Bilingual from the womb: Wales

[Anthea Fraser Gupta]

An interesting promotion of bilingualism from the National Health
Service in the United Kingdom. Parents are given copies of scans taken
in pregnancy, nicely packaged in a card with an improving message. In at
least some areas of Wales, it's a bilingual message from TWF, a
government agency promoting bilingualism (in Wales).

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Cymraeg o'r crud --
rhowch y cyfle gorau i'ch plentyn.
Fe fydd yn diolch i chi

Cymraeg o'r Crud
2 Languages from Day 1

Two languages from day one --
give your children the best start.
They'll thank you for it.

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The nice point to note is that while the English text promotes
bilingualism from the start, the Welsh promotes "Welsh from the Cradle".
This is good practice based on the reasonable assumption that acquiring
English in due course is unproblematic. It does, sadly, contrast with
advice to other linguistic minorities (e.g. Kashmiri, Bengali) to
increase the use of English and reduce the use of other languages.


More about TWF:

http://www.twfcymru.com/

and

(Welsh): http://www.bwrdd-yr-iaith.org.uk/cynnwys.php?pID=158&langID=1
(English):
http://www.bwrdd-yr-iaith.org.uk/cynnwys.php?cID=1&pID=158&langID=2

Anthea

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Anthea Fraser Gupta (Dr)
School of English, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT
<www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg>
NB: Reply to a.f.gupta at leeds.ac.uk
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