Wednesday 4 February 2009

Don Corleone

Translation of Vaughan Roderick's post

Paul Murphy's statement on the language LCO was rather lukewarm. More consultation is needed, he said. The demand could change. To use his own words: "It's not set in stone".

Some of Labour's Assembly Members were surprised by the statement but the Secretary of State for Wales is not the man being blamed. "The problem is Don Touhig", said one "Don is Paul's best friend and he spends a great amount of his time with him and his family. They're like two brothers."

And by the way, congratulations to Jenny Randerson for being brave enough to say in the Chamber what many of the members are saying in private. "If we wish to legislate to force a chip shop to use Welsh we should be allowed to do that - does anyone honestly believe the chip shop would close as a result?"

Congratulations must also go to Nick Bourne for addressing the Assembly in Welsh this afternoon. I wonder if he was trying to prove the ipod's worth.

Translation by Dewi Dau

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As native-born English speaker, living in London, I am so glad that, at least potentially, the Welsh language will gain equal status with English, in Wales.

As the "International Year of Languages" comes to an end on 21st February, you may be interested in the contribution, made by the World Esperanto Association, to UNESCO's campaign for the protection of endangered languages.

The following declaration was made in favour of Esperanto, by UNESCO at its Paris HQ in December 2008. http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=38420&URL_DO=DO_PRINTPAGE&URL_SECTION=201.html

The commitment to the campaign to save endangered languages was made, by the World Esperanto Association at the United Nations' Geneva HQ in September.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eR7vD9kChBA&feature=related or http://www.esperanto.net where information is -of course- in Welsh as well!