Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru

I'll just raise a couple of slightly more sceptical questions around what you're saying. Isn't the real danger, when we try to focus on things that make a difference in terms of the development of the Welsh language, the usage of the Welsh language, the numbers able to speak Welsh, that we're over intellectualising this? Isn't the most successful aspect of preserving and supporting the Welsh language the growth of Welsh-medium education? Isn't that the fundamental focus that we actually need?

I'm not saying that the data and the information aren't important in terms of understanding the overall environment, but when we spend so much time focusing on density here, and what the density is there, and the opportunities and so on—. The crux of the matter is that, until you get to a threshold of the numbers who are being taught through and are able to speak in Welsh, all the issues in terms of how you then promote usage and motivation don't follow on, until you actually get to that. The reality is, for a lot of Welsh speakers—. For example, in Pontypridd, we actually have a large number of Welsh speakers now because of the growth of Welsh-medium education. But it hasn't yet reached a threshold where a Welsh speaker knows that there is probably a one in two chance, or as likely as not, that one of the people they're speaking to will be able to speak Welsh. A lot of what you're doing is academically very interesting and so on, but the fundamental core is actually how we promote and expand and develop Welsh-medium education. That is the core that opens the door to all the other things that we're concerned about, which is usage and motivation. 

It's just to follow on from that, because reference was made to the Basque Country, and you've just made one now in terms of Ireland. During the delegation we had seven years back to the Basque Country, it was clear that their education system was successful in producing a large number of people who could speak Basque, but their default language was actually Spanish. The same thing seems to be happening in Ireland as well, and also I notice that the same thing often happens in other countries as well where there are languages that are under threat, what the default language is. I'm wondering how you see that as fitting in within the work that you're doing at the moment.

Yes, thanks. I just wanted to come in on the points you're making about Rhyl and areas in Wales where the Welsh language isn't, anecdotally, seen as prominent as perhaps other areas. But, obviously, being the MS for Rhyl, I know that it has quite a high proportion of Welsh speakers, with Ysgol Glan Clwyd, Ysgol Gymraeg Dewi Sant, and it has a wide catchment area, with all the towns and villages surrounding Rhyl. So, I know that's there, but how do we use that to enhance the Welsh language better in a sense that encapsulates some of those localisms and says, 'Well, we do it well here, so give us some credence for it'?

I will certainly be agile. Much of what I wanted to ask about in terms of confidence and assertiveness and so on, I've actually asked in other ways and it's come up in the discussions. Just a few comments on some of the simple aspects with regard to confidence and normalisation of Welsh that we don't seem to be strategically very good at. I'll give an example. Why isn't it, when I walk through Pontypridd, there are more signs that the shops are bilingual and have welcoming signs that you have staff who can speak Welsh, with the lanyards and so on, who are available, et cetera? Even when I go through solid Welsh-speaking areas, I get quite frustrated seeing the number of shops that have English-only signs on them and don't seem to be welcoming themselves, almost as though it's more geared towards non-Welsh speakers than accepting a sort of dual responsibility.

Another aspect I'll say, to some extent, is the lack of normalisation within, say, media stations, the BBC and so on. Of course, we have the Welsh language channels, we have more Welsh programmes that are using a sort of bilingual model, but if you listen to BBC Radio Wales, you listen to the music there, it is almost entirely English. If you want Welsh, you have to go into a Welsh channel. Why isn't there some normalisation of the fact that there is some very good Welsh pop music that should equally be appearing with the same status alongside some of the English stuff? So, it seems to me that, as we look to try and explore things, we overcomplicate, but there are some very simple normalisation things around that are not happening, perhaps, in the way in which they should be. Is that a fair comment?

I don't really have any other questions. I think everything else I wanted to ask on confidence has more or less been raised in one way or another, for the purpose of this session.

Okay. Thank you, Mick.

Thank you. I want to focus on the workplace, and how we can embed the Welsh language better within—. Obviously, I know that the public sector mainly have better provisions within their scope and services than perhaps what the private sector do, but what work and things can be undertaken to influence the private sector a bit more to say, well, you know—? Because we're roughly speaking on the theme of Ysgol Glan Clwyd and Denbighshire, but what a lot of people who went to that school will tell me is, 'We had Welsh language education,' but then since leaving school and living in communities like Rhyl and Prestatyn and some of the other local ones, they feel that they don't have a platform to use that language after they leave school and within their careers locally. So, what can we do better to enhance that Welsh language and keep that level of progression going through adult life in comparison to what they've received through their education?

I know we're pushed for time slightly, but, just finally, I'd like to ask, obviously in continuation of what I've previously asked, namely that, a lot of the time, as somebody who is a Welsh language learner, and my wife is a first-language Welsh speaker, what—and I've got to be slightly careful about how I say it—people will say informally, sometimes, is that there seems to be a slight level of Welsh language snobbery in some ways, in that there seem to be different tiers of understanding from first language to, obviously, more foundational Welsh language, even to the point, sorry, that people who've tried to learn the language and do their level best to try, will sometimes, unfortunately, get laughed at and seen as being a little bit of a berk or whatever. So, how do we break down those barriers, make it more inclusive, and get people confident to approach the Welsh language from that foundational level and see a continuum from that foundation up to where we aspire to be?

Good morning. My name is Bernie O'Rourke. I'm professor of sociolinguistics at the University of Glasgow and I specialise in multilingualism and minority language contexts.

Diolch yn fawr iawn. You're both very welcome indeed.

Bernadette, was there anything you wanted to add?

Yes, just building on that, I think there's been a lot of work in recent years across different European contexts on new speakers. So, I think it's not just a phenomenon that is particular to Wales, but across different minoritised languages across Europe, where there has been institutional support and language policy in place for the past number of decades, and where I think we're seeing the results of that, particularly through the education system, where speakers, I suppose, rather than being reproduced through intergenerational transmission, are being produced through the education system. Of course, that has a lot of positive things associated with it, in that it's increasing the number of speakers who were traditionally not associated with speaking the language, particularly in urban areas, and creating that critical mass of speakers that we really need for minoritised languages to be sustained.

Some of the challenges, I suppose, with producing or developing a new-speaker type of community is that, very often, through the education system, what we are producing are potential new speakers. So, they're developing competence and skills through the education system, but these are not necessarily activated, of course, when they go out into society and when they want to use the language on a daily basis. And some of the reasons why the language is not always activated are sometimes due to lower levels of competence, but also because of the lack of opportunities, maybe, sometimes, to use the language. We've done a lot of work on trying to understand what is it that helps people activate language use, and having opportunities to do that is a key one. Even very engaged speakers who go out and search opportunities often find it difficult. And I think, in urban areas, particularly language policy can have interventions in this area by creating those spaces. We've referred to them in some of our research as 'breathing spaces'—creating spaces that are available to speakers where they're not encroached by the dominant language, if you like, so they have the freedom to speak, come together as a group and build solidarities and connections.

I love that concept—'breathing spaces'. Lovely.

Ireland's had decades of promotion of Irish language in education as a core subject—many, many years. It has complete control of the language and has a policy completely in support of it. Yet it doesn't seem to be achieving success. In fact, the situation seems to be becoming even more and more difficult. Why do you think that is? What are the factors? What is it that is not motivating people who, even if they have had language education, even after decade after decade, are basically non-motivated to use the Irish language? 

Is that directed to me?

Yes. I apologise. Sorry, Bernadette. I think it was, because it followed on a bit from what you were saying. You started to do it, but what I was having difficulty to get to grips with is—and there are some real lessons for us in Wales here are on this—that, no matter how much you continue to promote, to use, to expand and to develop, at the end of the day, the point you're making is in terms of usage. We're relatively, time wise, newer to the promotion of the Welsh language through education, and so on, than you are in Ireland, yet the Irish language is clearly struggling.

I think maybe one of the advantages that you have in Wales is that you have a large Welsh immersion sector, which is something that we don’t have as much of in Ireland. About 6 per cent to 8 per cent of schools in Ireland are Irish medium, so the majority are schools where Irish is taught just as a subject. The immersion schooling definitely increases fluency in the language, and also, I suppose, active use of the language, because this is a group that engages in the language on a daily basis, at least in the school context, so they're not afraid to use it. I suppose one of the things that promotes competence is confidence in people's ability to engage with other social networks and have availability of social networks. Some of those social networks are often created through things like Welsh immersion education and strengthened through that.

In many ways, Wales is often seen as a success story. If we look at other minoritised languages, it has been very successful, in a very short period of time, in creating momentum, increasing the number of speakers. It's often compared, for example, with the Basque context, and even the Catalan context, whereas I suppose in the Irish context, sometimes there is more criticism of it—you know, we have had language policy in place for 100 years. But I suppose, even though some of the language policy areas in Ireland have not fully succeeded, we have to remember also that language policy was in place at a time when it was all relatively new. So, I think other contexts are also learning from the mistakes that were made in language policy in Ireland.

Can I just follow on very quickly, Chair, with your discretion? You referred to critical mass of speakers, someone referred to 10.5 per cent in Caerphilly and places. One fundamental point that probably we should be able to agree upon is that, having a critical mass of speakers, people who can not only speak the language, but are being educated through that, is a fundamental foundation to all the other things in terms of usage, in terms of motivation, and so on. If you don't have that critical mass, then almost everything else becomes largely peripheral.

Yes, I think it is quite important to have a critical mass. But I suppose, when we think of the way in which critical mass is distributed in contemporary societies, for example in urban areas, people may be living some distance from each other. So, people may be living, I suppose, in what Rhys Jones has talked about, networked communities. So, even though they're not living in very close proximity in the way we would think of traditional communities, the way they would have functioned, communication has changed and the way in which we communicate has changed and mobility has changed, so people are much more mobile in different types of ways. So, we probably need to rethink how we understand critical mass and how we understand community in a lot of ways.

Very quickly, the point I'm making is that, until the density of Welsh-medium education begins to get to the 35 to 45 to 50 per cent, really, a lot of the other things are peripherally beneficial. But the core has got to be the fluency through the educational medium.

I think that is a really important starting point—to have that critical mass that's developed from an early age. And immersion schooling, I think, is key to that. In places like the Basque Country, for example, the majority of the education system uses model D, which is immersion schooling, and in the Catalan context, it's all immersion schooling. So, if you look at the success stories in those contexts, in terms of language policy, you can see really see the benefits.

Professor O'Rourke, I'm interested in the examples or experience from outside of Wales. I look at our Celtic cousins across the water, and the Irish Government has a superb, first-class arts and culture approach and programme, but they don't seem to be able to persuade people to speak Irish except in particular circumstances. I've attended an oireachtas where people will sing in Irish on the stage but go to the pub and speak English. And the same in Scotland, where Gaelic seems to be in use in very narrow circumstances indeed, in particular specific geographical locations. Are there any examples that you could provide to us where speakers of a minority language have been successfully helped with the confidence of learning to speak and to use that language?

I think some of the success stories—again, I mentioned them earlier—are within the Spanish autonomous communities of the Basque Country, Catalunya and Galicia. I think it has been a lot around the normalisation policies that they have in place. If you look at statistics pre the 1980s, they really seemed to turn around the levels of language use quite fast over the past number of decades. They did that through going back to what Rhian said, that it's not just about the macro level, but it's also about the meso and micro level. There are interventions at all levels, so institutional support at the macro level and then local support at the meso level, and then a micro level where there have been very strong grass-roots initiatives, and all three complement each other.

So, I suppose rather than looking at top-down versus bottom-up policy, we're looking at a kind of circular movement where they're all feeding into each other. I think it's important to have all of that, because having perhaps just top-down policy doesn't mean that you will get the type of engagement that you want if you don't have the motivations on the ground and the initiatives on the ground. I suppose it can be a vicious circle in the sense that, if you don't have the top-down interventions, you won't get the bottom-up interventions, and vice versa—if you don't have the initiatives on the ground to lobby for more incentives and more language planning and policy in certain areas.

[Inaudible.]—at all, I want to be a ruthless magpie and take from wherever, whatever works, whether it's the Iberian peninsula or elsewhere. My concern is to help somebody who has a grasp of the language but not the confidence or the ability sometimes to just go out into the street and use it—what are the interventions that we can make from a public policy point of view to address that. If I'm understanding you correctly, Professor, then there aren't any good examples from the British isles or Ireland, so we need to look more at Iberia for those sorts of examples.

Rhian mentioned just a few minutes ago that the education system and schools are not the only way of ensuring language revitalisation, but other things can be done in education to help prepare speakers for the real world. So, I know in Galicia and in the Basque Country, they have sociolinguistic modules in secondary school in particular, to help people understand what are the social norms of language use. And they do this in a lot of the learning of foreign languages—in French, German and Spanish and other languages. How do you convert the nuts and bolts of the language that you learn at school into social practices? So, how do you integrate, how do you interact with other speakers? How do you find communities of practice? How do you engage with people who are more fluent or less fluent than you? And these are a lot of things that maybe we don't teach enough of through the school system in really preparing people to become speakers in the real world. So, I think that's something that could be looked at: rather than looking at language classes, that we're looking at sociolinguistic classes and how to behave in a language with other speakers.

Diolch yn fawr. Thank you. 

Bernadette, forgive me. You had introduced yourself as Bernie. Would you prefer to be referred to as Bernie rather than Bernadette?

Everybody calls me Bernie.

Bernie, okay. I will say 'Bernie' then.

You've actually commented on a lot of things I wanted to ask about. I see that we have these new phrases that come in of 'linguistic submissiveness', and so on. Basically, they all come down to confidence in the ability to use the language, and the desire to actually use it. I mean, this is something that is common to languages across the world. I notice in terms of my own background with Ukrainian, that where you have a lot of people who've been Russified, who've now come to the UK, some of the Ukrainian centres have signs that say, 'Here we use the Ukrainian language; don't use the language of the occupiers.' Now, there's a real political motivation there in terms of identity and purpose. How do you think we could frame such a motivation or usage similarly within Wales? What would be the sort of mantra that we should be trying to promote, to encourage people who can speak Welsh, or speak some Welsh, to use it? Is there a simpler way of actually trying to get this across? We have, in another areas, 'use it or lose it' or whatever, but, for me, motivation seems to be one of the really big issues and, of course, opportunity and all these other things come into it. But, at the end of the day, people have got to value the language and want to use it, and that seems to me to be one of the big, I suppose, sociopolitical challenges.

Bernie, do you want to go first on that?

Yes. That's a really good point, and I suppose one of the most important mantras would be 'Welsh for all', 'Welsh for everybody', particularly if we think about the fact that, in Wales now, it's becoming a very international population. We've people from all over the world coming to live in Wales who sometimes don't have the same type of baggage—you know, we see that in Ireland as well—associated with the language and are often very enthusiastic about learning Welsh, because, very often, they also have a very multilingual background themselves. So, I suppose adopting an approach where Welsh is seen as a language that everybody can use, no matter what level they have, and that they can use it, and I think that's a really good way of getting everybody involved. Because sometimes we focus, maybe, a lot on certain groups within the population, of maybe maintaining the language among certain groups, but I think having the support of everybody in society, and getting everybody on board no matter what their level, is really important.

Yes. I just wanted to come in on that comment, really, and just ask about how we can further break down barriers to the Welsh language, because I mentioned in the previous session about sometimes—. I'm a Welsh learner, my wife's a first-language Welsh speaker, but what's spoken about anecdotally within certain communities is an element of, unfortunately, Welsh language snobbery sometimes, where there seem to be different tiers of competency within the Welsh language, which, sometimes, if somebody's not at that level, it can be seen as not as credible as another one. So, how do we break that down and build up the Welsh language from that foundational level and create a continuum that works from that foundational level up to fluency or a higher level of competency?

Diolch. I appreciate that. 

I'm happy. 

Yes, I think, I suppose, social engineering and the use of language is something that is very much often required in the context of a language that has been minoritised, because, if we think, we’re up against a context in which the hegemony of English is strong. So, things without interventions—. If you were to leave that just to a laissez faire type of policy, then you probably would end up with a situation where people potentially wouldn’t engage, or to a much lesser level. So, I think it is important to have these kinds of interventions. Having said that, I suppose it is important to have these interventions in consultation with the communities. And I think working, as Rhian said, with local authorities, who are working at that meso level within a community, who very often know the kinds of services and provision and needs that people in the community want—. So, for example, we do a lot of work with Glasgow City Council, looking at the needs of Gaelic speakers in the city of Glasgow, and we're doing some work at the moment on identifying spaces within the city where there can be more provision put in place. We've done this through different types of methodologies, about tracking people, as they move around their daily business in Glasgow, to see where they go, what are they doing, what kind of spaces are available—so, understanding, I suppose, what are the existing kinds of daily uses of the language amongst the local population, and where intervention is needed. So, for example, there's a Gaelic-medium school, where we have discovered through this work that parents are actually looking for more provision within the local area of areas that would provide them with a space where they can meet together to speak Gaelic on a more regular basis. So, those kinds of things are things that need consultation with the community as to where best provision can be provided.

Yes. It's a method that's been used—. We're working with urban analysts as part of this, and they have used it for other things, like trying to understand people's behaviour in relation to transport systems or other studies—green spaces in the city, et cetera. So, it's not just used for language, but I think it can be adapted well to understanding linguistic behaviours. We haven't been great, I suppose, in sociolinguistic work, in tracking, being able to understand the 'where' of language use. We understand a lot about 'what' and 'how'. We've often ignored the spaces and places in which people use the language and understanding the connection between—the time-space, I suppose, relationship. And so, the use of this method, I think, helps us to get at a really kind of micro, fine-grained analysis of when people are using the language on a daily basis. In the past, we've used things like interviews, where we would ask people to recall—'Were you speaking Welsh yesterday? Where were you speaking it?' And that method, of course, is quite inaccurate, because people often don't remember the precise moments of the day when they do that. So, this method allows us to identify moments in the day when they're using the minority language and places where they're using it, or where they're not using it, and where they'd like to see more of it. So, I think it's something that has been used a lot in urban contexts, but can be fairly easily adapted to rural contexts, in the sense that nowadays everybody is used to using GPS as a way of understanding where they're going. So, it can be adapted quite well, I think, to rural contexts as well. You could think of a small local community and trying to understand the dynamics of language use within the community—when they're using it, why they're using it—and supplemented, I suppose, then, with things like follow-up, in-depth interviews, to really get behind some of the numbers and to find out what their real experience is with the language on a daily basis.

That's fine, yes.

Yes, just to add, I suppose, that technology is a great addition on its own, but you need all the face-to-face type of activity, I think, as well. But technology, I think, is essential, particularly in the contemporary context in which we live, and because, particularly a younger population, it's what they're engaged in on a daily basis. I think it can be used as a very good tool in supporting both learners and speakers, particularly to find opportunities to meet each other and to find opportunities for using the language. Again, in Glasgow, linked to the previous research that I mentioned—the research methodology—we were also developing an app called Gaelic Connect, which we're using to try and help people identify Gaelic-speaking spaces within the city. So, they can use the app to find those spaces and then connect with other speakers. So, again, it's just an additional tool, I think, that can be another way of increasing the number of speakers, people's competence, and creating social networks.

Diolch, Cadeirydd. I want to explore questions about the workplace and how we can promote the Welsh language better through them. Obviously, in the public sector, there are provisions that are regarded as better equipped, shall we say, through things like the Welsh Language Act 1993, and better provision generally through that. But, in terms of the general workplace, more in a generic sense, how do we promote that so that there is a continuum through lifetimes? Obviously, as I was saying in the previous session, there are cases within my own constituency where people have had Welsh language education, but then, as soon as they leave, there aren't the wider communities that speak Welsh and they can drop off—the Welsh language skills can become deteriorated over those ensuing years. So, in that regard, what can we do better to promote the Welsh language within general society—workplaces and water coolers, whatever you want to regard it as? How do we promote that better generally and create more confidence within the public realm as to how we promote the language better within those channels?

Rhian.

I think a lot of the research that has been done on minoritised languages, and in sociolinguistics more broadly, has had a tendency to focus on the education system quite strongly, and there has been work on workplace practices, but I think not enough has been done. I think it would be very welcome to have more research, particularly at a micro level, of the dynamics of the workplace and what happens in a workplace in terms of people's use of a minoritised language such as Welsh—what are the dynamics in it in terms of either language policies in the workplace, interactions between different speakers, different levels of fluency, whether that impacts on people using the language or not, and provision in the workplace more generally? So, I think there's a lot more research that we could do in the first place, which could, I think, inform policy more directly once that was done.

And what would be your—? Obviously, we've got 'Cymraeg 2050', which is a cross-party agreement that we've promoted through the Senedd, and it’s in legislation, but in terms of what your calls would be on the Welsh Government, because, ultimately, 2050 is now the challenge, isn't it—? It's to get us to a million speakers by 2050. So, in your opinion, what do you think the Welsh Government’s role is, in terms of the legislation, and how that can be monitored, embedded within those workplaces and societies to reach that goal by 2050? On the face of it, you think, 'Oh, 2050 is years away', but it's not really, in the general scheme of things. You can rest on your laurels and think it's years away, but, in reality, it's not long, really, to get to where we need to be. So, in your opinion, what would you think that the best way is to achieve that as a holistic package, really?

So, the final word to you, Bernie.

I agree with Rhian there. I think it is a really ambitious plan, but I think a lot of other minoritised language contexts could be very much inspired by the Welsh context in the level of ambition that there is. I know 2050 is not that far away, but I suppose things around activating language use are the most crucial, because there is, I think, a lot of positivity, a lot of positive language attitudes. There is also a certain amount of motivation, and I think what it is now is creating those opportunities for speakers and activating those who have competence but who haven't just activated that language use. And that is in all areas. I think it needs to be activated through the education system, then activated through implementation, and explicit that people would be aware that there are opportunities to use the language across all levels of society. So, I think it's a holistic approach that covers all domains and that really normalises the language across these different areas.

Thank you very much.

Should I do this in English or in Welsh?

It's up to you entirely—whichever language you feel more comfortable in.

I'll do it in English, because of the other—

That's absolutely fine.

I'm Michael Hornsby, I work at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań in Poland. We have a Celtic department in Poland, where we teach Welsh and Irish to Polish and Ukrainian students. My background is in minority languages. I've studied the position of new speakers of Breton in Brittany, France and have also looked at the comparative situation of new speakers in Wales, as well.

Diolch yn fawr iawn. Gwnawn ni fynd at Nikolay nesaf.

Thank you very much for this invitation. My name is Nikolay Slavkov, I'm a professor at the University of Ottawa, at the Official Languages and Bilingualism Institute, where I work on language teaching and learning, language and ideology and various other topics. I also hold a research chair in language policy and family language policy.

Thank you very much. Dr Ruth Kircher.

Hi. My name is Ruth Kircher. I'm a senior researcher at the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg in Germany, and also affiliated associate professor at the department of psychology at Concordia University in Montreal. My research focuses on multilingualism and minority language issues in numerous European and North American contexts. Whilst I've never done any research on Welsh, I have worked quite extensively on new speakers and also intergenerational language transmission.

Thank you very much. And finally, Dr Talbot.

Hello. It's nice to see everyone today. My name is Robert Talbot. I am the manager of research at the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages of Canada. The commissioner of official languages is an agent of Parliament, and so independent of Government. They have a dual mandate to protect official language rights and promote official languages, specifically the vitality of official language minority communities and the encouragement of individual bilingualism.

You're all incredibly welcome. I'll go straight into questions. As I said, please don't feel that you have to answer each and every question, but if there are particular things you'd like to add, then please indicate that. 

Don't all be too polite. Ruth.

I've done some research on new speakers in the context of Fryslân, a province in the north of the Netherlands where West Frisian is spoken, and where one of the things that became extremely apparent is that we can't look at language use in a vacuum. We have to look at language use in a contextualised way, and we have to acknowledge that the relationship between the different speaker groups that are involved in any minority language setting is absolutely crucial to moving individuals from being learners of a language to being active speakers of a language.

We need to find out what motivates people to learn a language in the first place, unless it's just that they've been forced to learn it through a school context, but what motivated people to learn a language, and that will then help us to achieve the aim of—. Usually it's because they want to be integrated into particular social groups at different levels, but knowing that will help us to create measures that allow them to actually become part of those groups, and that will then help us to actually increase language use.

For instance, in Fryslân, we found that people wanted to become members—. They didn't just want to be Frisian at the provincial level, but they wanted to be part of their particular local community, part of their neighbourhood, part of their sports club or a particular association. So it wasn't just that they wanted to revitalise the language and use it as some neutral instrument, but it was something that was deeply embedded in social contexts. And so unless there is research about what the particular speaker communities want, why they're learning this language, it's impossible to figure out how to best help them use it. So that is, I think, my main comment regarding this first point.

Forgive me, Dr Talbot. I'm getting too familiar.

'Robert' is totally fine, actually. 'Robert' works. In the Canadian context, especially for francophone or French-speaking minority communities outside Quebec, where the language is present across the country but much less so than in the French-majority province of Quebec, a key element at the community level is schools, access to schools. Francophone-minority schools, for those who have the language as their main official language, has been key, because the schools act not only as a place of learning to learn in the language, but also as, sometimes, a community hub, having spaces where the—it's sometimes hard to do—assumed language of interaction will be French, or at least French or English. And so community centres, for example, cultural locations, can be important for that in the Canadian context.

Does anyone else want to add anything? Professor Hornsby.

It's outside of my actual field of study, but it's something I've noticed very recently within the Valencian Country in Spain, where there was a vote held in the autonomous community there about which language they wanted the schools to teach in. Valencia has this complex relationship with the Valencian/Catalan language, but the majority of communes voted for just Valencian to be the language of instruction. So there is something that people in that particular setting tapped into that was very important for them for their children to have access to the local language. In some communes they voted totally against it, but the majority of communes—it was something like 51 per cent, so it was just over—voted for. So it would be interesting to know in a wider context, in an international context, why some places, some communities, see a local language such as Valencian or Welsh as being important enough for their children to be educated in, and why some don't, so to try and tease that out. I don't have the answers to that, but I can see this complex relationship between language and communities.

Thank you. Fascinating. And Professor Slavkov.

Thank you. I agree with everything my colleagues said before me. Perhaps I can add something a little more general related to language beliefs and attitudes. We know oftentimes in minority contexts we are battling with a history of negative attitudes and perceptions towards minority languages or minoritised languages. Today, even though those attitudes may have changed and the current policies may have changed, the baggage of those old attitudes may persist. A lot of times when we deal with minority language use and encouraging minority language speakers to use their language, we also need to balance more practical financial or economic considerations with symbolic value, the richness and identity-related benefits of maintaining a heritage language or a minority language.

It is oftentimes difficult to see the monetary value of speaking a minority language, especially when we all have access to English, which is an extremely useful global language, and of course a dominant language in the UK. I find that it's important to emphasise the symbolic value, the richness, the well-being related to using minority languages, even if they're not always the factor that contributes to financial or economic improvements in society, or the status of a particular community or group of speakers. This, of course, doesn't mean that we should not seek to also increase the practical and economic benefits of the use of minority languages.

Thank you very much. I'll just go to Dr Kircher before going to Mick's supplementary. 

I think the comments that my colleagues and I have just made show the breadth of the challenges that increasing minority language use poses, because some of us talked about school, I was talking about adult language learners and language users, but of course, we also have families who might be transmitting the language and trying to get their children to become active users of the language. So we have these different stages in life that we need to consider, these very different groups of people for whom minority language use needs to be increased, and very different measures are necessary for each of these different groups and contexts. So I think that's one of the particularly big challenges, that there isn't a one-size-fits-all model.

Diolch. I'm quite interested in the Canadian experience. We've spent a lot of time, obviously, looking at minority languages in Europe, but Canada is probably one of the largest countries that has the largest scale of minority languages, and also policy that's attempted to deal with that. There are two aspects I'd really like—. How successful is policy in Canada? You obviously have the First Nations languages, and so on. I'd be interested in how that has been developed. You also have, as I say, with my own Ukrainian background, you have probably the largest world diaspora of Ukrainians in Canada. I know from my own experience that there were schools and university aspects in terms of teaching, in terms of studies. Yet, nevertheless, assimilation and droppage in usage of language massively increases beyond second and third generations, and so on. What has your approach been to how you've actually looked at that? Of course, you have many other minority languages in Canada, so perhaps a bit more understanding about how you've dealt with what is a plethora of minority languages on a scale that is probably far greater than any individual country in Europe.

Dr Talbot or Professor Slavkov, who wants to go first on that? Dr Talbot.

Yes, that's a great question. I'd like to think in the Canadian context that the fact of having two official languages instead of just one, regardless of what those languages are, invites discussions about broader diversity and about languages being something valuable, something worth hanging on to, something worth promoting, and something that can be fundamental to the identity of the country. And I would say that's definitely it in the Canadian context.

I think it's been—. In Canada, we distinguish a lot between first and second-language speakers. And so one thing that's been—. Like I was mentioning, one thing that's been actually fundamental to the continued vitality of official language minority communities across the country has been access to schools in which French is the language of instruction. That tends to be aimed at francophone kids, for example, in the context in Canada outside Quebec. But it's also important at the same time that the rest of the population has meaningful access to the opportunity to learn the language.

And so, we also have what's called a French second-language education programme, notably French immersion, which is aimed at young anglophone kids, where, in principle, they'll be learning half the time in English and half the time in French, and where French is not their main official language. So, that is fundamental just to continue to have speakers, the importance of—. The more L2 speakers you have, the more potential possibility you have for L1 speakers to use their language.

And then also, it makes it politically viable that all Canadians can see themselves in this project. Something that's been really important to us and that we like to repeat is that you don't have to be bilingual to support official bilingualism, just like I don't have to be a nurse to be supportive of public health care. So, these things are not mutually exclusive. The link between language and identity for all Canadians is fundamental.

When it comes to the question of indigenous languages, I can't speak to that one in detail, because that one goes beyond my office's mandate, but, encouragingly, we had an Indigenous Languages Act adopted in 2019. And there's now a new position, a Commissioner of Indigenous Languages, who we've had some very insightful interactions with. But that that remains a very important point of discussion in Canada, for sure.

Thank you so much. Professor Slavkov, was there anything that you wanted to add to that?

Yes, thank you. So, thank you for this question. It's a very important, very interesting question. It's difficult to measure success when we deal with such a high degree of linguistic, social and cultural complexity. It is very clear that Canada has two official languages. There have been some debates about the role and effects of the two official languages on other languages present in Canada.

There is critical scholarly work that talks about a racialised hierarchy of languages in Canada, based on the two official languages on top, then listing heritage languages and the indigenous languages further down the hierarchy. I completely agree, though, with Robert's comments about the steps that are currently being made in terms of improving the situation especially of indigenous languages. In this regard, again we need to emphasise the existence of the now adopted Indigenous Languages Act, and the Commissioner of Indigenous Languages. The situation is very complex with multiple, really, many, many indigenous languages that are in various condition: some of them in really dire condition; some of them are doing a little bit better. So, we have a lot of work ahead of us in Canada in this regard.

On the positive side, there is, for example, an increasing number of immersion programmes in indigenous languages. Canada is famous for its French language immersion programmes, but that model could successfully be adopted and adapted to other languages. Sometimes, especially with indigenous languages, they also incorporate indigenous ways of being and indigenous knowledge, so connections with the land, connections with nature, with animals. There are outdoor programmes that incorporate the use of the language, so there is some rise in the number of these programmes.

In terms of the other languages, you mentioned Ukrainian, of course there's a large Ukrainian diaspora in Canada, and many other heritage languages as well. That often varies province by province. So, in some provinces there is direct support from the provincial Government for non-official languages, sometimes called international languages. In other provinces there's less, and it's more community based. In certain provinces we do have schools where you can have the medium of instruction in a non-official language, more so in some provinces than others. So, the situation is dynamic and complex. There's certainly debate in Canadian society: there are those who argue that there isn't enough being done for languages other than the official languages. At the same time, I also agree with Robert's point that having official languages also sets, to some degree, a good tone for realising that a society does not need to be focused only on one language.

Can I ask one follow-on point? This comes from other discussions and, obviously, with Welsh, where you can go back in certain communities just several generations and they were predominantly Welsh speaking, but have really lost language over relatively short periods of time historically. The medium of education, it seems to me, is actually almost the key, core, foundational, fundamental element in terms of preservation. One, whether you agree with that, and that's something that you then build on, but secondly, what would you say would be some of the main successes in Canada? What are the things that have worked, have been achieved, whether it be cultural, music, radio, media, whatever? What do you think has actually made an impact in addition to the medium of education?

Who would like to go first? Yes, Professor Slavkov.

So, first, the easy part for me would be that I completely agree, the medium of education or what are sometimes called 'content-based programmes' are really crucial; they're so important. They're not perfect and they're not sufficient, but they do really have a great impact. If we think of the amount of time children spend using a language, oftentimes children spend more time at school than seeing their parents, right? So, in some sense, the language of scolarisation is crucial. There are of course examples from Canada, examples from around the world that content-based education is very, very important. Also the Basque Country pops into mind, but, of course, many, many other examples.

Other than that, what's important, I don't know. That's, for me, the hard part of the question. Maybe my colleagues will help out here. But I think going beyond education, oftentimes we also want to consider not only primary and secondary education, but beyond. So, for example, at our university, the University of Ottawa is a bilingual English/French university. We don't have many of those in Canada. It's important to have, for example, for French-minority speakers, that this is a safe space and a place where they can continue their studies in French. So, that's a very important opportunity, because the medium of education, when we talk about K-12 education, as we call it in Canada, then that stops, and then once somebody is a teenager and then has no opportunities to continue later on in life with that, then that could be stalled development or a wasted opportunity, but continuing would be important.

But other things that are important are, of course, public services in the languages that we want to support. I know that festivals, cultural events, cultural activities are important. Speaking of indigenous languages, at the Junos, which are the Canadian music awards, this year we have a very strong indigenous presence. And it wasn't only English language songs that dominated the awards, but indigenous language songs, or songs that used partly indigenous languages, won some awards. And to me, even though, again, this is not necessarily economic, very practical, it is very important in terms of showcasing the value and that we have found space for these additional languages that have not always been at the top of the list or the hierarchy in the country.

Thank you for that. I'm going to bring Dr Kircher in here.

I agree with everything that Nikolay has just said, but one thing I would like to add is that as important as schooling and everything after schooling is, children don't start learning languages at the time they enter an educational institution. So, it's really crucial to also think about what happens in families before children enter school. Minority language instruction in schools is likely to be much more effective if children have some background in the language from the home context, whether it's from parents, whether it's from grandparents or other caregivers. And we've seen this in recent studies in the Canadian context and particularly in Quebec, where parents of immigrant-heritage-language-speaking children are incredibly concerned about transmitting their heritage languages to their children and worried about how that will be affected by the time they enter school. So, the discussion needs to be broadened to include not just whatever age children are when they enter the education system, but we need to start thinking about what happens before that as well.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. And I think Dr Talbot wants to come in on this as well.

Of course.

Yes, I would certainly agree with what Nikolay and Ruth have had to say about this topic. I think, yes, it is absolutely fundamental to look beyond the schooling system. I think, to the initial question, it's important to at least have that as a place from which to grow, because without it, it's hard to have much of anything.

In the Canadian context and speaking specifically about Canada outside Quebec, because, of course, Quebec is an entirely different kettle of fish where French is the majority language, but in the context of Canada outside Quebec and francophone-minority communities, there's advocacy for what's referred to as a continuum in education. So, even before school, access to French language day cares is an important element. And then school, and then access, as Nikolay was pointing out, to post-secondary education opportunities, access to services at different levels of Government, including the Canadian federal Government, but also provincial Governments.

But, then, looking to that home context again, as Ruth was pointing out, francophone minority communities in Canada face a lot of challenges. English is so dominant across the board. But that choice of parents to send their kids to a francophone minority school, or to French immersion—. How do we reach those parents too, so that they know that this is a choice that they can make, that perhaps is a choice that’s good for their family, and that, in some cases, to which they have a constitutional right to access?

One other thing that we’re seeing in the Canadian context is there’s more and more exogamous or 'mixed families', where you have an anglophone and a francophone parent, and it’s really important for that—. You hope that that anglophone parent is going to be bilingual, because the odds are much greater that the choice will be, 'Ah, okay, we’ll send our kids to school in French, or we’ll use French at home, or, yes, we’ll use French with English'. The stats are really interesting to see how much better it is when the anglophone parent at least has some French. So, that home context definitely matters, yes.

Thank you very much for that. 

Thank you. 

Professor Hornsby just wants to come in on this, and then we will move on to Alun. Professor Hornsby. 

I'll just make this brief. We’re talking here about—and it's what I’m hearing from colleagues—an emphasis on schooling for the minoritised languages that we’re discussing here. But, as we know, in the field of language revitalisation, particularly, Joshua Fishman criticised the position of schools as the starting point for language revitalisation, and he said that the community itself should be the starting point. That’s good in theory, and I realise that the practical application of that centres on the schools.

And what we’re talking about, as well, is kind of producing, in a way, future speakers, which is a valuable aim to have. But we could also think about concentrating on the here and now. To pick up Ruth’s point about adult learners, or adult new speakers of minority languages, I would say there could be a focus also on parents who have sent their children to be educated in these schools, and equip them somehow—if there was a possibility to do that—to make it a whole-family project, because, quite often, particularly in the Breton context, you would have this dichotomy of children learning Breton and becoming Breton speakers, and their parents aren’t, so the language of the home could never be anything other than French, or whatever. But if there was some way to kind of integrate, if there was a programme to help parents integrate, not to the same extent as the children, obviously, but to enable the parents to have some use of the minority language at home as well, with their children, I think that is something that is worth looking at in the here and now, rather than further down the line.

Thank you very much. That was all incredibly useful. I'm going to move on to Alun now, and, just to let everyone know, we've got just over 40 minutes left of our session. 

Thank you. And I’m grateful to participants for their insights. In terms of language journey for an individual—I’m thinking mainly of children and young people, but I accept that it’s not exclusive to that sort of demography—one thing that strikes me is a lack of confidence amongst people who have, for example in the Welsh context, learnt a level of Welsh either at an English language school, or, perhaps more importantly, at a Welsh-medium school, but the moment they leave the classroom and get on the bus, they start to speak English with their friends and they then speak English at home. What is there in that  journey, from somebody who speaks Welsh in a classroom environment, to actually make them and help them become a Welsh speaker in a social, perhaps workplace, or adult environment, along that journey, that continuum of learning—from becoming a new Welsh speaker, to becoming a confident Welsh user?

Who would like to go first with that? Professor Slavkov.

Maybe here I could mention our linguistic risk-taking initiative that we have developed at the University of Ottawa. I think it's quite relevant to this question. The concept of linguistic risk taking is actually quite simple. We know that, oftentimes, the type of language that we learn in formal settings, such as language classes or even medium of instruction, is different from the language that is used in real life in authentic settings, and oftentimes that puts these learners, users and speakers in this challenging situation where they may hesitate to bring out the classroom language into real life. We have that problem in Canada a lot, and we have that at our university a lot. We have a bilingual university where, for example, we may have lots of students who are learning French as a second language in the classroom environment, and once they step out of the classroom, even though we have a bilingual campus and in theory they can practise their French all day long with all our services and all over campus, they don't necessarily do that. They may go back to the language of their comfort zone—English.

So, here comes the concept of linguistic risk. People are often hesitant to speak a language that is their weaker language, the language that they're learning, that they're not very comfortable with, because of their fear of making mistakes, not being understood by others, or not understanding well enough others, feeling judged or awkward. Feeling less competent or appearing less competent is also important. And because of that, sometimes speakers prefer to stick to the comfort zone of their preferred language, which is usually the dominant language or the majority language. What we try to encourage them to do at our university is to overcome that preference, overcome that instinct to stay in their comfort zone and actually push them to take linguistic risks. So, these linguistic risks are really authentic situations, which they know they are anxious about. They have fear of using the language in those situations, but they take a risk and they start using the language in those situations. So, there are many different examples. They can be very simple or more complex. So, for example, you can stop a passer-by and ask them for directions in the less preferred language; you can write an e-mail; you can request a Government service—in Canada, a lot of Government services are offered in English and French, and even if your English is dominant, why not go and try to receive that service in French—or doing a customer service interaction, even browsing a website, or making an online purchase in that language. French is my second official language, and I always try to practise it, so I buy all my plane tickets in French, and I still reach the destinations—the correct destinations.

So, there is this aspect to the notion of linguistic risk taking that this type of risk pays off. It is sometimes almost gamified—it's fun to do that—and it's a positive feeling when we overcome a fear with a specific targeted action. It gives us a sense of comfort, a sense of accomplishment, and then, presumably, it increases our confidence. We have lots of qualitative evidence from students who have discovered very positive experiences and increased both their confidence and competence using this approach. We also have a phone app that we use. We train our students in class to use this approach, and we keep them accountable for using it. In other words, we tell them, 'Target two or three risks for next week and come back to class and tell us what you did and how you did and how you felt about it.' Again, the notion of 'risk' is not something that is truly risky or dangerous behavior. It is this positively positioned, fun way of challenging yourself to use the language, and once we start looking for those opportunities, we often discover that there are quite a lot of those opportunities for us to take risks. With the proper coaching, I believe people can increase their confidence in that way.

Thank you very much. Dr Kircher, you indicated you wanted to come in on this.

Yes. The risk-taking initiative, I think, can play a really crucial role in increasing language use in an individual's language journey, and there are discussions about adapting this for the European context, by the way, Nikolay.

Another thing that needs to be considered when we think about individuals' language journeys is that, even if they are willing to take these risks, even if they go out there and use a language that they might not be as comfortable with or that not everyone around them speaks is to think about how they react when other people then switch to the majority language. There was recently an Erasmus+ funded project called Listen, which I believe Welsh partners were also involved in. Other than that, it was the European Language Equality Network, the Frisian NGO Afûk and others, and the idea was that people receive training so that, if they approach someone in a minority language and that person then switches to the majority language—. Most of us have probably been in this kind of situation where we are a bit startled and then, often, we might just switch to the majority language. But if we take a step back mentally and think about how we can navigate the situation without switching to the majority language, then we might be able to either have a bilingual conversation or find another way that allows us to keep using our minority language. And so, as a result of this Listen project, schemes were developed where people receive training for linguistic assertiveness, and they seem to have been quite successful, at least in the context of Fryslân.

Another thing that we need to think about before we even think about risk taking and language assertiveness is why people learn a minority language in the first place, unless they were raised with it at home. Usually people don't learn a language just for the sake of having a minority language, and therefore if we really want someone's individual language journey to entail more use of the minority language, then we need to give them the opportunities they require that match their underlying motivations for language learning. If someone wants to learn the language so that they can write poetry in that language, or because they want to belong to the local football club or because they want to participate in local political initiatives, these are all individual reasons that are much more likely to make someone actually use a language than if we just say, 'This is an endangered language, go and learn it so that you can be part of the revitalisation process.' So, these are thoughts that we need to consider, ideally before we work on promoting further risk-taking initiatives and assertiveness initiatives in our European context, because, chances are, the reasons people learn languages here are sometimes overlapping with and sometimes different from the Canadian context.

I'll come to Dr Talbot. Just to let witnesses know, we have around half an hour left of the session. I'll come to Dr Talbot.

Thank you. Further to Nikolay and Ruth's points, it's so important to also have opportunities to use the language. We did some research on this. In the Canadian civil service, in parts of the country, civil servants have the right to work in either English or French. In principle, it's an environment where both languages are supposed to be used and actively encouraged to be used. But one thing that comes up is that some people hesitate sometimes because they think, 'Does everyone around the table understand French? I'm just going to go in English', and then it's not until the end of the conversation where people realise that everyone understands the language. Maybe some aren't comfortable speaking it, but everyone understands. So, you need to signal or create more awareness that language capacity exists, whether that's speaking and understanding, or at least understanding. That's why, in our virtual meeting backgrounds, we have a little symbol, 'Bonjour! Hello!', with an implicit assertion of, 'Hey, go for it in either language'.

On the linguistic resilience that Nikolay was speaking to, and Ruth as well, and about training people to be resilient, in our survey, among anglophones who wanted to use their French, one of the biggest inhibitors was, 'People are going to say my French isn't good, or they're going to switch to English', which they will take as an implied assertion that they are bad in French, when, 99 per cent of the time, that is not the case. People either think they're being nice by switching to the majority language, or they don't even realise they're doing it. I had a francophone colleague actually chide me when I switched to French on her because she was trying to practice her English with me. When the shoe was on the other foot, it was really eye-opening for me.

One of the things that we're trying to do is, if you're a native—. It can be so rewarding if you're a language learner and then a native speaker continues with you in the language—it can be incredibly validating and confidence building. We have a series of 10 best practices that we encourage among public servants, drawn upon this study, that if someone approaches you in a language, and it's maybe clear they're a learner, continue with them in the language, don't switch. And so, even though I'm an anglophone, if an anglophone talks to me in French, I'll respond in French. Normalise mistakes—it's not the end of the world; in a casual conversation, that's okay. There's always a judgment call—if it's a really egregious mistake, maybe you want to politely let the person know afterwards as well.

It's also important for people in positions of leadership to use both languages, to talk about their own struggles with the language, to normalise the fact that, 'Hey, you're not alone in your linguistic struggle or journey'. So, yes, we have a number of best practices to that effect. And it's a combination of individual resilience and creating opportunities to actually use the language and to be able to know where those opportunities exist.

I'm fascinated by the whole conversation. I think it's a conversation that we could continue over many more hours than the minutes we've got available to us. But I think there are a couple of things I just want to push you harder on, if you don't mind. One is that moment when you walk into a shop and you don't know what language to speak and you think, 'Shall I have a crack here? Shall I do this?', whatever it is.

Secondly, and this really surprises me, none of you have spoken about the importance of young people having some fun. I learned to speak Welsh at university. I learned to speak Welsh not so much in a class, but in a pub and in a concert and going out with friends, and learning to make mistakes and the rest of it, as you do when you're learning a language. Surely that very social aspect of learning and becoming confident in a language is of fundamental importance. Perhaps, sometimes, we can make this subject so academic that we actually miss what's standing there staring us in the face.

I will go to Professor Hornsby on this firstly and then I'll see who else online wants to come in. 

What the the last speaker just mentioned is a very important aspect of socialisation in the language, which is hard to plan for, but it's not impossible. For example, in the Breton context, they have, with young people—. I mean, this may not have been a lot of fun for them, but they did pair them up with older, more fluent speakers to get them used to difference—to talking between generations and getting used to difference in language. So, that's one way to do it. Socialisation is a really important aspect of that, and native speakers might be resistant to that.

I heard of one example where some younger students would go into a care home where the majority of people in there were native Breton speakers, had forgotten their French as they became older and had gone back to Breton. These young students came in to speak Breton to them and they were very resistant, the older people, to speaking to them until the students engaged in the—I don't know what the English word is—cantiques, the religious songs from their childhood. They started singing them to these older people and it recalled their childhood. And then that was the breakthrough—they started then to speak Breton as the common language. So, there needed to be some sort of cultural point of contact. You can't force fun, but you can find ways to socialise people in the language in that way.

Thank you very much, Professor. Dr Talbot wants to come in and then I'll come to Dr Kircher. 

Thank you. That's a great question from Alun, and you're absolutely right: if at all possible, fun needs to be part of the equation, especially for younger people, and for adults too. I should mention that my son right now is on an exchange programme to Quebec, where he's having an opportunity with a programme called Explore—or Explore in French—where the purpose is to go and use your French in a French language majority setting, and to do a series of fun activities that are around the language and cultural activities. So, that's absolutely an important point. You can't really manufacture fun, it has to sort of happen spontaneously, but to the extent to which it's possible to support that, exchange programmes can be really helpful.

I'm going to be the spoilsport and get back to the unfun part of your question, which was what to do when people go into a shop and they don't know what language to speak. I think that really is a problem. Obviously, I completely agree with everything that my colleagues have just said, but as a separate point, there are things that we can do, particularly in low minority language speaker density areas, to make sure that people know that the other person speaks the minority language.

There are initiatives in different European contexts, like in the Basque Country, like in the Netherlands, in the province of Fryslân, where there are stickers on shop fronts that say, 'You can speak your minority language here', or 'We understand the minority language'. And then there are initiatives in countries—again, the Basque Country, but also in the north of Germany, in the district of Nordfriesland for North Frisian—where people wear badges that say, 'I speak x minority language', but also, 'I understand x minority language', so that you can either have conversations that are entirely in the minority language, or you can have bilingual conversations.

But there needs to be some way of signalling to people, 'This is a person with whom you can speak the language, or a context with whom you can speak the language', because otherwise, we get these situations that Robert was describing, where you assume that maybe somebody isn't comfortable, and you want to be polite to everyone, so you end up speaking the majority language, even though you could have used the minority language. So, there definitely are some schemes that have worked really well in other contexts and that I think could be adopted elsewhere as well, as efficient ways of signalling, 'this is a person or a context where the language can be used'.

I know that there's been a big debate about the bonjour-hello, but I think it works really well to indicate, 'Hi, I'm okay with both languages; it's up to you in which language you want to respond.' I don't know if there are other contexts in which this is being used, but it's worth a try.

Yes, definitely. That's good. I'll go to Professor Slavkov and then we will move on to another Member. 

I'll try very quickly to get back to the fun aspect. In our Linguistic Risk app, we have various risks that could potentially be fun, but there's one specifically that says, 'I went to a karaoke bar, and I sang karaoke in my second official language.' And guess what—this risk wasn't proposed by me, it was proposed by an actual learner. So, one thing that I think is important here, apart from the joke that I just made, is to listen carefully to the learners and the users of the language. Sometimes they are the best people to propose authentic, rewarding, motivating and fun ways of using the language, and then we as professionals can integrate them into the curriculum. So that would be an important message as well. Thank you.

Thank you all so much. We have 21 minutes left of the session. With Members' permission, I will move now to the remaining Members who haven't asked any questions yet in the session. We'll try and squeeze in at least one question from each. I'll go to Heledd.

It's a difficult scenario to tackle. You were asking about in an international setting as well. If we look at various different situations of language minoritisation, the Basques seem particularly good at creating opportunities to use the language and then to integrate it back into the community to make it more widely used. I remember many years ago going to Vitoria-Gasteiz in the Basque Country, which is not in a Basque-speaking area. I don't speak any Basque, but I heard a lot of Basque being used by, I presume, non-native speakers. Particularly in the university, it seemed to be the communal language, the default language that was being used.

Obviously, in that particular community, which was the university, they'd had some sort of policy, they'd put in training, and there was the will amongst the workers there and anyone involved in the university to make Basque the working language, to the extent that I was shopping in the bookshop and the clerk at the cash desk refused to speak any other language apart from Basque with me, which is his right, but it was linguistic assertiveness that was happening there. So, there was obviously a will in that particular community to create a space where the language was going to be used. That's something to look at.

Diolch. Does anyone else want to come in on this? 

Thanks. It's so critical and it relates to the previous question—to what extent can we socially engineer linguistic habits. It can be extremely difficult, but I think it's worth trying.

Fifty years ago in the Canadian context, if you had, even in Quebec, but outside Quebec, an English and French couple, the odds would have been overwhelming that the children in that family would end up with English, either with the mother or the father. But now, it's far from perfect, but if the anglophone parent has French, I see and I hear couples where the anglophone parent is English but they're both speaking in French to the child. That's a little social convention that, over the last couple of decades, has evolved and that we see now, where in mixed couples the convention is to speak French to the child. The adults might even speak English to each other, but they speak French with the child.

And then, that also informs school choices. It's so important, if possible, if French exists within the home, to continue with it and to encourage, but that transmission can be reinforced with access to the minority language school, and if parents have meaningful access to one of those schools, and if they are encouraged or feel invited to make the choice to send their child to that school. I don't know if that answers the question, but I think the intergenerational transmission one is absolutely critical, especially in first language contexts. 

Thank you very much. Dr Kircher, you wanted to come in.

Building on what Robert said, it's very important also to acknowledge that parents who want to transmit multiple languages, including a minority language, to their child may have concerns about doing so. In a recent large-scale study in Canada, we found that parents who are raising their children with English and French were not at all concerned about raising multilingual children, but parents who are also transmitting other minority languages other than English in Quebec or French in the rest of Canada were very concerned about what it means for their child to be growing up with an additional language that didn't receive support in the school system, to be raising children with a language that might make them the subject of mockery by others, raising children who might have difficulties finding a sense of belonging to all or even any of the social groups that they belong to. So, this is something that I think parents raising their children with English and French in Canada are a very special case, because bilingualism is so normalised. But when we look at other minority languages, there isn't always this sense of, 'Oh, yes, we've seen thousands of examples of where this worked out really well', but there's a sense of, 'Oh, we don't know that many people where our language constellation did work out well. Are we harming our child by raising them with multiple languages, including a minority language?'

So, parents' concerns need to be explored and then addressed. And it's not just parents, it's also other practitioners, day-care workers, paediatricians, speech and language therapists. All of these things that have been told to parents about the potential dangers of raising their child with a minority language in addition to the societal language, they still persist even though we as academics think they don't. But parents tell us again and again and again that these myths surrounding multilingual child rearing and minority language learning, they still persist. So, before we can actively support intergenerational language transmission in the home, we need to think about how to support parents to ensure that they have the relevant knowledge and means to support their children when they're growing up multilingually with minority languages. 

I'm going to bring in Professor Slavkov, and then I think we'll have to move on to questions from our final Member, Gareth, but Professor Slavkov.

Yes. Just to add to the last point, it's very important to have services for parents like family language policy advice to help dispel myths and misconceptions on the one hand about bilingualism or multilingualism, and on the other hand, to help provide support strategies. A lot of the time, there are debates, even conflict, within families, between parents, regarding what language to speak at home, what language to send their child to school to, how to best support the language, whether that child being raised in a minority language will be at some sort of disadvantage in the future in the education system, and so on and so forth. There are various services sometimes run by non-governmental organisations, sometimes run by academic research groups or other organisations, that collect parental questions and provide answers. We are also trying to start a similar service at our university, but I think this is a very important aspect that can support family language policy.

Thank you very much.

Diolch, Cadeirydd. I think Michael's response to Heledd's initial question led very well into the sort of line of questioning that I want to ask around workforce. Because, obviously, you mentioned the example about the clerk in the bookshop, for example, and what the case is, certainly in my constituency and many other communities across Wales, is perhaps, through education, children have had the chance to have Welsh-medium education, but then if the wider society and communities don't practice Welsh as much as what they have within education, then sometimes people can feel a bit disenfranchised with it and naturally go to English. So, how do you think, in terms of solutions, we can create a continuum of the Welsh language throughout adulthood and then indeed, that can be passed on and spread across communities more effectively?

Professor Hornsby.

Yes. It's about creating opportunities, safe spaces—I know that that's a widely used word, but a linguistic safe space where people can—. We've talked before about taking risk and not feeling judged too much about the type of language they're producing, so having a go, at least, in the language and not feeling judged. When I knew I was coming to this meeting today, I did ask around amongst Welsh speakers what did they think. One person answered me and they said that, for example, in cafes or anywhere where people are facing the public, in hospitality, there needs to be more training for people to actually get used to using Welsh, in this particular case, facing the public, and to encourage their 'hyder'—what's that?

Confidence.

Their confidence in using Welsh in those particular situations. So, it's almost an artificial input, but it kind of leads to a natural outcome in that sense. If you give people working in hospitality the tools to be able to use some Welsh, it becomes a practical use of the language with people who are coming into a shop or a cafe, for example, and they know that they can use it. It's not just a school exercise, so it kind of—. And if a workplace has policies in place where the use of other languages, Welsh, is encouraged or is put into place in some sort of policy way, then I think that can help as well—you know, life beyond school, linguistically.

Thank you. I think that some of the witnesses online were nodding, yes, so Dr Talbot wants to come in.

Yes. In the Canadian federal context, we refer to this as the active offer, where the person providing the service starts with 'Bonjour, hello'. A trick is that people often assume the language that somebody will be using when they enter, based on maybe just assumptions, maybe unconscious assumptions, about what they look like, or if they've heard them interacting in a language as they approach the space, or maybe they were just interacting with a client in the majority language, and so mentally they haven't thought, 'Oh, yeah'. But that is a—. Yes, just the active offer at the first point of contact, to always make sure that it's known that the person can use either language. That is a convention that—well, in fact, it's an obligation for many federal offices—could work in private sector contexts too, where the capacity exists. It's equally important that you hope that people who could access that will actually use it too, because then the service provider says, 'Oh, yes.' It's validating for them too, like, 'Oh, yes, it's worth it when I make this active offer to go forward in either language', and that could help to reinforce that habit of making the offers. So, the onus is on the service provider, but you hope that the client will actually profit or benefit from that service, and use it, which will validate the offer of the service.

You did touch on it in your response, Dr Talbot, in terms of how those things can be achieved. Because I was saying, briefly, in the private session, that we've got to achieve better outcomes as a society, as we've got a cross-party agreement to reach a million Welsh speakers by 2050. Obviously, we want to achieve that in a way that isn't deemed to be authoritarian or being too Government heavy. So, what sort of solutions do you think can be had where there's an element of uniqueness to it, there's an element of authenticity, it's organic, but then, in the same way, we're achieving our aims and ambitions in that regard? So, how do you see that that can be balanced out in a way that's not authoritarian or too heavy-handed?

Diolch, Gareth. If I could ask for final observations on this, I'm afraid, because of time constraints. So, I'll go to Dr Talbot firstly.

Just quickly, I think that it's important to validate the language. I mean, this is fundamental to the identity and distinct character of Wales. It's so cool about Wales. That's so important. And I think, in the Canadian context too, French is one of the things that sets us apart in the North American context. And people have an interest in offering that service anyway. I know people who are like, 'Yes, the guy will serve me in French there; I'm going to go back to that business.' So, it costs you nothing if the capacity is there to just offer that possibility, but it may grow your clientele from a private sector standpoint. So, pourquoi pas?

Merci beaucoup.

Thank you so much. Who would like to go next for final observations? I'll go to Professor Slavkov. 

We haven't had a chance to discuss technology very much, but I think, related to the previous points, geo mapping may be a good idea for mapping places where businesses or other services are offered where there are opportunities for the minority language to be used. We are exploring something like this with our own linguistic risk app. But I think this is something that applies across the board and can be very easily integrated to various constituents in various locations. And we can use input from the people themselves, right? So, some sort of crowdsourcing initiative could be helpful in this regard.

Thank you so much. Diolch. Thank you. I'll go to Professor Hornsby, and then I'll give the final word to Dr Kircher. So, Professor Hornsby.

Okay. Just to pick up on the last point, one of my students is writing her thesis at the moment about gaming in Welsh and how the default language amongst the gamers seems to be English, even. But there is one of the gamers who is very resilient and insists on using Welsh at all points, so, in any kind of situation, you might need some kind of role model in these situations to help establish the language as the language of communication.

Thank you. Diolch yn fawr iawn. And final word to Dr Kircher.

I think there's also a great potential in technology to help people find other minority language speakers, especially in the areas of low minority language speaker density. There are apps. I believe Bernie O'Rourke spoke to you this morning, and she may have mentioned the app that's being developed in the Scottish context that allows minority language speakers to find other people who know the language and therefore, even in low density areas, if they don't want to keep walking around with a badge that says, 'Hello, I'm a Welsh speaker', they might be able to find other people, not just for the sake of speaking the language, but to engage in fun activities, since we were talking about that earlier, in which they actually use the minority language. So, my final word would be making sure that the language is used for purposes that bring joy to the people and us enabling them to find those other people who they want to use the language with.

Joyful and fitting notes on which to end, so thank you very much. Can I thank all of you for the evidence that you've given us this afternoon?

Thank you so much. Merci beaucoup. I hope to speak to all of you again in the future. Diolch yn fawr iawn. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much again.