Integrate, Learn The Language

Stroll around Carmarthen market and it quickly becomes clear how important the Welsh language is in this historic town. A young woman is discussing the price of lamb with a butcher in animated Welsh while a teenager in a hoodie is in the bookshop choosing a greetings card in the same language. At the cafe's busy tables there is little evidence of any English at all being spoken.

But language campaigners and many Welsh-speaking residents are warning such vibrancy could be lost if proposals to build thousands of new homes in Carmarthenshire go ahead.

The county council's local development plan makes the case that projected increases in population mean more than 11,000 new homes are needed in this corner of south-west Wales, including 1,200 on the edge of Carmarthen.

The fear among many proud locals is that the majority of the people moving in will not speak Welsh, a change that would pose a "huge threat" to the language.

Town councillor and sheriff Alun Lenny said the language was a fundamental part of Carmarthen life. "Thousands of people live their lives through the medium of Welsh," he said. "It's part of our being. People use Welsh when they shop, when they worship, when they socialise. Much of civic life is carried out in Welsh. It's not a superficial, quirky element."

Lenny says the plans could increase the size of the town, which has about 15,000 residents, by a fifth. "Since the 60s, there has been a constant battle to maintain the language as part of the fabric of present life and society," he said. "These plans threaten to throw all that out of kilter if many hundreds of people who don't speak Welsh – and don't wish to – suddenly move in."

Carmarthen has a wonderfully rich history. It claims to be the oldest town in Wales and the birthplace of Merlin (Myrddin in Welsh), the legendary Welsh prophet and wizard. The Romans and Normans built fortifications here and the Black Book of Carmarthen, a collection of poetry, is one of the earliest surviving manuscripts written solely in Welsh. Just over 50% of the county's population speak Welsh.

In the 1980s there was an influx of people looking to break away from English and Welsh cities, but they tended to be younger people with families who, if anything, gave the language a boost because they put children into the local schools, where they learnt Welsh.

The fear is that the next wave of new arrivals will be older people, retiring to Carmarthenshire, attracted by the relatively low property prices and the proximity of lovely countryside and beaches. But, it is felt, many of them will not bother to learn the language.

Sioned Elin, the Carmarthenshire chair of the Welsh language campaign group Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, called for the south-west Wales development to be scrapped, claiming no thorough assessments had been made on the impact of housing developments on the language. "Such assessments would have almost certainly shown a huge threat," she said.

Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg says what is happening in Carmarthenshire is just one example of a "national crisis". Similar protests against developments are taking place in other areas, including Denbighshire in north-east Wales, where councillors have approved proposals for thousands of new homes. The fear there is that they will be grabbed by commuters from Cheshire and Liverpool.

The Plaid Cymru MEP Jill Evans has raised her concerns with the European Parliament about the Denbighshire plans and is backing the launch of a national movement – calling itself Waking the Dragon – against such developments.

Over the summer, the Welsh assembly government has consulted over new proposals to specify how the language issue should be factored into the local planning process. It accepts the impact of "demographic change" ought to be taken into account. The results of the consultation are being analysed and assembly members are expected to examine them in the autumn.

In its development plan, Carmarthenshire insists that any proposals will have to take the language issue into account. Developers, for example, will have to submit a "linguistic impact assessment or statement" as part of planning applications.

If problems are anticipated, "mitigation measures" such as making sure a number of homes are affordable to local people or providing "support for the language within the community" should be established.

But the plan says that it has to identify new sites for housing and businesses for the good of Carmarthenshire.

Clive Scourfield, the county council's executive board member for regeneration, accepted it was inevitable that many people arriving in the area would not speak Welsh. He urged communities to encourage newcomers to learn the language.

Back in Carmarthen market, Llio Silyn, who runs the Welsh bookshop, said she was worried that young people would not be able to afford the new homes and be squeezed out. "We haven't got anything against people from Cardiff or from England, but the worry is that they will come and push our young people out."

Silyn, who appeared in Hedd Wyn, an Oscar-nominated Welsh language film, said Welsh was vital to the area and its people: "It's a big part of who we are and our place in the world."

Language that refuses to die

• Welsh is a Celtic language, closely related to Cornish and Breton. The Welsh spoken today is directly descended from the language of the sixth century.

• The passing of the 1536 and 1542 Acts of Union made English the language of law and administration of government. Although the Welsh language was not banned, it lost its status and centuries of steady linguistic decline followed.

• Until the mid-19th century, the majority of the Welsh population could speak Welsh – more than 80%.

• The 2001 census showed that 20.8% of the population was able to speak Welsh (582,400 people), an increase compared to the 1991 census (18.7%).

• Welsh-speaking heartlands include Carmarthenshire in the south-west, Gwynedd, Anglesey, Conwy, Denbighshire in the north and Ceredigion in the west.

• The number of communities where more than 70% of the population was able to speak Welsh dropped to 54 according to the 2001 census, compared with 92 in 1991. It is argued that a high density of speakers is required for Welsh to be an everyday language of the community.

• Migration has had a profound effect on traditional heartlands, with many Welsh-speaking young people moving to urban areas to work, coupled with the arrival of people unable to speak Welsh.

Sources: Welsh Language Board; Welsh Assembly Government

Picture Of The Day

Natalia Estemirova (RIP)

Uighurs Are Not Chinese

The Chinese Gov prohibits the use of this flag - afraid of something?

Clearly Chinese, as you can see.

Q&A: China and the Uighurs

The latest unrest in China's western Xinjiang region follows a long history of discord between China's authorities and the Uighur minority.

Who are the Uighurs?

The Uighurs are Muslims. Their language is related to Turkish and they regard themselves as culturally and ethnically close to other Central Asian nations.

The region's economy has for centuries revolved around agriculture and trade, with towns such as Kashgar thriving as hubs along the Silk Road.

In the early part of the 20th Century, the Uighurs briefly declared independence. The region was brought under the complete control of communist China in 1949.

Officially, Xinjiang is now described by China as an autonomous region, like Tibet to its south.

What are China's concerns about the Uighurs?

Beijing says Uighur militants have been waging a violent campaign for an independent state by plotting bombings, sabotage and civic unrest.

Since the 9/11 attacks in the US, China has increasingly portrayed its Uighur separatists as auxiliaries of al-Qaeda.

It has accused them of receiving training and indoctrination from Islamist militants in neighbouring Afghanistan.

However, little public evidence has been produced in support of these claims.

More than 20 Uighurs were captured by the US military after its invasion of Afghanistan. Though imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for six years, they were not charged with any offence. Albania accepted five in 2006, four were allowed to resettle in Bermuda in June, 2009, while the Pacific island nation of Palau has agreed to take the others.

What complaints have been made against the Chinese in Xinjiang?

Activists say the Uighurs' religious, commercial and cultural activities have been gradually curtailed by the Chinese state.

China is accused of intensifying its crackdown on the Uighurs after street protests in the 1990s - and again, in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.

Over the past decade, many prominent Uighurs have been imprisoned or have sought asylum abroad after being accused of terrorism.

China is said to have exaggerated the threat from Uighur separatists in order to justify repression in the region.

Beijing has also been accused of seeking to dilute Uighur influence by arranging the mass immigration of Han Chinese, the country's majority ethnic group, to Xinjiang.

Han Chinese currently account for roughly 40% of Xinjiang's population, while about 45% are Uighurs.

What is the current situation in Xinjiang?

Over the past decade, major development projects have brought prosperity to Xinjiang's big cities.

The activities of local and foreign journalists in the region are closely monitored by the Chinese state and there are few independent sources of news from the region.

China has been keen to highlight improvements made to the region's economy while Uighurs interviewed by the press have avoided criticising Beijing.

However, occasional attacks on Chinese targets suggest Uighur separatism remains a potent - and potentially violent - force.

A protest in July in Urumqi, the region's capital, turned violent, with about 140 people killed and hundreds injured.

Authorities blamed Xinjiang separatists based outside China for the unrest, while Uighur exiles said police had fired indiscriminately on a peaceful protest calling for an investigation into the deaths of two Uighurs in clashes with Han Chinese at a factory in southern China.

English & Welsh- All British?

Woman thrown out of shop for speaking Welsh

They have put up with countless jokes about leeks and have suffered Anne Robinson's constant description of them as irritating. But now it seems the Welsh have something to be truly angry about.

Simply speaking in their native tongue, it seems, can get them into trouble. Rosemary Dean claims that she was kicked out of a gift shop on the Isle of Wight for speaking in Welsh. The shopowner, she says, was offended by the language.

Dean was celebrating her 60th birthday with her sister in Shanklin when she stopped by Grange Gifts to buy a present for her granddaughter. She claimed yesterday that she was was talking in her native tongue to her sister, discussing what to buy, when the owner asked her to speak in English.

The argument that followed led to Dean and her sister being asked to leave the store. But she was determined not to leave it at that, and has reported the incident to the Welsh equality and human rights commission.

She explained: "It was unbelievable. We were just talking in Welsh about the goods in the shop and the woman behind the counter shouted at us to stop.

"There was no warning, she just launched into us. She got really angry and admitted she was discriminating against the Welsh.

"I was not even talking to her and if I was I would have spoken English – it would have been rude otherwise."

Sue Pratley, the shopowner, said: "I made a comment to them that I wished they would speak English but she took issue with that. I do not want to go into detail about what happened. I did not ban them from the shop but I did ask them to leave."

Morale: Can you imagine someone being thrown out of a shop say in the Welsh-speaker area of Snowdonia in North Wales because someone speaks English, with her sister, in the shop? Fascist nonsense they would say, wouldn´t they? same here. (Note of C.T.)

The Tiger & The Lion

Demonstrate the politics of war

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 May 2009, 20:32 GMT]

The Tamil national cause cannot afford to be deviated and exploited by others through questions such as whether the LTTE leader V. Pirapaharan is alive or not or whether the armed struggle has to be continued or not. The Tamil diaspora, the only section of the Eezham Tamil community that has the freedom and means to come out with authentic voice, has a historic responsibility in telling the world what they aspire for in no uncertain terms, and in seeing their righteous cause not hijacked by their enemies.

Opinion:TamilNet Editorial Board

More than the massacre, maiming and incarceration, what causes the height of the trauma to Eezham Tamils is the utter disregard of the norms of civilization and shameful deceit committed by India, IC and the UN in the happenings of the island of Sri Lanka. This will remain as an indelible blot in the annals of history, irremovable scar in the minds of Tamils and will globally discredit the existing power systems, sowing seeds for their deconstruction in future, unless they at least act now in upholding political justice.

Any effort on their part to exploit the situation to impose political subjugation on Tamils, thinking that there is a political vacuum in Eezham Tamil nationalism, is sure to bring in further disaster.

The Tamil national cause cannot afford to be deviated and exploited by others through questions such as whether Pirapaharan is alive or not or whether the armed struggle has to be continued or not. The answer to the second question is going to depend very much on the successes and failures of the IC in resolving the conflict.

Meanwhile, the Eezham Tamil diaspora, the only section of the community that has the freedom and means to come out with authentic voice, has a historic responsibility in telling the world what they aspire for in no uncertain terms, and in seeing their righteous cause not hijacked by their enemies.

The Tamil diaspora in France, and especially in Norway have already embarked upon this noble venture with foresight, by re-mandating the Vaddukkoaddai Resolution through unblemished popular politics.

It is high time the rest of the diaspora follow suit not only in specifying the course, but also in leading it further by democratically bringing in a political leadership to stand by that.

The existing structures should wholeheartedly, and in one voice, need to support it.

A grave concern of Tamils at this juncture is the stand of India. Whether it was in 1987 or now, the bitterness of Eezham Tamils about the Indian Establishment is its unrealistic stand of resolving the crisis within the state of Sri Lanka, not recognising the Tamil independence and sovereignty that have very much become a must today.

Tamil Nadu has a great role to play now. As both the major parties of Tamil Nadu have openly stated that Tamil Eelam is the solution to the crisis, they should not waste any time now in declaring that in the state assembly. This is sure to inspire the Indian parliament and various governments of the International Community.

A few who saw the spontaneous, democratic demonstration of the political will of Diaspora Tamils as 'LTTE orchestrations' need to realise that the model experimented in the Norway mandate took place without any compulsion either in participation or in expressing opinion.

It is surprising that certain sections, which accept intimidated elections taking place at gunpoint in Sri Lanka as 'democratic' and envisaged further elections like that to ensure their positions criticising the free political expression of the diaspora through self-evolved structures.

However, this is not the occasion for the Eezham Tamil nation, either in the island or in the diaspora to waste time in fruitless arguments.

The Sri Lankan state is not going to spare the non-LTTE Tamil political forces either, and danger is imminent to them.

Unconfirmed reports say that a Colombo based political entity, having Eelam in its name, has been 'ordered' recently to conduct elections in the island under the identity of the ruling party that is fighting 'Tamil terrorism'.

As has been already demonstrated in the East, the idea is to see that Tamils should not even have their own political parties. This political genocide is one of the many facets of Colombo's agenda.

It is also high time now that all Tamil entities join together in truly reflecting the minds of the people they claim to serve rather than serving the minds of others. Failing, they may never be able to find political or social platform among their own people.

If political war is what India and the IC want the Tamils to take up, the ball is in the court of India and the IC now. The right sign and support have to come from them. If they know how to handle the Sri Lankan state, that has to be clearly demonstrated by them now.

But, if deceit continues to impose half-baked solutions that don't match the long-sufferings and sacrifices of Eezham Tamils, then they only invite troubles.

The Caucasus

An overview of languages of the Caucasus

Johanna Nichols
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
University of California, Berkeley

The Great Caucasus mountain range extends from the Black Sea to the Caspian. To the north of it is the western portion of the Eurasian steppe; to the south, the hill country of northern Mesopotamia. Both the steppe and northern Mesopotamia have been centers of economic and political power since approximately the Neolithic, and both have long been avenues through which peoples and languages have moved between Asia and Europe. The Caucasus itself has been a major conduit through which the Neolithic revolution, agriculture and stockbreeding, and subsequent technological innovations have spread from Mesopotamia to eastern Europe. The Caucasus is a biological refuge zone in which species found nowhere else are native, and it is known for its ecological and biological diversity. It has also been known since ancient times for its linguistic diversity, and it can be called a linguistic refuge zone in the sense that three entire separate language families are indigenous to the Caucasus and have no kin elsewhere. Survey of languages

The indigenous language families of the Caucasus are:

Kartvelian or South Caucasian, a family about 4500 years old comprising Georgian and its three sister languages. It probably dispersed in the vicinity of central to eastern Georgia, in the foothills or southern plains. Georgian has a written history going back to the creation of a special alphabet after Georgia became Christianized in the fourth century; the same alphabet is still used. Most Georgians and other Kartvelians are Christians, but some of those in the south are Muslim.

Northwest Caucasian or Abkhaz-Adyghe (or Abkhaz-Circassian), a family of uncertain age (evidently older than the Romance or Slavic families and younger than Indo-European, which is about 6000 years old) with three or four daughter languages. The structural type of this family is exotic in Eurasia. It may have dispersed near the Black Sea coast. Speakers of Northwest Caucasian languages are mostly Muslims. There are sizable diasporic communities in Turkey and elsewhere in the Near East, descendants of emigrants from the Russian conquest of the Caucasus in the 19th century; they retain the languages to varying extents.

Northeast Caucasian or Nakh-Daghestanian, a much-diversified family about 6000 years of age, with some 30 daughter languages spoken in the central and eastern Caucasus. It probably dispersed in the southeastern foothills of the Caucasus, near the Caspian Sea and in present-day Azerbaijan. Islam spread into Azerbaijan early and from there to the northern Caucasus, reaching the Chechen and Ingush in the 17th-18th centuries. Though most speakers of Northeast Caucasian languages are Muslims, the Udi (who now inhabit three villages in Azerbaijan and Georgia and are remnants of a larger pre-Georgian population) are monophysite Christians. There are sizable Chechen-Ingush diasporic communities in Turkey and Jordan, descendants of emigrants and deportees from the Russian conquest of the Caucasus in the 19th century; they retain the language, generally quite well.

Languages not indigenous to the Caucasus but long resident there include:

Ossetic, a member of the northeastern branch of the Iranian subfamily of Indo-European. A descendant of the Alanic division of Sarmatian, which was part of the Scythian state of the Iron Age steppe, it straddles the Caucasus across the central pass and must have entered during the first millennium BCE.

Karachay-Balkar, two closely related dialects of northwestern Turkic. Now spoken in the western central highlands of the northern slope, they must have come into the Caucasus after the spread of Kipchak Turkic to the western steppe in the early middle ages.

Kumyk, another Turkic language of the northeastern lowlands which also entered the area in the early middle ages. The Kumyk people may well descend from the Khazars, Turkic speakers whose empire extended from the Volga to the Daghestan foothills, but the Kumyk language itself goes back to the Kipchak Turkic that began spreading into the North Caucasian steppe in the middle ages.

Azerbaijani (Azeri), a Southwest Turkic language that spread from Central Asia to formerly Iranian-speaking Azerbaijan in about the ninth century. Azerbaijan has been culturally important since the time of the ancient Persian empire, and Islam spread here early. Thelanguage has been written since the 14th century, originally in the Arabic script.

Tat, a southwestern Iranian language spoken in Azerbaijan and along the Caspian littoral. It is a survivor of the Iranian-speaking population that was dominant in Azerbaijan before the spread of Turkic, and is spoken now by Jewish, Muslim, and Christian enclaves.

Talysh, a northwestern Iranian language spoken in Azerbaijan and also a survivor of a pre-Turkic language.

Armenian, an independent branch of Indo-European. The Armenian language spread into the former kingdom of Urartu in the seventh century BCE. Armenia converted to Christianity in 300 AD, and an Armenian alphabet was created not long thereafter, originally as a vehicle for disseminating Christianity. The oldest surviving documents in classical Armenian date to the ninth and tenth centuries. The language has been written more or less continuously since then, and the original alphabet has been retained.

The ancient Urartean language and its still earlier ancestor Hurrian, attested in cuneiform inscriptions. The range of Urartean was approximately the territory of medieval Armenia.

Structural types of languages

The indigenous languages of the Caucasus are known for their complex consonant systems (including ejectives and pharyngeals), complex morphology, and ergativity (identical case or other coding on subjects of intransitive verbs and direct objects of transitives; distinct coding on subjects of transitives). However, the structural differences between these families are considerable. The following examples give some sense of the structural complexity and diversity among the indigenous families. An Ossetic example is also given for comparison. In three millennia of residence in the Caucasus, Ossetic has acquired loan vocabulary, an ejective consonant series, and aspects of central and western Caucasian vowel centralization from its neighbors but shows no trace of pharyngeals, pharyngealization, or ergativity.

In the following examples, all three indigenous languages have ergative constructions but use very different morphology: Georgian signals its syntactic relations by a combination of cases and verbal agreement, chiefly prefixal; Chechen mostly by cases; and Abkhaz entirely by elaborate verbal prefixation. Abkhaz also inflects its postpositions and possessed nouns, while Georgian and Chechen use a genitive case for possession.

Abbreviations: ERGative case, DATive case, Plural, NOMinative case, PERFective, REFLexive pronoun, ADESSive case, TRANSitive; 3sg = third person singular, 3pl = third person plural. - marks morpheme boundary; = marks boundary following a proclitic. In Chehen, /aa/, /ie/, etc. = long vowels and diphthongs.

Language contact, bilingualism, and verticality

Traditionally in the Caucasus there was no single lingua franca. Rather, there was considerable bilingualism and multilingualism between adjacent communities. In recent times, up to the Russian conquest of the Caucasus in the mid-19th century, the standing pattern of bilingualism was vertical: in highland villages many people knew the language(s) of lower villages, but not vice versa. This was because markets and winter pasture were to be found in the lowlands, while the highlands afforded few economic advantages. The male population of highland villages was largely transhumant and spent perhaps half of its working life in the lowlands. Naturally, under these conditions, lowlands languages tended to gradually spread uphill, reducing highlands languages to islands and eventually replacing them entirely. At present and for all known history and known prehistory, languages with large numbers of speakers have both lowland and highland ranges and a generally elongate vertical distribution; these are economically advantageous and/or culturally prestigious languages that have spread uphill. Languages with small numbers of speakers, including several one-village languages, are mostly found in the highlands. This pattern apparently predominated during the Little Ice Age (late middle ages to mid-19th century), a period of global cooling in which highland farms and pastures were economically precarious and the lowlands more prosperous. Prior to that, there is evidence that highland communities were larger and more prosperous and their languages spread downhill, and that highland communities formed and maintained lowland colonies. Chechen-Ingush isoglosses, and the discontinuous distribution of language families like Chechen-Ingush, Avar, and Lak all point in this direction. Overall, then, geography and size of speech community are correlated, and this is explained by verticality, economy, and climate change.

© 1998 by Johanna Nichols

The Other Tibet

Quiet death in Xingjiang

by Charles Cumming

The Dalai Lama has been called many things in his time. Rupert Murdoch once described him as "a very political old monk shuffling around in Gucci shoes", while CNN's Larry King mistakenly identified the political and spiritual leader of the Tibetan people as a prominent Muslim activist. However, until last week, nobody had ever called him a terrorist.

It was the Chinese government, inevitably, which levelled the accusation. According to Beijing, the recent violence in Tibet was orchestrated by the Dalai Lama in collusion with Uighur militants from Xinjiang, who were themselves plotting a terrorist atrocity at the Olympics. This was the second time in a fortnight that China had accused separatists from Xinjiang of posing a threat to the Games. However, with the exception of an article by Parag Khanna in these pages, the story failed to generate any further coverage in the British press.

For purely selfish reasons, I was disappointed by this. By coincidence, my new novel, Typhoon, concerns a plot by US-sponsored Uighur radicals to blow up the Beijing Games. China's suggestion that a conspiracy of this kind was actually in the pipeline was the sort of publicity most novelists dream about. However there is a more serious point to be made here. The British media's obsession with Buddhist Tibet says a great deal about western attitudes to Xinjiang and to its predominantly Turkic-Muslim population.

It may be that people remain ignorant of Xinjiang because it has no Dalai Lama, no Richard Gere, to bring its cause to the world's attention. If it did, then we would know more about the barbaric treatment meted out to Uighurs on a day-to-day basis.

So paranoid is the Chinese government about the threat of a separatist movement in Xinjiang that it will incarcerate innocent civilians on the flimsiest pretexts.

Uighurs have been jailed for reading newspapers sympathetic to the cause of independence. Others have been detained merely for listening to Radio Free Asia, an English-language station funded by the US Congress. Even to discuss separatism in public is to risk a lengthy jail sentence, with no prospect of habeas corpus, effective legal representation or a fair trial. About 100 Uighurs were arrested in Khotan recently after several hundred demonstrated in the marketplace of the town, which lies on the Silk Road.

And what happens to these innocent Uighur men and women once they land up in one of Xinjiang's notorious "black prisons"? Amnesty International has reported numerous incidents of torture, from cigarette burns on the skin to submersion in water or raw sewage. Prisoners have had toenails extracted by pliers, been attacked by dogs and burned with electric batons, even
cattle prods.

In Typhoon, I relate the terrifying true story of a prisoner in Xinjiang who had horse hair inserted into the tip of his penis. Throughout this diabolical torture, the victim was forced to wear a metal helmet on his head. Why? Because a previous inmate had been so traumatised by his treatment in the prison that he had beaten his own head against a radiator in an attempt to take his own life.

This is the reality of life in modern Xinjiang. Quite what the Chinese hope to gain from their inhumane behaviour remains unclear. According to Corinna-Barbara Francis, a researcher with Amnesty's East Asia team, "the intensified repression of Uighurs by the Chinese authorities is in danger of contributing to the very outcome that China claims it is warding against - the radicalisation of the population and the adoption of violent responses to the repression."

Uighurs have motive, at the very least, for fighting back. On January 5 this year, 18 Uighurs were killed and a further 17 arrested during a raid on what the Chinese described as a "terrorist training camp" in the Pamir mountains. However, many western observers have cast doubt on the veracity of this claim. Just as there has been no proof of the planned attacks on the Olympic Games, the Chinese authorities have yet to produce any evidence which would suggest that the men and women killed in January were terrorists linked to al-Qaida.

Rebiya Kadeer, president of the World Uighur Congress, who lives in exile in the United States, believes that the threat of "terrorism" in Xinjiang has been grossly exaggerated and is being used by Beijing "both as a justification for the continued repression and cultural assimilation of the Uighur people" and as a diversionary tactic designed to disguise China's appalling human rights record in the region. But who will hear her?

· Typhoon will be published in June charlescumming.co.uk