Speaking up for the silent majority

IN respect of Meri Huws’ announcement that students in further and higher education now have a legal right to be tutored through the medium of Welsh, it appears reasonable to suggest that there is an increasing requirement for all the silent native speaking majority English population of Wales to devote 10,000 hours, six years of their lives attempting to develop their Welsh language capability to cater for this need.

Sadly, there is no evidence that basic Welsh language communicative fluency can be developed in seven intensive hours, as Aran Jones, the Welsh language activist, once claimed.

Children who are born into Welsh speaking families will always have a head start in obtaining the Welsh speakers’ only job opportunities that are being created in Wales. It cannot be right that teachers, academics, nurses, doctors, AMs, and even the police will have to interrupt their practice and professional development in future to attempt to learn Welsh.

English is the academic language of the world. It is unclear whether it is intended to translate every book and researched paper in university libraries into Welsh.

It is unclear of what value there will be in students writing assignments, papers and dissertations in a minority language in contributing to corporate intelligence that exists in subject domains.

In my own professional development, I found it a privilege to have my assignment marked by authorities in their field, what they have done, as opposed to the language they speak.

Howard Gunn Tonteg, Pontypridd