Prejudicial diatribe is an infernal cheek

AS a long-standing reader of your paper, I enjoy your letters page, with the usual writers, and as such I am enjoying the exchanges between the pro- and anti-Welsh-speakers, presently between Mr Derek Griffiths, and that well-known lover of the native tongue, Mr Dennis Coughlin, (Western Mail Letters, August 12).

I, like D Griffiths, now of Llandaff, was brought up in Welsh-speaking Fishguard, north Pembrokeshire.

I later moved to Newport, Gwent, and in the years I lived there I never heard Welsh spoken, or in “Kairdiff”, where the citizens consider themselves “Welsh Cockneys” and the “Welshies” as ignorant hayseeds!

Mr D Griffiths is a well-educated grammar school pupil, taught in a school where Welsh was on the curriculum and it didn’t stunt his education!

He went on to become a corporate lawyer for a world-wide construction company, and travelled the world on major projects, so for D Coughlin to describe D Griffiths’ letter (Western Mail, August 10) as a 500-word “ramble” is laughable.

Mr Coughlin stated in his missive that the appalling GCSE results are down to compulsory Welsh lessons. Has he not considered maybe the teachers aren’t up to the mark? He also remarked that “the majority of the bilingual population have never learned a language”.

Well, surely that’s a contradiction in terms.

Mr Coughlin writes that he works in a school, but doesn’t say as what! If he is a teacher, well I pity his pupils if he subjects them to his prejudicial diatribes.