Jeremy Vine says Welsh language tweet was ‘misconstrued’
BBC radio host Jeremy Vine has been accused of “insulting” the Welsh after a Twitter comment which critics claimed appeared to suggest people in Wales should speak English instead of their mother tongue.
Earlier this year he’d interviewed a man from Pontypridd in South Wales who’d declared about Welsh: “I don’t want to speak it, it’s a horrible language.
“If you go into any pub in west Wales, or North Wales, they’re all there speaking English. As soon as they hear my accent, they start changing into Welsh, so we can’t understand them.”
But an infuriated Twitter user had criticised the recent Radio 2 review of the year for again giving air time “to the tired old trope about ‘walking into a pub and people switching to English(sic)’.” It was branded “nonsense.”
A further furore then erupted when Jeremy Vine’s official Twitter feed responded to a message, which compared speaking the Welsh language in Wales to using French in France, by asking: "Is France in the UK?” The tweet has since been deleted.
Replying to a Twitter user who suggested the presenter apologised or explained the tweet, Vine insisted :”My tweet was misconstrued! I was pointing out that the listener on my show who complained about people not speaking English to him in Wales was not quite the same as a Brit in Paris who complains no-one speaks English there. Didn’t mean to offend.”
Understand
Plaid Cymru Welsh Assembly member Sian Gwenllian, whose Arfon constituency is in the Welsh-speaking heartland of north-west Wales, invited Vine to visit the area “so that you can understand what it means to live in a community where Welsh is the day-to-day medium of communication.”
She declared online: ”Perhaps then you will see why your recent remark about the Welsh language is profoundly insulting to our identity, culture and way of life.”
The politician claimed the “obvious and dangerous” implication was that “English is the language that should be spoken in the UK. Other languages don’t belong here.”
However, the presenter told her it wasn’t what he meant. He added :”There is nothing better than diversity of language and of everything. I was arguing against an analogy and not doing it very well.”
Yesterday a fan of Vine’s radio show from Conwy said :”The Welsh mustn’t be seen to lack a sense of humour. There are always language zealots who seem to be easily offended.”
