It's about a pair of Welsh sisters who were (allegedly) thrown out of an English shop for speaking Welsh. Even the way the story's been phrased puzzles me. For example:
They have put up with countless jokes about leeks and have suffered Anne Robinson's constant description of them as irritating. But now it seems the Welsh have something to be truly angry about.
It's not immediately clear to me why a mild restriction on your use of your mother tongue (when presumably, you could easily use another language) should be more annoying than an apparently constant stream of racism.
The insult did not occur in Wales - there is no colonialism involved here. Only around a quarter of the population of Wales speaks Welsh, so being told not to speak that language should not, logically, be interpreted as an attack on Wales or Welsh people. However, it clearly has been interpreted - and apparently intended - this way.
I don't know why anybody would take particular issue with Welsh as a language. It's not particularly ugly-sounding (I've always considered it quite lyrical) and it doesn't seem to carry any obvious, internationally negative connotations. (Think, for example: English/French in relation to colonialism, or Arabic conjuring up bin Laden in the imagination, or people who insist on loudly mentioning WWII when they hear German.) So, I think we have to assume the shopkeeper had just broken up with a Welsh person or something else personal. (Certainly, when I've had an argument with the Yumboy, Polish sounds incredibly irritating and confrontational for a few hours.)
Or perhaps it's not Welsh, exactly, despite this quote from the article:
She explained: "It was unbelievable. We were just talking in Welsh about the goods in the shop and the woman behind the counter shouted at us to stop.
"There was no warning, she just launched into us. She got really angry and admitted she was discriminating against the Welsh.
Perhaps it's any language the shopkeeper doesn't speak.
The importance of language in forming personal and cultural identity can hardly be overstated. The right of Welsh speakers to speak to each other in Welsh seems obvious.
The shopkeeper's reaction seems over the top, even paranoid or racist; but the bonding qualities of a language, especially a minority or foreign one, are the very same qualities which can intimidate and alienate those who don't speak it. It gets old, especially when you know the people doing it speak a language you understand perfectly well. Especially if you're like me, and you used to get annoyed when your work colleagues would speak the local minority language (in my case, Scottish Gaelic) when non-speakers were around. I think people who've never been in that situation don't understand how vulnerable it can make you feel.
So, was she vulnerable, lonely, having a bad day and forgivable...or a racist idiot?
Nope, I still can't decide.
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