Madam,

I’m writing in response to Deborah Dakin’s letter.

Is Ms Dakin saying that only people born and bred in Gwynedd can be understood by Welsh speakers in Gwynedd? I thought the days of ’Fo a fe’ were long gone.

Is Ms Dakin saying that people in Gwynedd only speak a simple form of Welsh and can’t understand someone who has a degree in the language? I’m sure this isn’t the case.

What is undoubtedly the case is that providing simultaneous translation is a mentally exhausting job. My husband once attended an academic conference in China where two translators worked in relays.

Obviously a local meeting can’t run to a team of translators, but it would not be surprising if a momentary lapse of concentration meant that the translator lost the thread of what was being said.

Another possibility is that Liz Saville-Roberts was using words and phrases common in her field of politics but which are unfamiliar to many Welsh speakers, native or second-language. This is not due to Ms Saville Roberts learning Welsh as a second language but rather it is due to the lack of Welsh-language media, both broadcast and print.

Welsh speakers tend to get national and international news via English-language broadcasts, websites and newspapers, thus they will be more familiar with technical terms in English than in Welsh.

If there is a problem (which I doubt is actually the case), then the answer is not to ask political speakers to sprinkle their talks in Welsh with English words.

Instead we need to campaign for more Welsh-language media covering news and current affairs so that Welsh speakers, both first and second-language will become familiar with the terminology in their own language.

Yours etc,

Margaret Hall, Maes yr Odyn, Dolgellau.

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