Thanks for bigging up Welsh speaking | Letters
May I begin by saying how, as a Welsh speaker (albeit a vernacular one) I was delighted by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett's article (How Welsh became cool, G2, 13 June). The roots of the revival coincided with the popularity of Welsh bands in the era known as CAl Cymru (cool Wales). At the time (the 1990s/2000s) my late wife and I were living in Lesotho and I started my collection of Welsh band CDs in music stores across the border in Bloemfontein. It included those by Catatonia whose lead singer Cerys Matthews attended the same school as I did in Fishguard, but long after me I hasten to add.
The revival was also helped by the introduction of Welsh medium schools in Wales: a complete reversal of the corporal punishment handed out to schoolchildren caught speaking Welsh in school in the time when my maternal grandmother grew up. Her great grandchildren have been the beneficiaries of the teaching revival. One is now a doctor and the other is about to graduate; how much more cool than that can you get?
That said, unlike the Scottish, Irish and northern English newscasters, it is impossible to identify many of their Welsh counterparts as being Welsh by the manner in which they speak English: is it because of a continuing inferiority complex? To end with Cerys: there is no mistaking she is Welsh when addressing the public in English.
Derek Griffiths
Cardiff