5 FEBRUARY 1977, Page 10

Say it in Welsh

Antonia Martin

Come the referendum, the Welsh joke about the ambulance driver who couldn't drive but got the job because he was the only applicant to speak Welsh will have its point sharpened and dipped mightily in hemlock before the voting is over. Scotland may have oil, but Wales has Welsh and there can be no doubt which will prove to be the more hot-blooded issue.

Only two decades ago, Welsh was almost moribund. Now, it has undergone a resurrection, although how much a resurrection of form rather than substance only time will show. Certainly, its public manifestations are impressive and hit the eye at every turn. Bilingualism is the name of the game and makes its presence felt as soon as a visitor is over the Severn Bridge and into Gwent. Pronunciation apart, a driver will soon find himself acquiring a kind of subliminal Welsh if only through regular exposure to notices flashing their messages to the subconscious. Giant motorway signs inform him that he is approaching Dociau Casnewydd (Newport Docks), then announce 'dim cerbydau nwyddau yn y Ion dde im ymlaen' (no goods vehicles in the right-hand lane im ahead) and so to 'diwedd' (end), but not for long.

As the construction of the Welsh-annotated M4 plunges westward, the official march of the language is spelled out emphatically on road signs all over Wales. Having first won their battle for place names to be bilingual (Brecon — Aberhonddu, Cardigan—Aberteifi), then for directional signs to be in two languages, the campaigners are now pressing for Welsh to come first on directional signs, a move the Welsh Office has resisted because of the possible danger of accidents through drivers being unable to understand the signs. It is said that the Welsh Office is about to yield this point, too, in response to the argument that other countries with two or more languages to contend with have experienced no trouble.

Those fighting for Welsh are now making a significant change of ground. They feel strong enough to ask not just for parity of Welsh with English, a principle conceded anyway ten years ago, but for precedence. Last term, members of the Cymric Society at University College, Bangor, demanded that Welsh should be used as the first language in college administration. Some of the requests seem petty—Welsh always in the left-hand column in bilingual notices, the Welsh version always to be on top when announcements are stapled together—until it is realised that what is involved is a serious face-gaining exercise. Asserting that Welshspeaking students had difficulty in under

standing English (a doubtful claim, but if true a knockdown of the argument that English is an annihilating force in Wales) they wanted all lecturers to learn Welsh by `wIpan,' the local version of the Hebrew `ulpan,' or crash course, by which Jewish immigrants to Israel are taught Hebrew.

Not only is the language being promoted far more aggressively, but some groups of nationalists, notably one called Adfer, see the creation of a 'Bro Cymraeg,' a series of completely Welsh-speaking and Welsh administered areas in the west and north, equivalent to the Irish Gaeltacht, as the onlY hope of preserving the language as a living entity. The corollary to this is the call made recently by some members of the Welsh Language Society (a direct action grouP founded by students from Aberystwyth in 1962) for restrictions on the 'never ending flow' of English immigrants to rural Wales on the grounds that they are a threat to the language and social life.

The language campaigners can look back on a ,decade of almost unimaginable progress. Nearly all official notices, from the Highway Code to British Rail timetables are in both languages, as well as tax forms, television and driving licences, birth and marriage certificates, motor taxation discs. Banks now print cheques in Welsh and the capital has put up Welsh translations of its English street names, as well as emblazoning its buses with the legend 'Dias Caerdydd—City of Cardiff.' Last month the BBC started a new allWelsh VHF service, Radio Cymru, and the pressure continues for an all-Welsh television channel. The language campaigners enjoy strong support in the Welsh-speaking establishment, especially the university, the chapels, the BBC—an organisation under criticism for years for its alleged bias in favour of Welsh-speakers. Pondering all this activity, it is an effort to remember that three-quarters of the people in Wales are scarcely able to pass the time of day in Welsh and that each succeed-, ing census shows a decline in the number 01 Welsh-speakers, now amounting to about 23 per cent of the population. The majority of Welsh people speak one language, and that is English; and the Anglo-Welsh are beginning to scent coercion in the air. An increasing number of jobs in Wales stipulate Welsh as an essential qualification, defended by nationalists by analogy with France or ItalY-imagine, they say, trying to get a job France or Italy without speaking French or Italian—a specious argument that serves to intensify the anger of non-Welsh-speakers. They suspect that already in too many .i0bst language is the over-riding factor and tha standards are being sacrificed to accorn

modate it.

and

The Anglo-Welsh may be wrong _

their fears unfounded, but when it comes tc: the language, devolutionists have a h°.1 potato in their hands that could burn theinr fingers badly. Then they will need a ambulancg driver who can drive.