An Analysis Of Cachau Bant: Mind Your Language

We all like to think of ourselves as being good people. However, we quite often we are selfish. A person can be begging for help to save their way of life, and we won’t bat an eye. We will often think that the person begging needs to get with the times or that they are just whining over nothing. However when we ourselves need help, we become shocked and outraged when we receive no such thing. This is what Tom Law attempts to convey in his article “Cachau Bant: Mind Your Language”, where he asserts to the British population, the need to save the Welsh language and culture from fading away.

Tom Law who is angry at the 150 years of suppressing and crushing of his native tongue, starts his article out with the following sentence; “It’s hard to

Already from the start, the reader sees that Law is quite sarcastic, while also treating the English like children, who needs to be explained things crystal-clear before they are capable of understanding it. This can be seen in the following sentence; “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” . Law also shows the English lack of compassion and the English double standards. He says that if a Welsh person were to complain about their language disappearing, it doesn’t really register because there are more important things to worry about. But if the English language found itself under attack, the English would suddenly expect special treatment, special treatment that was not given to the Welsh or in different parts of the British Empire. Law also states that the British Empire used language to control their various colonies during the 19th century. Firstly English would become the official language used for government, commerce and law, and then the people chosen for different seats of power would be sent to lean English language and culture. This would seep down through society, dividing the population of the occupied areas. The British would then exploit this divide, to put the English speakers and native speakers up against each other. Law also mentions the Merthyr Rising of 1831 and the Rebecca Riots of the 1840s as being beacons of light, fighting against corruption, inequality and injustice, while at the same time being portrayed in the London media as being sub-humans. Law believes that the prospect of the Welsh language is minor, and it is only now that the language has almost perished that the state has started