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From: Alan Badmington
Date: 20 Oct 2010
Time: 12:39:51 -0500
Remote Name: 95.144.71.232
Hi Patricia, Thank you for your interesting paper. I live in Wales (in the UK) where the Welsh language is spoken by 21% of the population. After falling into decline during the early part of the 20th Century, it has made considerable gains during recent years. Since 2000, the teaching of Welsh has been compulsory in all schools up to the age of 16. In addition, an increasing number of schools now use Welsh as their principal language. As a result, even the children of non-Welsh-speaking parents (who have moved to Wales from elsewhere in the UK) acquire a knowledge (or even complete fluency) of the Welsh language. In addition, legislation introduced during the 1990’s provides that (as far as reasonably practicable) the Welsh and English languages be treated equally in the public sector. Bearing in mind the increase in bilingualism, it would be interesting to know if this exposure has had any effect upon children (and those who are now adults) who stutter. I am not aware of any research that has been carried out in this area. Digressing slightly to a much lighter vein – despite having stuttered severely for most of my life, I gained the reputation of being a raconteur. Whenever I told a joke, I would invariably adopt different (exaggerated) accents. This enabled me to overcome many of the difficulties that I would, otherwise, have experienced had I used my normal accent/voice. Indeed, I became quite a proficient mimic. Yet another example of the incredible avoidance strategies that I adopted to conceal my stutter. :-) Kindest regards Alan