The Anti-Welsh Thread

Alexia
Posts: 2999
Joined: Sat 01 Oct, 2005 17.50

walesdestroyedme wrote:Well i have just abandoned a house in Wales, mired in debt, my simple ambition of completing my education more or less in tatters. Basic education funding denied and frequent absurd racial abuse from welsh colleagues and customers on account of my English accent. Why hate outsiders so intensely? I thought the anti-english racism was a bit of a myth until I tried to settle there. Im sure you Welsh forum members will be pleased that I will never cross that "border" again. I only hope for some kind if Berlin Wall to be erected, with snipers too.
Sorry you had such a bad experience, but there are a few inconsistencies / generalisations in your story I must question, especially as you've seen fit as a first-time-member to resurrect a six-year old irrelevant thread.

Firstly - basic education funding denied? Student Finance Wales do not discriminate if you are a non-Welsh person, in fact they provide funding to anyone from the EU and beyond. If funding was denied, you must not have fulfilled criteria that have nothing to do with you being English, such as studying a non-covered course, having defaulted on other financial matters, or you were studying at an institution that charged more than you were able to get in a loan.

Secondly - you show a breathtaking amount of racism yourself by tainting ALL Welsh people - including those on this forum which, as you have only just joined you do not know at all - with the same brush that you have used against the people you have had direct interaction with. We are not all anti-English bigots as I have said in this VERY THREAD.

Thirdly - Wales is actually an incredibly tolerant country, on the whole. During the 1920s Cardiff was THE centre of world trade and all manner of goods, services and peoples came in to work. Without foreign investment including from English industrialists, Wales' legendary coal industry would never have got off - or even out of - the ground. My own great-great-great grandfather came in from Somerset to live and work in the Welsh coalfield. My grandmother was a London war evacuee. One of my best mates is half-Persian and he is the loudest, strongest, and drunkest cheerer for Cardiff City and Wales football teams I know. As such we have a large proportion of second- and third- generation Welsh people with genetic and cultural makeups from all over the planet. And we all get along quite nicely thankyou.

Lastly - it's amazing how many English people I meet go in to living in Wales with preconceptions about how the Welsh will treat the English. They hear stories about how Welsh people will deliberately start speaking Welsh in pubs and on buses when an English person is in earshot. Even though only a quarter of the population have any Welsh language skills at all. They hear stories about how Welsh terrorist groups firebomb English properties, even though Mabion Glyndwr was only three blokes in a shed with some propane. Most English are put off by this scaremongering, and those that do come here, like yourself, are susceptible to seeing and hearing prejudice when actually what you are hearing is good-old-fashioned Welsh ribbing and banter. The generation that had genuine grievances against the English for things like forcing them out of their homes to flood the valley to provide water for Liverpool has largely since passed, replaced by a new younger generation who like soccer and drop their Welsh language education as soon as they can. In short, outside of the heavily politicised, no-one gives a shit any more.


EDIT: For an alternative view, I suggest you read Mike Parker's Neighbours From Hell.
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Finn
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Joined: Sun 06 Nov, 2005 17.02
Location: Manchester

I was in Cardiff a few months ago for a weekend and thought it had a fantastic atmosphere.

I also enjoy visiting North Wales (as it's not that long a trek down the M56/A55). Some great beaches and lovely countryside. I could see myself retiring there, one day.
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WillPS
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I can sympathise to some extent, I have to say. I had a particularly negative experience during my placement year when I lived in/around Scunthorpe. Of course, Scunthorpe is actually a well renowned shit hole and that doesn't help things. But the truth is that it was mostly my own stupid decision to ignore warning signs and put myself in that situation, the hideous town and its mutated racist townsfolk are really incidental. Do you think the same thing might apply to your experience?

Your mileage with idiots will vary according to where you are. Swansea and Cardiff struck me as being very forward-thinking type places, while Bridgend, just a few miles away, struck me as not being so. I wouldn't get off the train in Neath. The same is true in the East Midlands, Yorkshire or any of the English regions.

My family have holidayed for years in Powys and more recently in Ceredigion. It really is some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen. Unfortunately it is economically bereft of almost anything aside from tourism and that has had varying effects.

The rudest people I've come across in New Quay, the town we go to now, have been English retirees.
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Critique
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Location: Suffolk

I've only been to Wales a handful of times, and at that I've barely ventured out of Cardiff but when I was there I thought that the people I encountered were probably some of the nicest I've met anywhere. The moment I got off the train and went to the (actually quite rubbish) bus station a random person walking past asked if I needed any help and pointed me in the direction of the bus I needed, on the bus itself the driver was waving at bus stops to make sure no-one wanted his bus and at my restaurant for the evening I was served by an immensely friendly and chatty woman. I appreciate that in two of the three scenarios I mentioned the people were being paid in part for their customer service, but unlike sometimes at home both seemed 'genuine' rather than having forced smiles or making false conversation without having any interest. I enjoyed my visit so much I'd quite like to go back for leisure!

Oh, and on the train back to London the guard was much nicer than the one on the way there, which is probably a coincidence but it has only helped my positive impression of Wales.
cwathen
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Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 17.28

WillPS wrote:Your mileage with idiots will vary according to where you are. Swansea and Cardiff struck me as being very forward-thinking type places, while Bridgend, just a few miles away, struck me as not being so. I wouldn't get off the train in Neath. The same is true in the East Midlands, Yorkshire or any of the English regions.
Well let's not generalise within towns either. One of my work colleagues, born and bred in Bridgend, proud to be called Welsh and with an almost indescribably strong Welsh accent also thinks the Welsh language itself is utterly pointless in the 21st century, damaging to her young daughter's education as her head is so confused between juggling Welsh and English to the point that her English grammar (which in her words, is more important) is appalling and believes it is only prevented from becoming as dead as other Celtic languages through political will pouring huge amounts of money into it to prop it up which could better be spent elsewhere rather than any genuine need for it to exist.

For the record though, I go to Cardiff and Swansea a lot for work since the 'South West' and 'South Wales' regions of my company got merged together (and have ventured to Newport, Neath and Cwmbran on occasion) and they've always been perfectly lovely places to go. Certainly not half as scary as some of the shitholes that exist in England that I get sent to from time to time.

Can't say I find any of my Welsh work colleagues in any way Xenophobic either, there's a bit of Wales-England banter at work but it's all in good humour and we can all still go for a drink together after a meeting and have a good time, whether it's in Cardiff or in Bristol.
bilky asko
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Joined: Sat 08 Nov, 2008 19.48

cwathen wrote:Well let's not generalise within towns either. One of my work colleagues, born and bred in Bridgend, proud to be called Welsh and with an almost indescribably strong Welsh accent also thinks the Welsh language itself is utterly pointless in the 21st century, damaging to her young daughter's education as her head is so confused between juggling Welsh and English to the point that her English grammar (which in her words, is more important) is appalling and believes it is only prevented from becoming as dead as other Celtic languages through political will pouring huge amounts of money into it to prop it up which could better be spent elsewhere rather than any genuine need for it to exist.
Well this woman is wrong. It is well documented that learning multiple languages has positive effects on intelligence. This is why so many other countries insist upon children learning more than one language.
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cwathen
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bilky asko wrote: Well this woman is wrong. It is well documented that learning multiple languages has positive effects on intelligence. This is why so many other countries insist upon children learning more than one language.
Without wishing to get into the argument of which specific other languages children should learn, I don't believe that it is necessarily possible for everyone to become fluent in more than 1 language, some people have a natural affinity for language and can easily learn and retain them, others can't and will never be able to be truly fluent in anything other than their mother tounge. As such it may be better to concentrate on getting 1 language right in early education before trying to introduce another one.

Having spent 5 years at school doing French, I was able to learn a lot about it to the point of being able to hold a conversation in it, but internally my head only works in English. I was only able to communicate in French by a process of listening, translating into English, deciding what I was going to say in English and translating that back into French (and usually needing reference materials to help me do that). That was a literal process I went through every time, it never in any way felt natural or like I could break through that barrier to actually immerse myself fully and think in another language in the way that someone with a talent for languages can. For the 1 year that I also did Spanish, I was regularly mixing words up between the two.

My GCSE French oral (where you had to talk about a subject and then be questioned about it entirely in French with no prompts or forewarning) was singularly the most stressful examination of any kind I've done in my life as I felt more or less like I had to try and memorise a dictionary in order to have a hope of dealing with it.

Despite getting a B GCSE which would indicate a relatively good level of French, 16 years later it's the subject I've retained the least knowledge of.
bilky asko
Posts: 1400
Joined: Sat 08 Nov, 2008 19.48

cwathen wrote:
bilky asko wrote: Well this woman is wrong. It is well documented that learning multiple languages has positive effects on intelligence. This is why so many other countries insist upon children learning more than one language.
Without wishing to get into the argument of which specific other languages children should learn, I don't believe that it is necessarily possible for everyone to become fluent in more than 1 language, some people have a natural affinity for language and can easily learn and retain them, others can't and will never be able to be truly fluent in anything other than their mother tounge. As such it may be better to concentrate on getting 1 language right in early education before trying to introduce another one.

Having spent 5 years at school doing French, I was able to learn a lot about it to the point of being able to hold a conversation in it, but internally my head only works in English. I was only able to communicate in French by a process of listening, translating into English, deciding what I was going to say in English and translating that back into French (and usually needing reference materials to help me do that). That was a literal process I went through every time, it never in any way felt natural or like I could break through that barrier to actually immerse myself fully and think in another language in the way that someone with a talent for languages can. For the 1 year that I also did Spanish, I was regularly mixing words up between the two.

My GCSE French oral (where you had to talk about a subject and then be questioned about it entirely in French with no prompts or forewarning) was singularly the most stressful examination of any kind I've done in my life as I felt more or less like I had to try and memorise a dictionary in order to have a hope of dealing with it.

Despite getting a B GCSE which would indicate a relatively good level of French, 16 years later it's the subject I've retained the least knowledge of.
All of your experience is because you learnt French too late, and learnt too little Spanish (too late). The most commonly held linguistic theory states that there is an innate ability to learn language in neurotypical humans which degrades with age. (Interestingly, there are cases of people who seem to never lose this ability, effectively rendering them able to learn any new language at speed). You simply started the process too late in your development for it to work properly for you.

Combine that with the generally poor teaching methods and standards of years gone by, and there's no wonder you couldn't master French or Spanish.

Ultimately, other languages ideally should be taught from the start of schooling, in an immersive way. At the very least, it should definitely be before the age of 11.
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Sput
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I heard the Home Office is secretly tracking all welsh people via the chips on their shoulders.

*HEY HO*
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Alexia
Posts: 2999
Joined: Sat 01 Oct, 2005 17.50

Sput wrote:I heard the Home Office is secretly tracking all welsh people via the chips on their shoulders.

*HEY HO*
Sorry Andy, but the only chips we have in Wales are the ones from Caroline Street that have been dropped by marauding seagulls.
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