Tools of the Taffia

Let the rant commence. My morning/moronic holiday viewing of Trisha followed by This Morning was rudely interrupted today by a very disturbing commercial advert for www.WorkPlayLive.org, a new Welsh Language promotion website. It contains such gems as

"More and more businesses are realizing the benefits of using Welsh in the workplace - on signs, packaging, leaflets, websites and many employ bilingual staff. You'll soon be able to spot Welsh speaking staff easily - look out for the orange badge!".

Uh-huh. Okay. So what are these benefits and why aren't they listed?

There are 2 things that deeply trouble me about this sort of promotion.
• Why do you need to promote the Welsh language if it's so great? Wouldn't people just choose to speak it? Incidentally, only 21% of the population can speak any Welsh at all, according to the last census, and 98% of all households in Wales are English-speaking households.
• Why should taxpayers fork out for promoting the Welsh language? It's recognised that there is significant cost incurred in producing bilingual literature, signs, and so on, but in this case the Welsh Assembly is spending taxes on English-language television advertising on English-language TV. Expensive, misplaced and pushing a questionable agenda, in my opinion.

For the Economist's better-reasoned discussion of the serious implications of this, have a look at:
http://www.welshdragon.net/resources/Articles/patriot.shtml