The Cost of Saving the Welsh Language Week In Week Out

You know when you are in Wales, because you have to pay to get in.

And now there are new laws to support the Welsh

language, and they cost too.

This is times of austerity.

Can we afford it?

I think not.

You now have the right to demand services in Welsh

as well as English.

But it could cost Welsh councils millions of pounds

to provide bilingual services.

When I received the figure for what it might cost us

there was a deep intake of breath from lots of my council colleagues.

Tonight, as rows rage about the cost, are we even spending

in the right places?

We've got it all in Wales - stunning scenery, culture and sport.

RADIO: Wales will be in the Euro 2016!

And of course the Welsh language.

RADIO CYMRU PLAYS.

It's something we're proud of but most of us don't speak it

and there's a constant battle to keep it alive.

As a young lad in Flintshire, I found myself as a

linguistic guinea pig.

That brings you back.

A long time ago, back in the 1970s, I was educated off these corridors

through the medium of Welsh.

That was an evangelical time for the language and,

for pupils like me who came from English-speaking homes,

part of the mission was clear - that we would go on to save

the Welsh language.

As it turned out, things didn't go according to the big plan.

Inside the classroom, the language was definitely Welsh,

but, for me and other pupils, the language

of the playground was English.

And when I left here it was to make my way

into an English-speaking world across the border, and I left most

of my Welsh language behind me.

For me and many others where I grew up, it is a typical story.

But today, the language is being supported in predominantly

English-speaking areas thanks to the introduction of new laws.

They give Welsh speakers the right to use Welsh.

But there's a catch.

We have discovered that the new laws which are designed to keep the Welsh

language alive come at a cos.

-- language alive come at a cost.

In fact the price tag is huge.

And it's councils that are going to have to pick it up first.

The idea is for you to be able to speak Welsh wherever

you are in Wales.

But already rows are breaking out across the country about

whether we can really afford it.

I'm in Torfaen, where fluent Welsh speakers are a bit

thin on the ground.

Do you remember last time you heard anyone speaking Welsh

in Pontypool?

No.

My granddaughter is three and she's going to Welsh nursery so she comes

out with the odd word but you've got to go to west Wales to hear

people speaking Welsh.

10% of locals speak Welsh here.

I speak Welsh fluently.

I went to a Welsh school.

But nobody else really speaks it and there's no need to speak Welsh

cos no-one in the shops speaks Welsh and stuff like that.

that I am really dull.

And I'm not!

It's just cos I don't know anything in English.

What about friends?

Do you speak to them in Welsh?

Only if we want to speak about someone behind their back

and they can't speak Welsh!

Since last month, Torfaen, and every other council in Wales,

has been obliged to provide services in English and Welsh.

So all public documents have to be translated and staff must

be available to deal with the public in Welsh.

The cost to Torfaen is estimated to be ?870,000.

All this bilingual pamphlets, all right up north Wales but down

here I don't see any need for it to be honest.

Nobody reads it.

Giving Welsh equal status to English costs.

Certainly when I received the figure about what it might cost us

there was a deep intake of breath from lots of my council colleagues.

You're being polite now.

What did they really say?

There were some colourful expressions.

A few expletives went around the room?

We're far too polite for expletives in Torfaen but certainly

there was a bit of shock and a bit of alarm at the fact

we had been through another budget situation where we are having

to make really difficult decisions.

You're talking tens of millions of pounds over the last five or six

years, just to keep going.

If it is going to make a real difference to the language,

I can understand it, but my issue comes where it's

maybe more tokenistic.

So what do people in Pontypool think about their council having

to spend their money on the Welsh language?

Waste of money.

But that's what they do.

It's just a waste of money.

Yes, I suppose cos there's a lot of Welsh schools around now.

Teaching kids Welsh, they'd be better...

I look at myself as Welsh.

Are you Welsh?

Yes.

Wouldn't you be a bit more Welsh if you could speak it?

This is my Welsh.

Everyone round here speaks like this.

This is our Welsh.

The new regulations are called Welsh Standards.

There are 176 of them and councils have had a year to get

ready for the change.

But what do people here think?

Too much, too late.

Torfaen has never been a Welsh speaking area.

It's never going to be a Welsh speaking area.

Protect what you have got.

Don't try to force on other people what's never going to happen.

When Ron Burnett isn't working in his family's florist shop,

he's an independent councillor helping to decide

on where to make cuts.

I'm a proud Welshman and I know we have to maintain our Welsh

language and heritage but at what cost?

This is times of austerity.

Can we afford it?

I think not.

The point of the new law, called Welsh Standards,

is to give Welsh equal status alongside English in public life.

My sister works in a place in Cardiff as a receptionist

and she speaks Welsh in there but anywhere

round here there's nothing.

Would you like to use your Welsh?

Yeah, I would.

If everyone else spoke Welsh I'd speak Welsh all the time.

I'd love it.

I'm shy now cos I'm on camera.

Councils are the first to work with the new regulations.

Every other public body, more than 100 in all,

will have to follow suit, ranging from police forces to museums.

And we've found Torfaen won't be facing the stiff bill alone.

what it will cost to put the Welsh Standards into effect.

But getting an accurate figure is proving difficult.

Estimates from those who have responded vary wildly from no cost

to millions of pounds.

The Government has published these figures but it admits

they are unreliable.

What this means is that new laws have been passed to introduce

Welsh Standards but no-one really knows what the final cost

to the public is likely to be.

Councillor Burnett says it's creating uncertainty.

I've spoken to officers on an individual basis

and they are worried.

They have a hard enough job as it is to meet budgets and they're

hard working officers.

Where is the money going to come from?

And the cuts they have to do at the moment are worrying cuts.

But like it or not, councils don't have a choice.

They're not allowed to ignore the changes.

SHE SPEAKS WELSH.

This is Mari Huws, and what she's telling

you is that your rights to speak Welsh is enshrined in law.

-- you is that your rights to speak Welsh are enshrined in law.

It is her job as the new Welsh language commissioner

to oversee the introduction of these new regulations.

She's person you complain to if you think your

rights are being ignored.

And she's the person councils have to answer to if they get it wrong.

She has the power to investigate and the power to impose fines

if the rules are broken.

So why does the language need to be protected in law?

Only one in five of us speaks Welsh and the last census said

numbers are dropping.

A critical mass that speaks the language is important

for the language maintenance and the survival of the language.

Linguist Professor Antonella Sorace says new laws alone won't be

enough to save Welsh.

You also have to invest in communities where it's

already a living language.

It has been calculated that 70% or more people who speak

the language actually maintains the language alive.

From the point of view of a child who grows up with the language,

it's very important to hear the language from many different

people who speak in different ways.

50 years ago there were hundreds of such communities in Wales.

You could drive from Holyhead in Anglesey, through the hills

in mid-Wales near Machynlleth, all the way to Llanelli,

and you wouldn't have to speak a word of English.

This is renowned as one of the most beautiful views in Wales.

But this place also has a siginifigance on the

linguistic map as well.

Because 50 years ago there were literally hundreds

of communities north and south of here where Welsh

was the majority language.

But today there are just 49 - all north of here, in Gwynedd

and Anglesey, where over 70% speak Welsh.

To the south in Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire,

Welsh has gone into rapid decline.

I'm in the heart of Ceredigion.

For Welsh learners, it's the perfect setting.

Today, English is strictly off the menu.

If they don't order their Chinese in Welsh, they go hungry.

SHE SPEAKS WELSH.

Iestyn Ap Dafydd runs the class, and the emphasis

is on the practical.

To speak to us, he has to leave the table.

For people who are learning Welsh, to be able to go out in a village

and talk Welsh without having to worry whether the person

will understand is just priceless.

In an area like this where you hear people speaking Welsh to each other

on the street all the time it's just more natural to think,

"I'm going to join in with that."

Iestyn's pupils are doing well because Llandysul is still mainly

a Welsh-speaking community.

But for how much longer?

Even here, numbers are dropping.

The old families, they all speak Welsh but the new families coming

in now haven't got a clue.

Most people speak Welsh around this village but there

is a tendency to speak English.

We see the Welsh language used less and less now which is quite sad.

There are quite a lot of English people in pubs now and people try

and transform them to Welsh.

Oh, yes, we're having a lot of fun trying to learn people.

Oh, yes.

The local council is already able to function through

Welsh in most areas.

But under the new laws it may have to spend up to ?36,000 to provide

more public information in Welsh as well as English.

But to really keep the language alive in places like this,

you need to go back to school.

THEY SPEAK WELSH.

In Llandysul, the village primary school teaches through the medium

of Welsh, and children from English-speaking homes

quickly become fluent.

THEY SPEAK WELSH.

Iestyn Ap Dafydd is also one of the school governors.

What Ceredigion does very well is they have immersion centres

for new arrivals where children go there for a few weeks and come out

practically Welsh speakers.

With schools like Llandysul where everything happens in Welsh,

once your child is able to take part in that,

they just take to it like a duck to water.

Unlike my Welsh, which I learnt and left in the classroom,

when these children leave school, the new law will give them the right

to demand to use the language when dealing with public

bodies anywhere in Wales.

But are enough children learning Welsh to make it work

and will they continue using it?

In Ceredigion, learning through Welsh is popular especially

at primary school level, but it's not compulsory.

Some think it should be - like language consultant

Cefin Campbell.

Well, research shows over many, many years that,

when you provide choice, the numbers opting for Welsh

medium tend to decrease.

So we have a dilemma - if you provide choice,

then fewer people opt - for various reasons.

But with a level of compulsion, you are giving young people those

opportunities to be bilingual.

What you want making out an argument for is anti-democratic.

Social engineering.

I think it's not anti-democratic in any way.

The Welsh Government have committed themselves to creating a bilingual

Wales, so if we believe in that, then we must give our children

the tools to become fully bilingual.

And that means it's not about opposing choice or forcing

the language down people's throat, it's about giving them

the opportunity to be bilingual, and I think all schools

in Wales eventually should be able to do this.

Cefin Campbell is also a councillor in the next county, Carmarthenshire,

where there are controversial plans to help save the language

in one community.

I think if people want to learn Welsh, great.

I'm not against the Welsh language whatsoever,

if people want to learn the language I think it's absolutely fantastic.

But I don't think it should be forced on people.

Michaela Beddows is one of a number of parents in Llangennech

who are worried about plans for the village primary,

where children are currently taught through English or Welsh.

In future the English stream could disappear.

I think that these people who are trying to force this policy

on children especially are doing more harm than good.

They're going to make more people anti-Welsh language than supportive

of the Welsh language.

Michealea's daughter went to the school,

and her younger son is still there.

But she's worried about the effect the proposed change could

have on the village.

If they start now, parents start sending their children

to different schools, changing schools, out of the area,

and all different children are coming from different areas

into the school, the children are not growing up knowing each other.

We're not going to be a strong community ever again.

The Welsh Government is keen to promote more Welsh medium

schools, and Carmarthenshire Council will decide soon if Llangennech

primary will become one of them.

It might be controversial, but to the north, in Gwynedd,

the vast majority of pupils already learn through the medium of Welsh.

Certainly in the primary sector, we have implemented this for over 20

years and it's extremely successful.

Most children who have gone through the primary sector

by the time they go into the secondary sector are fluent,

and I mean fluent in both languages.

The number of Welsh speakers has held up better in Gwynedd

than anywhere else, and there is evidence

that the school system has helped.

But should Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire do the same?

Parents like a choice and they know that.

Well, we've got over it.

Just go for it.

Go for it.

Put the arguments.

There are positives, there are very big positives

in having your education through the medium of Welsh.

Gwynedd already has a well-established policy

to support the Welsh language, so they don't expect the new Welsh

Standards laws to cost them any more money.

But back in Torfaen, they're already worried about how

they're going to foot a potential bill of more than ?800,000.

We are trying to keep our libraries open around Torfaen.

One of these standards potentially could mean that we have to run

bilingual reception facilities at all of our sites.

If you're going to have two receptionists, how busy do

you think the Welsh language receptionist would be?

The demand isn't particularly great.

I think it's under 2% of the visits to our website, for example,

are accessed in Welsh.

If you were to ask a resident what they want us to spend our money

on, forget about whether it's Welsh language or other bureaucracy,

they want us to spend it on front line services and not about printing

two sets of forms out.

But if the language is going to survive in areas where it's been

traditionally spoken, the thought is it will need

the support of the new laws and other practical measures.

Hello there, hello.

Come on, I'll show you around.

Elliw Mai Davies has just moved into a new home in the tiny

Welsh-speaking village of Felinfach in Ceredigion.

That's nice, isn't it?

It is nice, yes.

Like many young people, she wanted to stay in her Welsh

speaking community.

The kitchen.

This is nice and spacious, isn't it?

It is, yes.

You've got enough room for a dining table, as well, which is nice.

She's a single mum who works in the county as a Marie Curie nurse.

She says she couldn't have afforded to buy her own home here.

This is my daughter's bedroom.

So this housing association scheme built for local people with the aim

of helping to support the Welsh language came at just

the right time.

I think eventually, every young person moves out of the area

that can't speak Welsh, I don't know whether the Welsh line

-- that can speak Welsh, I don't know whether the Welsh langage

will survive.

Elliw and her daughter are lucky.

But there's shortage of affordable housing in areas like this.

THEY SPEAK WELSH

A third of young people leave Welsh-speaking counties,

taking the language with them.

That's a major threat to its survival.

If that process of transmission stops, then the language is bound

and pass it on to their children, that language can survive.

We work on minority languages all over Europe that are not doing

as well as Welsh.

speakers is controversial.

of 300 homes because of fears it would bring in non-Welsh speakers.

Not everyone here is convinced.

I wouldn't agree with them...

on that particular case.

There are cases, of course, where if you...

Why wouldn't you agree with them?

Because I'm not sure whether it will have a detrimental effect

on the Welsh language in that particular area.

Not that I have a personal knowledge of that locality.

We need to provide housing.

We can't stop building houses just in case it has a detrimental effect

He believes there's a more productive way to

maintain the language.

of this county council -

have had a policy when all our administration is undertaken

Which has had a very important effect on the language

who deal with us on a regular basis to adopt a similar policy.

We want to see the whole of Wales, really, being administerd

through the Welsh language - that's the ideal.

So you see the public sector as taking a lead on this.

It's a brilliant opportunity to take the lead on this.

But could this really work anywhere else in Wales?

In Carmarthenshire, 67% of council staff speak Welsh.

The union Unison is worried further pressure for bilingualism

of their qualifications, etc, and they Then apply for a job

and because they don't speak Welsh to a certain standard, they are now

Yes, we are in full favour of promoting it, but if you think

A sizeable part of the workforce would have to learn

Welsh for new jobs.

I don't necessarily agree with that.

But that would be the feeling people will have and it will

If the Welsh Assembly wants it, put the money in.

And what about Torfaen?

If local authorities staff are required to be bilingual,

that goes a long way in encouraging the wider population to learn Welsh.

Would that work here?

No, frankly.

We want to try and employ the best possible people to run

our public services.

That may be a realistic aspiration in Gwynedd.

it was here or indeed in other parts of Wales.

We now know the new Welsh laws come at a cost.

In Torfaen, they claim it'll be more than ?800,000.

Other councils say they are facing six-figure bills, too.

So who did the number crunching before passing this legislation?

The law giving Welsh equal status was first passed in the Senedd

five years ago.

When it came to the Welsh standards that have just hit our local

councils, the First Minister Carwyn Jones said the benefits

justified the probable costs.

But did any of our politicians realise just how much that might be?

The aims of the Welsh Language Standards received

all-party support.

AM Suzy Davies speaks for the Conservatives on Welsh.

All parties committed to making Wales more bilingual, if you like.

There is a difference between imposing decisions on people

in a way that actually puts people off the Welsh language

and encouraging them to take up opportunities that the law can

provide them in order to enjoy the benefits of being bilingual.

I wanted to know how this would be policed.

And what are councils telling the Language Commissioner?

After all, she's the one who has to get tough on those

who don't comply.

But she doesn't want to speak to us.

That's because we've been told that the introduction

to the new regulations is at a sensitive stage of the process.

In fact, half the public organisations who have been issued

with new standards have launched legal appeals,

and that includes Welsh Government departments.

So her in-tray might be a little bit full at the moment.

In fact, we've discovered there are 18 public bodies appealing

against more than 270 of the new regulations.

If there are...

Let's say it's local authorities feel that the standards,

as applied to them, are not reasonable and proportionate,

then they are quite right to appeal, and they will get more support

with that appeal if they are able to show that the weight had

gone too far.

But I think it should be a concern for the Welsh language commissioner

that so many authorities have appealed against the regulations

which were, of course, devised on the basis of advice

from her office.

But if Torfaen had done more sooner, would they have such a big bill now?

We've not taken an approach, for example, of objecting

to all the standards.

We've really tried to drill down and looked really at what we can do

and what we'll try to do and what really has

big resource implications.

So I hope she would see that we've taken that balanced approach

and deal with us sympathetically.

I've come to the Senedd because I wanted to ask why

the application of a law passed by the Welsh Government should cost

so much and why there've been so many legal challenges against it

- including two from this place.

But we were told that because they'd been busy deciding who's

going to get which Cabinet job, the minister now responsible

for the language, Alun Davies, isn't ready to talk to us.

But the Welsh Government says it's always been open about the fact

the new Welsh standards would cost councils money.

They say they should not be disproportionate to public bodies

which have endeared effectively to their Welsh language schemes that

-- which have adhered effectively to their Welsh language schemes that

have been in force since the 1990s.

However, some feel there should be a wider debate

about what each community needs.

The Welsh Government should come down to ground level

and take their gold-rimmed glasses off, because they think this

is what is going to be, give people the choice.

Again, do you want the Welsh language or not?

And within the community of Torfaen, I'd say less than 10% are Welsh

speaking, and they choose to speak Welsh and keep

the Welsh language alive.

The other 90% choose not to.

It looks as if the arguments about the cost of this new law

will go on for some time.

The big question is, what will it do to help

the Welsh language survive?

Well, one thing is certain.

The language does need help and is facing its toughest test

in an increasingly Anglicised world.