Madam,

Siôn Griffiths is correct in much of what he says about the use of Welsh (Freedom of speech for Welsh speakers should be mandatory, but should take more care when spelling his address: the mansion, weather-station and village of Trawscoed are regularly misspelt, due to the mistaken intrusion of northern Welsh upon our own dialect, in which coed is masculine, therefore ‘Trawscoed’.

The transgender ‘goed’ is a veritable Gog cuckoo in the nest of mid-Wales diction.

I note also that words such as ‘mandatory’ and ‘discriminatory’ are used in the letter: English, too, is being badly mangled due to the American pronunciations which constantly assail us on the airwaves; polysyllabic words such as these (e.g. ‘formidable’, ‘speciality’ and ‘leverage’ – not to speak of the shorter ‘research’ and the like) are constantly on the lips of those who should know better.

The epicene use of ‘man’ at the end of the letter is to be commended, but how many teachers in either language explain this usage, that of the verbal noun, or adverbial misusage (‘overly’, ‘importantly’, ‘I’m good’) and other barbarities to their pupils?

Teaching and broadcasting standards should be greatly improved so that we may use our own languages correctly and learn others more efficaciously.

Yours etc,

Name and address supplied.

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