Welsh Government set the agenda on Language rights

Even before the first ever debate is held in the French Parliament
this Wednesday about the languages of the French state, Plaid Cymru
have announced that they are preparing to bid for an extension of
the range of powers for the Welsh language in Wales, as part of the
Welsh Assembly Government in Cardiff.

Currently Welsh language legislation in Wales does not cover the private
sector, allowing companies to actively discriminate against Welsh
speakers should they wish to do so. However, plans unveiled by Plaid
Cymru last week by Welsh Language Minister Rhodri Glyn Thomas will
give statutory rights to Welsh speakers in the work place for the
first time. Last year, several companies and businesses in Wales asked
their workforce not to speak Welsh while at work, including the travel
agency Thomas Cook, the supermarket chain Tesco and its recruitment
agency, Adecco and even a restaurant in North Wales, 'La Voile'.

Welsh Government Assembly Member Alun Ffred Jones, who has been actively campaigning for further rights for the Welsh language said:

"I want 2008 to be remembered as the year that Government Ministers
recognised, for the first time, that Welsh speakers should not be
treated as second class citizens in their own country and decided
to do something about it."

Further rights for Welsh would push language legislation in Wales
far in advance of Brittany and the other Celtic countries, outside
the Gaeltacht areas of Éire/Ireland. In France it has taken the United
Nations Year of International Languages, NGO's denouncing French language
and cultural policy to the United Nations in Geneva for the second
year running, UNESCO recording an 'endangered' verdict on the Breton
language and many, many years of campaigning and lobbying to even
get the French Parliament to discuss the issue of its state languages.

The development of the linguistic rights of the peoples in all the
other Celtic countries are leaving the Bretons the odd one out while
the Breton language continues to suffer and struggle on in the face
of a continuing policy of French linguistic assimilation.