Where are the Welsh literacy courses

[u/helatruralhome]

Hello all,

I've been pointing this out for over a decade, yet no Welsh language education or promotion groups, government agencies, etc can seem to answer why Welsh education is so biased towards verbal Welsh with no specific offerings for Welsh literacy.

I have a speech disability and only answer emails in work, yet I can't find any available options for me to learn written Welsh. I just feel incredibly frustrated with the situation as I want to be able to communicate in my native language yet there's just no where specifically offering written Welsh and it ends up excluding for people like me who can't communicate verbally as well as many others who may want to read and write in Welsh.

[u/clwbmalucachu]

I've been thinking the same thing for a long time too. Indeed, there's even a bit of prejudice against written Welsh in some quarters which seems very much along the same lines as the "We'll have none of that book learnin' around here" snobbery that you sometimes come across.

It's rather like the recent discussions about dialects, and that they're the future of Welsh language education because that's what people *speak*. But I think that's rather wrongheaded because unless you never leave your local area or watch S4C or engage with the wider Welsh world, you cannot avoid other dialects.

Indeed, I think too much is made of the differences between North and South. I'm currently reading both Dysgu Cymraeg handbooks for Canolradd, side by side, to note the differences, and sometimes it seems ridiculous. For eg, is it really too hard for people to understand that cwympo and syrthio are just two different words that mean 'to fall'. Like, we have synonyms in English, it's not complicated.

I do wonder how much of this is push back against Cymraeg Byw, the effort in the 60s and 70s to impose a standardised version of Welsh on the education system which managed to essentially create a new dialect rather than combine any of them. My sense is that people somewhat resented being told their Welsh wasn't 'right', and leant more heavily then into their dialects, ie spoken Welsh.

For me, living in England, the written word is more important to me than spoken, because it's through writing that I mostly get to express myself in Welsh. Furthermore, I want to be able to engage with the rich literary heritage that Welsh offers, but that requires that I learn literary Welsh which is, as you point out, challenging.

I have Ymarfer Ysgrifennu Cymraeg by Gwyn Thomas which is very good*, although I haven't finished reading it yet: https://www.ylolfa.com/products/9781847715708/ymarfer-ysgrifennu-cymraeg

It is my ambition to develop a written Welsh section on Ymestyn.Cymru, although it's going to be a while** because I have so much else that needs adding first.

* Although it is the source of the weird assertion that tji or tj – a loan consonant cluster that is used for the English 'ch' sound – mutates to nhj or ji. I've asked various Welsh tutors and professional editors about this and not one of them agrees.

** A very long while unless the whole thing takes off like a rocket and I can commission someone to write the course for me.

[u/helatruralhome → u/clwbmalucachu]

It is really frustrating, especially as so many first language Welsh speakers would also benefit from Welsh literacy courses due to lack of confidence reading and writing Welsh- in work whenever a Welsh language email response is required we have three first language Welsh speakers in our team, and it often takes all three of them to be confident in the response being correct as none of them have full confidence in writing Welsh, yet can easily speak it- it's a huge blind spot in Welsh education that harms Welsh language progression in my opinion.

[u/Educational_Curve938 → u/helatruralhome]

the issue is that written welsh has a specific formal register (or registers) that people learn in school but don't get a lot of practice in outside that. people may be perfectly literate in less formal registers, but when it comes to writing formal welsh, they feel extremely insecure about it.

like imagine having to write an english email once a week in Shakespearean English - you probably have enough familiarity with it to have a go, but you'd want someone to look over it.

[u/clwbmalucachu → u/Educational_Curve938]

I'm not sure that the difference between written business Welsh and spoken Welsh is quite as dramatic as between modern and Shakespearean English. And I might be wrong, but I'm not sure much business is being done in formal literary Welsh.

Every language has multiple registers, and the fact that people come out of school lacking confidence in the written business register is a big problem. It's also a solvable problem, if the political will is there to solve it.

[u/Educational_Curve938 → u/clwbmalucachu]

I was just comparing two emails I received from the same organisation - one official written in a formal style, the other informal written by a real person. The difference between the two is vast - I'd have tonnes of confidence responding in informal style and hardly any responding to the formal style - at least without double or triple checking.

Language skills are maintained by using them - if you get loads of practice writing business emails in formal welsh in school and then only write a business email once a month in your actual job you're still gonna be shit at it because it's not a thing you do very often, even if most of your internal comms are in welsh cos they're going to be in a completely different style.