Radio host scorned in Welsh language row
A Powys councillor has accused Radio Two presenter Jeremy Vine of ignorance over saying people in Wales should speak English instead of their mother tongue.
Earlier this year he’d interviewed a man from Pontypridd in South Wales who’d declared about Welsh: “I don’t want to speak it, it’s a horrible language.
“If you go into any pub in West Wales, or North Wales, they’re all there speaking English. As soon as they hear my accent, they start changing into Welsh, so we can’t understand them.”
But an infuriated Twitter user had criticised the recent Radio 2 review of the year for again giving air time “to the tired old trope about ‘walking into a pub and people switching to English(sic)’.” It was branded “nonsense.”
Furore
A further furore then erupted when Jeremy Vine’s official Twitter feed responded to a message, which compared speaking the Welsh language in Wales to using French in France, by asking: "Is France in the UK?” The tweet has since been deleted.
Welsh language campaigner and Powys councillor Elwyn Vaughan has hit out at the presenter.
He said: "This is the re-run of a old spurious red herring which often crops up at holidays when there's a lack of other stories!
"What some people fail to realise is that many communities in Wales are naturally Welsh speaking and are living, practicing bilingual communities and hence rather than constantly complain and show ignorance of this fact, it should be actually celebrated that the original language of 'Britain' still exists and it may be more appropriate for wider teaching and understanding of the language in order to avoid such ignorance in the future."
It comes after Plaid Cymru Welsh Assembly member Sian Gwenllian, whose Arfon constituency is in the Welsh-speaking heartland of north-west Wales, invited Vine to visit the area “so that you can understand what it means to live in a community where Welsh is the day-to-day medium of communication.”
