Cachau Bant - Mind Your Language

English essay- Cachau Bant: Mind Your Language

The English language is one of the most dominant languages of the world. It is the one language that everybody understands. English is the language we choose to speak when we interact with the natives. This is something that we are extremely lucky to do, that we can communicate in one language. However, we tend to forget how the English language, became the most preferred language globally. This did not just happen as a coincidence. The English Empire ruled the world for many years, and in these years, the English language spread all over the world. This means that many people were forced to take the English language into their lives. This also means many countries lost their native language. One of the lost languages is the language Welsh. But how? This dealt with, by the Welshman Tom Law, in his article ”Cachau Bant: Mind your language” In this paper I am going to analyze and comment on his article, where part of the focus will be on the writer’s tone and style, and how history is used in the text.

In this article Tom Law criticizes the English Empire for being the reason the Welsh culture is fading out. His negative point of view can already be seen in the beginning of the article, where he is sarcastic ” English is a dominant language- the third most common in the world. It’s a source of national pride- a gift to the planet. It helped to civilise the fuzzy wuzzies and spread culture and joy throughout distant lands” (p.1 l 6-11) The sarcasm is shown by Law calling the English a gift to planet. And by saying it spread culture and joy to the world. When most the time, the English empire was meet by resistance.

Tom Law tries to create a debate, by making us as an reader imagine what the Welsh are trough. He does this by creating a scene where Germen instead of English becomes the dominant language of the world. He asks the questions ”How would you feel if you were made to speak German?” and then, he in many details describe how Germany will slowly take over the English language. This seems very unlikely but however it is what happened to Wales over 150 years ago.

By using history in his text, he is able to create a clear contrast between the past and present, which has lead to Tom Law being angry with the non-Welsh speakers. Welsh people have always been proud of their native identitty and language. This something we can see as Law is more than willing to

Troughout history, the Welsh people have been proud of their native identitty and language. This is something Law also is more than willing to emphazize.. As we can see he serevel times uses the Welsh history to compare with today.

Tom Law is a Welsh journalist and writer, who is against the way the English Empire more than 150 years ago took over the Welsh school system, and made them teach English only. Making their native language secound, and English the first langauge. Nobody seems to care about the Welsh, as he states ”There are more important things to worry about in life than some bloke in Aberystwyth demanding a bi-lingual sign on his local fish and chip shop” (P. 6 l.14-18)