Mum’s shock after being told to stop speakingWelsh inWales

A MOTHER was shocked when she was told to stop speaking “foreign muck” to her one-year-old daughter, but was actually speaking Welsh... in Wales.

Elin Jones, from Lampeter, was speaking to daughter Elena while out shopping on Saturday, explaining food on the shelves.

To her shock, a customer at the local store in Ceredigion confronted her, and mother-of-three Elin tweeted: “Just got asked by a lady in a shop why I don’t speak English and not foreign muck to my baby. I was speaking Welsh. In Wales. #givemestrength.”

Elin explained how she corrected the woman.

“I think I was pretty calm about the situation to be honest. I said to her ‘I think you are misunderstood – I am speaking Welsh to my children.’ But she turned on her heels and walked away. She didn’t even try to justify what she had said.”

Elin, 32, works in a local pub and added: “Most people usually recognise that it’s Welsh, particularly when I’m in Wales. But maybe because I don’t sound Welsh when I am speaking it, I have had comments from people saying ‘go back to your own country,’ which is very funny because I am from Aberystwyth.”

Elin, a Plaid Cymru town councillor, whose husband does not speak Welsh, is bringing up her children in a bilingual household. She said: “Our home is bilingual and the children learn it in school too. I’m a first-generation Welsh speaker as my grandparents are from the London area.

“I have always been in Welsh education and they are always really proud that I speak Welsh.”