Comment by stevekemp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stevekemp | Hacker News Reader

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It might not be spoken by "everybody", but it is an official language.

It was only recently that there was headline news over parking fines being overturned because the demands were not available in Welsh. The fact that the driver could speak/read English was not an adequate defense:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jun/10/driver-wins-...

The Welsh nation has decided preserving and encouraging the use of their language is a good thing, and they should be saluted for it. Gaelic, and other local languages have suffered due to disuse and neglect, and Welsh is a post-child for the effectiveness of teaching it in schools and "forcing" it to be supported. Usefully.

>Welsh is a post-child for the effectiveness of teaching it in schools and "forcing" it to be supported. Usefully.

You can say it's a good thing that an ancient language and corresponding culture is being saved (although I would also argue that draining Welsh speakers from their familial localities by proving strong financial incentives to move to Cardiff is ultimately doing huge damage to the cultural heartlands of Wales), but I can't agree with this statement. Census data shows that Welsh language usage has decreased slightly over the past 10 years, and Welsh-language schools (funded at extra cost to taxpayers as a parallel school system) do not perform as well academically as mainstream schools. Sure, everyone here has done a Welsh GCSE, but it's largely considered a joke and kids boast about how little they learned.

https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/welsh-medium-school-pupils-...

Nit: "poster child" for the effectiveness [etc], as in such a perfect example that you would put it on a poster to represent them.

In looking this up to be sure of my comment, I learned that it originally comes from children on posters requesting support against a specific disease: https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/poster-child https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poster_child

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