironically, when I was in Catalonia, I had more problems getting native Catalan-speakers to speak it with me than L2-speakers. The former were confused to hear Catalan coming out of my foreign tourist face whereas the rest were like, "Whatever he wants to use is fine with us.") What you have in Wales, by contrast, is a society where no one will speak Welsh to you unless they already have some assurance you'll understand them (and perhaps not even then).

[Salmoneus]

I think the problem is that you have to give people a reason to speak a language. The old Irish approach was basically "it's your duty as part of the fight against the evil english" (which has gradually lost its power ever since independence), supplemented with "look at these depressing books you'll be able to read about starving to death!" - oddly this approach struggled to attract the younger generation.

The approach that seems to be working now is "your kids will get a better education if they speak irish" (which people say is about the Magic of Bilingualism, but which I suspect is actually about network capital effects), with a side order (for the kids) of "isn't this cool your parents won't understand what you're saying and nor will the boneheads in your class".

[linguoboy]

I think the problem is that you have to give people a reason to speak a language. The old Irish approach was basically "it's your duty as part of the fight against the evil english" (which has gradually lost its power ever since independence), supplemented with "look at these depressing books you'll be able to read about starving to death!" - oddly this approach struggled to attract the younger generation.

I'm not sure it was even conceived of in terms of duty so much as simply assumed, i.e. "you learn Irish because you're Irish". Kids were left to find their own motivation, which was damn difficult given that--as you say--the main context in which Irish was presented was dull, backward-looking study of literature. Really a textbook example of how not to get anyone to learn anything.

The approach that seems to be working now is "your kids will get a better education if they speak irish" (which people say is about the Magic of Bilingualism, but which I suspect is actually about network capital effects), with a side order (for the kids) of "isn't this cool your parents won't understand what you're saying and nor will the boneheads in your class".

I plan to put the latter notion to the test by openly speaking Spanish with my eldest nephew in front of his brothers now that he might know enough to communicate with me.

Honestly, I wonder if panic at not being able to understand your own children underlies some of the resistance to teaching Welsh in Wales, etc. (Because Heaven forfend that the parents pick up some, too.)

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

I think the problem is that you have to give people a reason to speak a language. The old Irish approach was basically "it's your duty as part of the fight against the evil english" (which has gradually lost its power ever since independence), supplemented with "look at these depressing books you'll be able to read about starving to death!" - oddly this approach struggled to attract the younger generation.

The approach that seems to be working now is "your kids will get a better education if they speak irish" (which people say is about the Magic of Bilingualism, but which I suspect is actually about network capital effects), with a side order (for the kids) of "isn't this cool your parents won't understand what you're saying and nor will the boneheads in your class".

This, oh so much.

I haven't analyzed the case of either Irish or Welsh but if the case of French in Canada is any example, the problem lies at "unilingualism becomes a liability".

French is Canada is pretty much as Salmoneus explains : "It's your duty as part of the fight against the invading British". Catholic, French-speaking, and Civil Law; the first and last are part of Oh Canada, and the middle one is kept as the song itself.

But, despite the massive protection and promotion of French in Quebec, especially through its infamous Law 101 (The French Language Charter, officially), being a monolingual speaker of French is still is huge liability in one's career while being a monolingual speaker of English, if you stay in Montreal, or live almost anywhere else in Canada, is at worst an inconvenience. (Though I should say that not speaking French can be a liability now for some specific positions within canadian institutions, to the amusing frustration of many.)

This situation, reinforced by the fact that a distinct language is not needed anymore as our lives are getting more intertwined as globalization and social commonalities tend to progress, means that people might be more interested by a language that offers a passport to New York or, best, London (or, in Canada, Toronto), than to keep to a highly isolated language where the best possibilities are well... living off farmland.

(Obviously, French is spoken in quite a few countries, but French is even less unified than English when it comes to the dialectal variants.)

I cannot stress it enough : monolinguality in what is said to be the local language has become a liability for many speakers of other languages; in Quebec, French might "survive" (I am not counting on that in the long term, seeing how my generation's graduates are turning), but for Irish and Welsh, where's the point in acquiring a language spoken, well, nowhere else... You usually speak a language to communicate and, in today's world, communicating with a rather restricted group is quite not what is expected.

There are probably some reasons to keep languages, but the requirement of learning French in Quebec for immigrants has actually hindered social integration because of the task to learn two languages (because a bilinguality in French+Language-that-is-not-English is as much a liability as French monolinguality). As a result, a portion of the immigrants who come to Quebec leave. Japan, from what I am seeing from the inside, is slowly (but surely) going the same path.

And independence is certainly not a garantee that a language will thrive. After what I have seen in Japan, I've had enough to convince me that Independence (or a high level of autonomy), while most probably a necessary condition, is not sufficient for a distinct language to thrive. (Not that Japanese is anywhere near endangered status, but the number of Japanese people going for an English education is on the rise. That was enough of a warning sign for me to leave.)

[Sumelic]

I cannot stress it enough : monolinguality in what is said to be the local language has become a liability for many speakers of other languages; in Quebec, French might "survive" (I am not counting on that in the long term, seeing how my generation's graduates are turning), but for Irish and Welsh, where's the point in acquiring a language spoken, well, nowhere else... You usually speak a language to communicate and, in today's world, communicating with a rather restricted group is quite not what is expected.

There are probably some reasons to keep languages, but the requirement of learning French in Quebec for immigrants has actually hindered social integration because of the task to learn two languages (because a bilinguality in French+Language-that-is-not-English is as much a liability as French monolinguality). As a result, a portion of the immigrants who come to Quebec leave. Japan, from what I am seeing from the inside, is slowly (but surely) going the same path.

And independence is certainly not a garantee that a language will thrive. After what I have seen in Japan, I've had enough to convince me that Independence (or a high level of autonomy), while most probably a necessary condition, is not sufficient for a distinct language to thrive. (Not that Japanese is anywhere near endangered status, but the number of Japanese people going for an English education is on the rise. That was enough of a warning sign for me to leave.)

What exactly do you mean by talking about if a language "thrives"? I have never been to Japan and know little of the social and linguistic situation there, but to me it seems unimaginable that the influence of English will ever cause the Japanese language to cease to be used there. What language is used in education doesn't affect the language people learn in the cradle, and in any case the educational system of Japan is not going to switch over to teaching English alone to all students, right? (What do you mean by "going for an English education?" Is this just learning English as a second language, or using it at universities, or do you mean there are some Japanese students who take an English-only track in secondary school or primary school?)

The only way language replacement seems at all possible to me is if an enormous demographic shift takes place, but we can't just extend modern demographic trends, so that's hardly a sure thing.

[cntrational]

(Not that Japanese is anywhere near endangered status, but the number of Japanese people going for an English education is on the rise. That was enough of a warning sign for me to leave.)

...

???

[Yng]

The problem is that while WME produces people who are able to speak Welsh, they still speak English in the school yard and out in the wider English-language community, when as in most cases they're not already embedded in the few remaining Welsh-language districts.

I actually think this is something of a point in its favour when it comes to selling immersion to the majority-language community. The experience of Catalonia (a much better model for minority language revival than Ireland) shows that Catalan-medium education produces full bilinguals whereas native-language instruction supplemented by Catalan language classes doesn't. Most of the bilinguals produced by this system may still prefer the majority language, but the difference is that there is a societal expectation that everyone can and will make use of the minority language when asked. Meaning that native Catalan speakers can go out into the wider society and interact with everyone (except tourists) in Catalan, if they so choose.

Yeah - although the Welsh people from Welsh-language education outside the Bro speak is barely Welsh imo

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

What exactly do you mean by talking about if a language "thrives"? I have never been to Japan and know little of the social and linguistic situation there, but to me it seems unimaginable that the influence of English will ever cause the Japanese language to cease to be used there. What language is used in education doesn't affect the language people learn in the cradle, and in any case the educational system of Japan is not going to switch over to teaching English alone to all students, right? (What do you mean by "going for an English education?" Is this just learning English as a second language, or using it at universities, or do you mean there are some Japanese students who take an English-only track in secondary school or primary school?)

The only way language replacement seems at all possible to me is if an enormous demographic shift takes place, but we can't just extend modern demographic trends, so that's hardly a sure thing.

I mean there are some kids going from Kindergarten to University in English only, with some of them losing proficiency in Japanese. It is still quite rare, though. (And usually reserved to quite rich people, as tuition fees would most probably be required.) Going into a university in English is more common, but getting more and more frequent. Then again, I've seen that this pattern has been seen in other non-English countries and regions, including my own. (I still did not do it yet, but I might eventually do it, just for the lolz.)

As for demographic trends, Japan is undergoing a huge one : 1 out of every 49 births in Japan is now international. While full assimilation is quite easy, some issues have arisen. But the biggest issue is the lack of workforce; Japan is starting to encourage immigration, but Japanese, as it is, is not exactly an immigrant-friend language. For the first year, finishing JETs, like me, are offered a six-month long extended visa to find work in Japan. I'm going back to Canada, but there is a will to keep people in Japan, and, judging by the general reaction around me, quite a few are not expected to be proficient in Japanese.

But no, Japan won't suddenly switch to full English education. But there is nothing encouraging about the whole system either.

cntrational : Can you give more details to your questioning?

[marconatrix]

Yeah - although the Welsh people from Welsh-language education outside the Bro speak is barely Welsh imo

Could you give examples? I'm not exactly saying you're wrong, but I expect things are not quite as simple as that. There's an interesting suggestion here (*) from an 'insider' that the native speaking communities may have only themselves to blame for as it were keeping the language to themselves, though IMO this happens once the proportion of speakers drops below a certain level, so that you no longer use the minority language with strangers. It then becomes confined to family, old friends etc., disappears from public view, and at that point regeneration becomes very difficult. Manx is the extreme case here. You wait until all the native speakers are dead and have taken their negativity to the grave with them, so that they no longer confuse, criticise or otherwise hold back the learner-revivalists. Unfortunately much existing 'detail' and idiom will probably be lost. But then such things are always changing and will in time be created by the 'new' language on its own terms.

*
https://fymhethaubychain.wordpress.com/ ... u-bychain/
https://fymhethaubychain.wordpress.com/ ... in-ganrif/
https://fymhethaubychain.wordpress.com/ ... th-rhan-2/

[marconatrix]

Some extracts from the Welsh language blog I referred to above for the benefit of the di-Gymraeg (because I think these issues are not confined to Wales) :

Mae nifer o Gymry Cymraeg yn gweld bai ar y person Saesneg hwnnw a fudodd i Gymru 10 mlynedd yn ôl ond sydd dal ddim yn deall gair o’r iaith. Ond y gwir yw, mae llawer mwy o fai arnom ni fel Cymry Cymraeg nag arno ef. Y rheswm am hyn yw’r ffaith ein bod ni’n trio’n gorau i guddio’r iaith oddi wrth ddysgwyr, a pheidio â rhoi rheswm iddynt orfod dysgu. Llawer rhy hawdd yr ydym ni’n newid i’r Saesneg “achos ei fod yn haws” neu “rhag ofn pechu”, neu yn aml iawn oherwydd bod gennym ni Gymru “ddim amynedd” i siarad yn arafach efo rhywun a gorfod ail-adrodd ambell air.

"There are a number of Welsh speakers who find fault with the English incomer who has lived in Wales for ten years and still doesn't understand a word of Welsh. But really much more of the blame falls on us as Welsh speakers than on the incomer. This is because we do our best to hide the language from learners and so give them no reason to need to learn it. Far too often we change to English just "because it's easier" ... or simply because we can't be bothered to speak more slowly or repeat the occasional word."

Mae Wil, sy’n Gymraeg iaith gyntaf, yn cerdded i mewn i siop. Mae’r siopwr yn siarad Cymraeg yn iawn, ond Saesneg yw ei famiaith, ac rydym ni mewn ardal gyda llawer o fewnfudo, ac mae’n adeg o’r flwyddyn pryd mae llawer o ymwelwyr i’r ardal, felly mae’r siopwr yn gofyn yn Saesneg “hello, how can I help?”
Rŵan, mae’r sgwrs (yr un yr ydym i fod i gychwyn yn Gymraeg) wedi cychwyn yn barod, felly mae Wil yn parhau yn Saesneg, a dyma yw iaith y sgwrs tan ei diwedd.

"Will who has Welsh as his first language walks into a shop. The shopkeeper has English as his L1 but also speaks good Welsh. And we're in an area with many incomers and it's a time of year when there are many visitors around. So the shopkeeper asks in English, "Hello, how can I help?"
Will agrees with the idea of "starting every conversation in Welsh", but since the conversation has already been started in English, he replies in English, which is then the language of the rest of the conversation [even though both parties can speak perfectly good Welsh]"

Er mwyn ceisio osgoi’r “cywilydd” o ddechrau sgwrs Gymraeg gyda rhywun sydd yn ddi-Gymraeg, rydym ni’n tueddu i gychwyn sgyrsiau’n Saesneg os ydym yn meddwl mai di-Gymraeg yw’r person arall. Ond drwy wneud hyn rydym ni wedyn yn dylanwadu ar benderfyniadau pobl eraill o ba iaith i’w defnyddio. Mae hyn yn gylch dieflig sydd angen ei dorri.

"To avoid the 'embarrassment' of starting a conversation in Welsh with someone who doesn't understand that language, we tend to begin in English if we think the other person is not a Welsh speaker. But by doing so we are influencing the other person's choice of which language to use. This is a vicious circle which will have to be broken"

--------------------

There's more in the same vein, but I think this gives an idea of where the writer is going. I find it interesting to see this coming from a native speaker in a Welsh-speaking community, an 'insider'.

[Yng]

The Welsh of people who have been through Welsh-language immersion lacks synthetic verb forms (with a few exceptions), consistent mutations, noun gender, and idioms not calqued from English (or even expressions not calqued from English). It's full of spelling pronunciations and many people are incapable of holding a conversation without code-switching. Some people don't distinguish the future and the conditional. Other people use a direct calque of English structures in things as basic as conditionals. The phonology is usually basically identical with Welsh English, with a strange, not-entirely-alveolar-tap /r/ (if they even have it to start with), Englishy vowels (certainly no [1], even in the North) and so on - they have /K/ and /x/ and often <rh> (not sure how to X-SAMPA that), but not much else. Some of these features may have been present in traditional, moribund dialects in these areas - but I suspect that the vast majority of them are the result of trying to make everybody native speakers of a language in an environment where nobody speaks it. It's unavoidable but also sad and painful for me as somebody who finds linguistic diversity in expression, phonology, and grammar exciting and interesting.

I sort of agree with this argument - that learning Welsh is discouraged (to some extent) by native speakers' behaviours, and some of this comes from mixed feelings about people learning what is, in a sense, a private language. But also these are as you say natural outcomes as well from the presence of a common lingua franca everyone speaks natively and often the absence of a large enough percentage of natives to be sure you can use Welsh.

[Salmoneus]

A relative of mine tried to live in Wales, but encountered a lot of open hatred on account of her origins. She learnt Welsh for a few years - seemingly reaching a simple conversational standard - but found that this was quite unwelcome. At best, it offered no particular advantage, since other than one dull TV channel and the odd 'how are you today? I'm fine thank you how are you?'-style greeting with the one other Welsh-speaker (who iirc was also English), there was no actual Welsh to come into contact with. At worst, some people apparently got quite angry that a non-Welsh person would try to learn Welsh, viewing this as a sort of imperialism. [coming over here, stealing our jobs, learning our language...]


Regarding semi-Welsh, and semi-Irish... I guess the hope would be that once a critical mass of speakers builds up, to the point where regular language use becomes feasible and attractive, then some users may seek out a) ways to express more complicated things, or to express things more elegantly, and b) more 'authentic', exclusive ways of speaking. After all, there's no point speaking excellent Irish if nobody understands enough of it to know how excellent your Irish is! The more sophisticated Irish (Welsh) of these more literary types may then exert an influence on the wider speaker base.