Social Experiment or Entertainment?

Popeth yn Gymraeg or "everything in Welsh" is a new programme where Ifor ap Glyn travels Wales as a monoglot Welsh speaker, pretending not to speak English. It's funny but also informative. I especcially like the conversations where an English Speaker obviously understands far more Welsh than s/he is aware of. This is from Ifor's Blog:

-‘Are you going back to your van?’
- ‘Sori?’- ‘I saw you earlier.’
- ‘Dwi'm yn meddwl’
- ‘Can I ask you one question then?’
- ‘Iawn.’
- ‘You know presenters, when they're filming, do they put on a false
personality, or is that how they really are?’

Nic Dafis has blogged bi-lingually about this. I agree with him that the "Welshless" Welsh should watch this programme and that it needs to be re-broadcast in a format they can easily follow. If more Welsh (and English) people were to watch this they would realise what it is like to be treated as a Foreigner in your own country - a daily experience for Welsh speakers. This would put an end to the Paranoid fantasies of people who follow the paranoid fantasist example of the late George Thomas who seemed to believe that if we so much as mention Devolution and positive promotion of the Welsh Language, hoards of uncircumcised philistine Gogs (southern slang word for Welsh speaking northerners) will decend on the Valleys and M4 corridor to force every welshman, at spear-point, to speak only Welsh.

However Nic is wrong to beieve Welsh speakers are all hunkydory. A tragic aspect of welsh society is the tendency of Welsh-speakers to switch to English when a learner doesn't quiet understand their dialect or turn of phrase. I have been banging on for years that S4C should help to educate Welsh speakers to simplify their Welsh for learners, not huff and take pity on the "poor dab" and turn to English out of misplaced courtesy. Ifor's programme is a long awaited answer to these calls.

Dwi'n rhy brysur i dweud hyn oll yn Gymraeg rwy'n ofni. Sori am y diffyg cyfieithu.