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Mind Your Language

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Essay - Chachau Bant: Mind Your Language

Our language is a very big part of us, whether you are Spanish, Danish or English you can be proud of your languages. Every language have a lot of heritage, your parents taught it to you, like it was taught to them by their parents. But not everyone can feel proud, or at least can be sure, that they will get the chance to teach their language on to their children. This is one of the main themes in Tom Law’s article “Chachau Bant: Mind Your Language” from the sabotage times from 2013. In his article Law writes about how the English have completely smothered the Welsh language.

In his article, Tom Law starts his article by telling the reader, the English speaker, that they do not understand the following problem: “it’s hard to give a toss about language when you’re an English speaker” (p. 1, ll. 1-2), but afterwards he tries to explains it, but with a little twist. Law sets up a scenario for the English speakers, where he starts out by letting the German take control of Europe and thereby making German the main language, this causes English to be inconvenient and therefore going extinct. This is Law’s way of explaining how English made the Welsh language a thing of the past. Law therefore uses pathos to make the English people feel what Welsh people have gone through. He gives them a scenario where they are the victims. Law also tells about how the school children got bullied and punished for speaking Welsh in the school, appealing to their sympatric side.

“As a German speaker you’re sick of hearing theses people drone on about their language. You’re sick of them chuntering about Dickens and Keats and Dad’s Army and The Beatles and all the rest of the cultural twaddle that you don’t understand.” (p. 2, ll. 59-65)

Law I really clever in the way he writes this article. The story is not only directed at the

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