Eddie Butler takes aim at people who moan about Welsh being on road signs
Eddie Butler has taken aim at people who moan about the Welsh language being on road signs.
The sports commentator and former Wales international rugby player said people who complain about bilingual road signs have “got to put up with it”.
Butler, who supports Welsh independence, argued about the need to expand Welsh medium education, and said language is “still very much part of our way of life whether you speak it or not”.
In an interview with WalesOnline he said: “But all the attempts to suppress the Welsh language and the Welsh culture have failed. The language is still very much part of our way of life whether you speak it or not.
“It should be as natural to hear Welsh in Wales as it is to hear Spanish in Spain. People complain about the road signs, but that’s too bad, you have got to put up with it.
“We are all in this together, however Welsh speaking you are. But in terms of the future of the Welsh language, education is the absolute key, no question.
“You introduce Welsh into the schools system and within two generations everybody will be speaking Welsh who is educated in Wales.”
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Eddie for president 🏴
Welsh should be the first language on all signs in wales 🏴 English second stop being little Englanders and and be proud to be welsh it’s time for a new wales 🏴 A Free Wales 🏴
Sounds very patriotic but the reality is something totally different..
Da iawn, Eddie – a diolch am eich cefnogaeth – ac ydy, mae addysg gyfrwng Cymraeg i bob plentyn yng Nghymru o’r Ysgol Feithrin i’r Brifysgol yn hanfodol – ond, ond, heb gymunedau cynaliadwy Cymraeg eu hiaith, does dim mwy o ddyfodol i’r iaith Gymraeg na mae ‘na wedi bod i’r iaith Aeleg yn Iwerddon, iaith sydd mewn sefyllfa angheuol bron oherwydd prinder cymunedau cynaliadwy Gaeleg eu hiaith. ~ Great, Eddie – and thankyou for your support – and yes, Welsh-medium education from Nursery to University in Wales is absolutely essential- but, but, without sustainable Welsh-speaking communities, there is no… Read more »
I went to see Eddie giving the Gwyn Alf lecture in Merthyr 2 weeks ago and was impressed with him.I always looked upon him as a stuck up public schoolboy with more loyalty to the English than us.My perception was totally wrong and he was great.Very passionate about independence.
Grêt Hogia.Daliwch anti.Codi canon rhywun a diolch.
Good for you Eddie
I am a proud Welshman, but I don’t speak Welsh and dont understand very much of it.
BUT — its MY language.
The language of MY country
I am happy to see it and hear it everywhere.
I support the aim to teach it throughout the school system
Da iawn, Cymru am byth 🏴
There shouldn’t be any bilingual roadsigns in Wales.
You visit Spain, you expect roadsigns in Spanish. You live in France, you learn French.
What makes those people think that Wales should be any different?
There are bilingual signs in Brittany, Catalonia and Cornwall to name but a few. Why shouldn’t Wales therefore have bilingual signs!
Those are not countries.
A question for you too: what is the official language of each of those regions?
The Welsh language act (2003) gave Welsh and English equal status.
No one is complaining about them.
Ifan “Bach” really is provoking his little army of online f**kwit bigots today.
Nobody from Wales is complaining about them, or at least far fewer. I don’t think Eddie Butler’s remarks were aimed at Welsh people.
Of course they were aimed at Welsh people.
It would have been jumped on in the text.
This was probably an uttering in response to an inane question in a Q and A.
You are being played by a Nationalist media that wants you wallowing in victimhood and bigotry in order to see the clickbait.
Contrary to what you would like to be the case, most Welsh people have moved on from the ‘Llyfrau Gleision’ reaction to the Welsh language. Nobody’s being played, sorry.
I’m welsh and I used to think they were daft but now they’re putting Welsh as priority language on caution signs I think it’s downright dangerous
Ermm because Wales is not a country it’s part of the United Kingdom…….and the majority speak English……
I’m English but learning Welsh as a hobby. I was quite surprised by Welsh friends who had opted to remove their kids from Welsh-medium schools as they thought the overall standard of education was limited by the fact that the pool of Welsh-speaking teachers was so small. (I hope I’ve explained that well enough). I teach in an English Catholic school, and I must admit that if we limited ourselves to employing only Catholic teachers, we would probably limit that range of life experience too. So I do understand their decision but how can you solve that problem without the… Read more »
You have to start somewhere. It won’t be perfect for a long time. Perhaps it won’t be perfect until today’s four year-olds have graduated. Yes, an insufficiency of teachers fluent in technical Welsh will cause inequality but standards inevitably vary from school to school anyway. If WG and local government policy persists then the number of Welsh-medium teachers will increase year by year and the quality of teaching will come along with the numbers. In fourteen years time, those four year-olds won’t be suffering any disadvantage. They’ll be undergrads on an equal footing with monoglots and may have better Welsh… Read more »
The overall standard of education provided by ‘Welsh medium’ education, (which is in reality bilingual) is as good as you’ll find anywhere, and due to the dedication of both staff and parents, those schools are often up there with the best. Despite their detractors, who, even though relying on prejudice and also on turning research findings on their head managing to convince some that Welsh medium education is restrictive simply by dint of the fact it’s largely facilitated through the medium of Welsh. It’s interesting that this prejudice doesn’t extend to other countries’ education systems where multilingualism is a norm,… Read more »
The great Eddie Butler is right. And I find with our Welsh language bigots & critics who overlook the fact where we show respect towards English by including the translation alongside its original Welsh name, they would never contemplate doing similar.
#CariadCymraeg ❤️ 🏴
I am not Welsh but have lived here for over 47 years. I firmly believe that if people wish to converse in their native no one should complain about it. My feelings are the same for bilingual signs, I think it helps others to understand some of the language.
Da iawn chi, I agree immerssion for all 5 year olds would bring back the Cymraeg to our non speaking communities.with in 2 generations.
I wish that it was that simple. No doubt that immersion through education is part of it, on its own it will merely create people who are able to speak Cymraeg, and not people who do, habitually speak it as their everyday medium. I think context is everything, and unless there are contexts where Cymraeg can be used outside of education, and where more and more jobs require people fluent in Cymraeg in order to do the jobs – i.e. ‘Welsh essential’ because Cymraeg is the administrative and working language.. It would also require the creation of a genuinely popular… Read more »
Let’s not beat around the bush. Idiotic attacks on the use of Cymraeg in the public sphere are proxies for attacking our identity as a nation. Simple bigotry. That’s it.
Spot on! Ti yn llygad dy le.
Mae,r diawliad yn cywiro fy sillafu fi ar hwn rwan.
Quite right if they don’t like bilingual signs then bugger off to england
Indeed – I’m also a little peeved at a certain language on the signs in Wales – English ! Get rid of it, this isn’t England !
So how does that help the large majority of Welsh people who can only speak it?
They’d manage, most of them aren’t stupid. The blood of a few bigots my reach boiling point, and a demented few might suffer an apoplectic fit, but most would cope – there’s not a lot of difference between Merthyr Tudful and the ‘English’ version after all, and we got rid of abominations such as Llanelley and Dolgelly decades ago.
And the good people of Cefn Fforest seem to have no particular difficulties finding their way home, despite most of them not speaking that much Cymraeg.
“Pedestrians look right — Cerddwyr edrychwch i’r chwith”.
Their defence: “Did anybody spot the deliberate mistake?”
Oh dear he looks in the mirror first thing and the words flow – fascist, nazi, bigot, phobe blah blah – it’s all a reflection of irrational supremacist hatred towards the Welsh language and culture.
Well what a nonsense reply
Anthony Thomas, how on earth did you come to make a comparison with South Africa? We need to protect, and promote the Welsh language. You need to check the meaning of fascism, and then read how the Welsh children were forced to speak English, and wear a Welsh not placard, and punished for speaking the language of our forefathers, and still they try to thwart us, and then you tell me who the fascists are.
Well said Eddie👋👋
You I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt, and am assuming that you’re a unionist troll doing a wind-up. If you’re being sincere, then I don’t know where to begin telling you how misguided and offensive your comment is.
Chware Teg, Eddie.
When I started school I could barely speak English but got taught it in school in the late 50sand 60s then a few English people moved into the area so we had more practice but all those children learnt how to speak Welsh even though their parents did not
What a load of rubbish ,I could no speak English untill I was 6years old and was forced to learn it in school Welsh is the oldest language in the UK
Well said Ed
It’s probably Welsh Tory voting unionists and English in Wales who are complaining. In any case, whoever is objecting should move to England because spiritually and politically, that’s where they belong.
We are currently touring Scotland and Gaelic is written first on the road signs followed by the English place names – as it should be! It’s not a problem at all! All road signs in Wales should have the Welsh place names written first followed by the English.
It’s about time we got rid of the Anglicised/English names for our towns and cities also. We don’t need them. There would, quite rightly, be uproar today if it was decided to give an alternative name to Llandudno, Llangollen or Betws y Coed to make it easier for the English to pronounce. They should be phased out now and known only by the Welsh name. Same for Yr Wyddfa too
Who moans about it?
I agree do these people moan when they go to France, Spain etc when the road signs are in one language? From someone who is half Welsh and was at Llangollen a couple of weeks ago it doesn’t bother me
Use only Cymraeg.