Has the Democracy and Boundary Commission explained why it thinks monolingual names are best? I’m not going to get het up over it, but given Wales is a bilingual country it would be interesting to hear the rationale for using only one of its languages for constituencies when previously both were used.
The article says that Welsh-only names received ‘pushback’ during the public consultation, but the CEO has only said this reflects “anti-Welsh language sentiments” and is “incredibly disappointing”. Does anyone know if more substantial reasoning been published elsewhere?
>…if the name includes a geographic designation such as north, south, west or east, the commission would not find the Welsh version acceptable. Four seats – mostly in Swansea and Cardiff – have been given bilingual names for that reason.
This has now changed, so presumably the commission has decided that English speakers will understand “Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf” just as well as “Cardiff North-west”. Maybe they will – it’s not hard to familiarise yourself with the name of your constituency, after all – but it would still be interesting to know the rationale for the change.
Utterly mental. What is the matter with these people? Are they actually trying to ensure that Wales permanently underachieves by making the four fifths of the population who don’t speak Welsh feel disenfranchised and undervalued?
There are communities in Wales that haven’t been majority Welsh speaking for atleast 100-200 years. Welsh is not the cultural language the Cardiff establishment thinks it is.
No probs, Wales will soon be a simpletons backwater. More Senedd members than population. No tech industry, no roads, only tourism.
I’m a Welsh speaker and not in favour of removing bilingual place names, I think it’s mostly performative and tends to create an atmosphere of “even if you grew up here your perception of where you live is wrong” rather than feeling like a celebration or encouragement of Welsh to me.
It always feels like either:
* “Get the English words out” Where the goal is declaring some performative victory over English words.
* “Appear to be doing SOMETHING to encourage Welsh” But of course never something expensive or *effective.*
In the cases of places of cultural importance I’m cool with people disagreeing here- A mountain is a mountain no matter what we call it and the old names will of course be in history books.
But in the case of constituencies where the whole goal is to represent the people inside those constituencies we should strive to represent the people of those constituencies rather than prescribing to them how they should think of their local area.
Gulf of Mexico or America vibes
Seems a odd choice. Personally I’d go for the most common language in the seat first followed by the other or just the most common language
This is great, all the names are easy enough for a monolingual English speaking person to pronounce anyway, we should be using the proper Welsh names more often to further entrench them in the national psyche.
The Welsh language is the cornerstone of our identity as a nation and should be celebrated, not shunned. Especially when we create new administrative demarcations.
We need more of this it’s long overdue, I for one am very glad they are finally doing this, people shouldn’t be so damn complacent about learning place names in Cymraeg in Cymru, if foreigners can do it then there is no bloody excuse.
I genuinely don’t see what the issue is at all. Manufactured outrage.
Hopefully this will lead to Cymru being the only name for the country. It’s insane that people live in a country literally named “foreigners”
Sorry to all who gets upset about this but Wales is a bilingual country.
The pious nature of being essentially forced to use one language which the vast majority of the country do not speak will not help the Welsh speaking camp.
I get stuff like Brecon Beacons and Snowdonia getting reverted to original names but that doesn’t fly with ‘Cardiff North’.
Encourage people to learn or be exposed but don’t remove English words altogether, it’s regressive and is guilty of exactly what the English lords did before any of us were born.
Good
Da iawn.
There’s no need for “English” names for the seats, the majority of them are in common usage already.
Da iawn, mae’n wneud sens.
Ok
Seems to be some disagreements over on Twitter and im here for the meltdowns 😎
Great, more Balkanization!
Sounds good to me. Also, increase funding on Welsh language teaching in schools and colleges.
Im more annoyed by the size increase of the Senedd itself. More “jobs for the boys/girls”. I’d sooner the money be spent on improving local services, or even filling in potholes than paying for more talking heads and their hangers on.
23 comments
Has the Democracy and Boundary Commission explained why it thinks monolingual names are best? I’m not going to get het up over it, but given Wales is a bilingual country it would be interesting to hear the rationale for using only one of its languages for constituencies when previously both were used.
The article says that Welsh-only names received ‘pushback’ during the public consultation, but the CEO has only said this reflects “anti-Welsh language sentiments” and is “incredibly disappointing”. Does anyone know if more substantial reasoning been published elsewhere?
Edit: looking at [this BBC article from December](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg7r5medzpgo), the commission’s previous position was that
>…if the name includes a geographic designation such as north, south, west or east, the commission would not find the Welsh version acceptable. Four seats – mostly in Swansea and Cardiff – have been given bilingual names for that reason.
This has now changed, so presumably the commission has decided that English speakers will understand “Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf” just as well as “Cardiff North-west”. Maybe they will – it’s not hard to familiarise yourself with the name of your constituency, after all – but it would still be interesting to know the rationale for the change.
Utterly mental. What is the matter with these people? Are they actually trying to ensure that Wales permanently underachieves by making the four fifths of the population who don’t speak Welsh feel disenfranchised and undervalued?
There are communities in Wales that haven’t been majority Welsh speaking for atleast 100-200 years. Welsh is not the cultural language the Cardiff establishment thinks it is.
No probs, Wales will soon be a simpletons backwater. More Senedd members than population. No tech industry, no roads, only tourism.
I’m a Welsh speaker and not in favour of removing bilingual place names, I think it’s mostly performative and tends to create an atmosphere of “even if you grew up here your perception of where you live is wrong” rather than feeling like a celebration or encouragement of Welsh to me.
It always feels like either:
* “Get the English words out” Where the goal is declaring some performative victory over English words.
* “Appear to be doing SOMETHING to encourage Welsh” But of course never something expensive or *effective.*
In the cases of places of cultural importance I’m cool with people disagreeing here- A mountain is a mountain no matter what we call it and the old names will of course be in history books.
But in the case of constituencies where the whole goal is to represent the people inside those constituencies we should strive to represent the people of those constituencies rather than prescribing to them how they should think of their local area.
Gulf of Mexico or America vibes
Seems a odd choice. Personally I’d go for the most common language in the seat first followed by the other or just the most common language
This is great, all the names are easy enough for a monolingual English speaking person to pronounce anyway, we should be using the proper Welsh names more often to further entrench them in the national psyche.
The Welsh language is the cornerstone of our identity as a nation and should be celebrated, not shunned. Especially when we create new administrative demarcations.
We need more of this it’s long overdue, I for one am very glad they are finally doing this, people shouldn’t be so damn complacent about learning place names in Cymraeg in Cymru, if foreigners can do it then there is no bloody excuse.
I genuinely don’t see what the issue is at all. Manufactured outrage.
Hopefully this will lead to Cymru being the only name for the country. It’s insane that people live in a country literally named “foreigners”
Sorry to all who gets upset about this but Wales is a bilingual country.
The pious nature of being essentially forced to use one language which the vast majority of the country do not speak will not help the Welsh speaking camp.
I get stuff like Brecon Beacons and Snowdonia getting reverted to original names but that doesn’t fly with ‘Cardiff North’.
Encourage people to learn or be exposed but don’t remove English words altogether, it’s regressive and is guilty of exactly what the English lords did before any of us were born.
Good
Da iawn.
There’s no need for “English” names for the seats, the majority of them are in common usage already.
Da iawn, mae’n wneud sens.
Ok
Seems to be some disagreements over on Twitter and im here for the meltdowns 😎
Great, more Balkanization!
Sounds good to me. Also, increase funding on Welsh language teaching in schools and colleges.
Im more annoyed by the size increase of the Senedd itself. More “jobs for the boys/girls”. I’d sooner the money be spent on improving local services, or even filling in potholes than paying for more talking heads and their hangers on.
17.8% of Welsh can speak the Welsh language.
Seems rather counter productive. No ?
A toxic decision. I hope they choke on it.
Newyddion da iawn!
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