STUDENTS have spent a week giving Welsh a go.
Creative youngsters from year 12 at Ysgol Brynhyfryd organised a series of activities to promote day-to-day use of the Welsh language, as part of the Welsh Government’s Cymraeg yn Gyntaf / Welsh Give it a Go campaign.
Student Tesni Richards, who spearheaded the campaign, said: “We set up a ‘Cymraeg yn Gyntaf / Welsh Give it a Go’ committee at the school and organised three school assemblies, a Welsh language rap and beatboxing workshop with Ed Holden / Mr Phormula, a ‘language token’ scheme and a language awareness session.
“Our main message to the rest of Brynhyfryd’s pupils was that they should start every conversation in Welsh.”
The team had been inspired into action following a presentation at the school by the Welsh Government’s Nan Vaughan Edwards, the local development officer for the Welsh in the community department.
Nan said: “As part of my role I visited Ysgol Brynhyfryd’s Year 12 to highlight the importance of speaking Welsh in day-to-day situations. We find that, unfortunately, many people automatically speak English when buying goods from a shop or doing a transaction at the bank and so on.
"It is often the case that perfectly fluent Welsh speakers end up conducting their business entirely in English because they happened to start the conversation in English.”
Tesni added: "The week was a massive success - the pupils seemed to have a lot of fun and took our message on board.
"Crucially, we hope the effects will last much longer than the week itself.”