I want to live in North Wales why do employers there not accept non welsh speaking candidates it racist?

Question

I am told that north wales is a bi lingual community i respect that but most people in the uk today speak english. If on a job advert the employers are only willing to employ welsh speaking people seems to me that having this stipulation means the job is only open to a welsh person 99% of the time. I want to learn welsh but it is not taught in the english or irish community so to learn the language you need to live in wales and once again i cannot live in wales unless i have a job its a circle that is frustrating and i am finding it hard to break . has anyone else had this problemi[

Answer 1

It's not racist, but I can see it must be frustrating. You can see where they're coming form, they want to preserve their culture, but this can result in some people being overly aggressive towards non-welsh speakers. My friend went on holiday in North Wales once and said a shopkeeper refused to serve her becuase she didn't speak Welsh!

Does it have, have, have to be North Wales you move to? I'm moving to Cardiff next year, they don't seem to ahve those attitudes there at all.

Answer 2

Bruza 17/uk - what?! Wales has two official languages - English and Welsh. mellonsosb thinks that speaking one of those two should be enough to get a job. Spanish is not an official language in any part of the UK, so your answer does not make any sense.

mellonsosb - Welsh law states that customers have the right to be served in Welsh, so of course many employers prefer to employ Welsh speakers. I went to school in North Wales (Colwyn Bay), and Welsh was not used or taught in the school at all. I also went to university in Wales (Aberystwyth), my course was all in English and I had various different part-time jobs where not speaking Welsh was never held against me.

Some employers are willing to take you on without Welsh, or on the condition that you learn Welsh. I live in London now so I can't give the current situation too accurately, but maybe someone else will be able to name some possibilities.

Answer 3

You can get employment if you are willing to learn welsh - many employers will take you on if you are willing to learn and you can learn welsh on the BBC website there is a whole section devoted to learning welsh. There are plenty of jobs advertised throughout the UK asking for people who speak other languages that are relevant to the communities they will be working in. North Wales has areas which are predominantly welsh speaking but it also has areas that are predominantly English speaking - depends where you want to live and what job you want to do. Once in Wales it is really easy to find welsh classes. You don't have to live in Wales to learn Welsh.

Answer 4

Practicality - the main language of commerce in wales is and always will be English. Welsh as a language is sustained by the public funded industries - local council, arts, media, education, charities, grants. Laws also stipulate a large spend on bilingualism for any large body publications. Hence much funding is expended in wales on recreating the Welsh language on a rolling regime. It will never be self funding and generating (i.e. a business generating asset) hence no-one would go so far as crippling our ability to do business with the world. The 2011 census shows a drop in Welsh speakers - that's the practicalities. If someone wanted to fund wales as a giant St Fagans then, yes, we could all adopt welsh as the primary competent language.

Answer 5

In Wales there is always the problem of 'sleeping with the elephant' The Welsh live next door to, no, in the same house as, one of the most important languages in the world. It is widely spoken as a first language and even more widely as a second language.

We have films and books and TV programmes from all over the world, many of the highest quality, in English.

However we wish to preserve our culture, our sense of being Welsh and for us, the language is very important.

We see villages bought up by non Welsh speakers, not to live in, but as holiday homes, the school closes, the Post Office closes in the end even the pub closes. . .and many of these villages were centres of Welsh speaking.

We see constant jibes and jokes about us, often on Yahoo answers.

I am quite old, so you may not believe this but it is true, my mother was hung by the neck of her coat in the school cloakroom for speaking Welsh at playtime.

We try like many other peoples to preserfve our sense of not being part of the Anglo-American culture which lives next door to us.

So a lot of time and money is spent encouraging and protecting the Welsh language as best we can.

Every non Welsh speaker who takes a "Welsh speaking job' means another small setback.

You say you want to live in North Wales, well then you have to accept what is going on there, and if you can't, well maybe it would be better if you went elsewhere.

Answer 6

Thats ridiculous, If I were you I'd refuse to live in North wales if it was so unwelcoming, You see this in the west of Scotland where people are racist to the english, Racism like this goes un dealt with and I think it is just as bad as calling someone a "paki". In scotland where i live almost every second day someone comments on how they hate the english, I find this quite offensive as the English have done a lot for the other countries in the Uk and without England we would be nowhere

Answer 7

It's not racist. The ability to speak the local language of a given place is almost always a requirement for most jobs. That's true in Wales, in Japan, in wherever.

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Answer 8

I live in North Wales. Very few employers require it
Local Government/ civil service do, but the language level is very low, you can lean it from a cd in a day or two.
Helpful site:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/learnwelsh/grammar/index.shtml

Answer 9

i can kinda see where your comming from i live in swansea (south wales) and although there not as militant about it there the whole hate the english thing still lingers abit, try somewhere in south wales.

Answer 10

I fear you need to work on your English Language Skills as well, Sir.

If this is an example of your Language Skills, it's rather short of acceptable limits, Sir.

Have a nice day.