Indigenous British people that can't speak English

My family and friends are awash with Irish and to claim some Irish can't speak or don't speak English is incredulous . As Victor would say " I don't believe it!"

My family and friends are awash with Irish and to claim some Irish can't speak or don't speak English is incredulous . As Victor would say " I don't believe it!"

Irish and Scottish Gaelic are practically non-existent compared to Welsh anyway, which is easily the most flourishing Gaelic language, and by an absolutely massive margin too.

my mother is from south Wales, everybody round there can speak English with no exceptions however she did have an uncle from Gwynedd, about whom it was said in family lore, that he could not speak English. Whether he could speak English, and just wouldn't or refused to, or whether he really didn't know how to speak English at all, I don't know.

whether it is possible for somebody from one of the predominately Welsh speaking counties to go through their lives without speaking English hardly at all, and who may have gone rusty to the point that they just can't hold a conversation in English anymore, like almost nobody remembers their GSCE French, I am pretty sure that is probably true.

Just for information, Welsh, Breton and Cornish are Brythonic languages, Scots and Irish are Gaelic which predates them and is as different to them as English is to German.

The ancestral Welsh language was spoken in Western and Southern Britain and Ireland as far as Dublin, Glasgow and Aberdeen.

Local 'Welsh' names include Don, Derwent, Rivelin, etc.

English was universally the official language of church and state school lessons up until WWII. After this time some schools became more or less bi-lingual. Now all schools are more or less bi-lingual.

The ability to communicate in only one language is becoming more unusual.

When children left school at 10 and in areas where the opportunity to speak English was limited, there were people who would not speak English for fear of ridicule. They understood perfectly.

You do not forget English taught throughout your school years, neither can you avoid it in day to day life.

In every day conversation English words and phrases are included. People flit from one language to another within one conversation.

There is no comparison between the level of language ability needed to gain GCSE English and GCSEs in other taught languages.

---------- Post added 23-04-2018 at 10:35 ----------

Just for information, Welsh, Breton and Cornish are Brythonic languages, Scots and Irish are Gaelic which predates them and is as different to them as English is to German.

The ancestral Welsh language was spoken in Western and Southern Britain and Ireland as far as Dublin, Glasgow and Aberdeen.

Local 'Welsh' names include Don, Derwent, Rivelin, etc.

English was universally the official language of church and state school lessons up until WWII. After this time some schools became more or less bi-lingual. Now all schools are more or less bi-lingual.

The ability to communicate in only one language is becoming more unusual.

When children left school at 10 and in areas where the opportunity to speak English was limited, there were people who would not speak English for fear of ridicule. They understood perfectly.

Nobody

"Annie Bynnol - English was universally the official language of church and state school lessons up until WWII."

Accepted. But, this was the date, WWII, when political correctness first started to distort ordinary commonsence.

When was English first universally accepted as the language of Church and State schools?

My guess is that it would have been as a result of evolution when people voted with their tongues to legitimise what was already becoming the defacto state of society. Which is normal and to be expected.

I don't think it would be as a result of a government initiative or as a result of a small pressure group having more influence than their numbers should have caused.

Blue Mink - Meltin' Pot

oh dear. You haven't got a clue have you.

Compelling people to speak English in school was a feature for years, and imposed. Not only was Welsh not on the curriculum in Welsh schools, but children would be punished for speaking Welsh, their first language, and the language they used at home, even in the playground, at school. That went on for decades. It only stopped quite recently, maybe from about 50 years ago.

imperialists always do it. They impose a foreign language on people. The Communist Russians did it in Latvia and Ukraine. Guess what. Latvians and Ukranians didn't like it when some dick tried to get them to speak Russian, when they would rather speak their own language. Why should the Welsh, or Irish be any different.

Watched a really down to earth play, a few years back with authentic Sheffield accents. Can't remember the name of it, but it had subtitles LOL

"Annie Bynnol - English was universally the official language of church and state school lessons up until WWII."

 

Accepted. But, this was the date, WWII, when political correctness first started to distort ordinary commonsence.

 

When was English first universally accepted as the language of Church and State schools?

 

My guess is that it would have been as a result of evolution when people voted with their tongues to legitimise what was already becoming the defacto state of society. Which is normal and to be expected.

 

I don't think it would be as a result of a government initiative or as a result of a small pressure group having more influence than their numbers should have caused.

 

Blue Mink - Meltin' Pot

I am not clear as to what you are saying/asking.

Political correctness in Wales from the 1940s?

I don't know when English replaced Latin as the language of the Church and there were no state schools at that time.

Wales was no different to England in Government, Law or Canon Law, so the language in all aspects of religion, government, education and law was English.

The direct control by The Church of England gradually ended in Wales from WW1, it was replaced by a The Church in Wales . This was in response to a campaign that objected to a minority religion having so much power.

In rural areas all schools were CofE and Welsh was not used, the no-conformist chapels were mostly Welsh and promoted Welsh culture. Also

Schools under various Education Acts became the responsibility of local Government. The use of Welsh increased.