Wales is like Ireland should/could have been

I spent a lot of time in Wales when I was younger. I haven't been back much in 20 years but if it's anything like I remember then no, I do not envy the Welsh in the slightest. I'd like to see the north, I was supposed to go last year until that inevitably got cancelled, but the towns in the valleys of the south are like the worst of the midlands here on steroids.

In the Wetherspoons by any chance? There is one and its easily the nastiest pub in the town.

That'd be dearer than the cheapest pints in the one here (€1.95). The normal bars were all over £3 when I was last there and pubs are not in the habit of getting cheaper. Its a tourist trap, it has no need to be cheap.

I like Wales but Isn't it the size of Leinster or something? It's geographically smaller and thus easier to manage might explain?

Indeed. We have spent quite a bit of time in south west Wales over the last few summers visiting my wife's extended family and heard Polish being spoken more then Welsh. Must depend on the area you're visiting.

The amount of natural forest compared to here you see from trains passing through makes me sad, same in England though

The big difference is that the number of people in Wales who claim to be able to speak Welsh (30%) is considerably less than the number of Irish people who claim to be able to speak Irish (50%), but many of those Welsh speakers have Welsh as their native language and use it on a daily basis.

It makes logical sense that using a language on a regular basis is one of the key ways of driving adoption.

The typical response here is that "It's the way Irish is taught!", and while this is true, it's probably a bit too simplistic. My experience of learning Irish is that you go from learning the basics of the language in Junior Primary, to basic reading comprehension in Senior Primary, then into actual reading comprehension in secondary school. All with very little practical use of the language.

Every successful language course in the world concentrates on practical usage of the language before getting into the complexities, the spelling, tenses, verbs etc. We try to teach Irish in the same way that we teach English, but that doesn't work because practically none of us enter school with a single word of Irish. In order to drive retention of the language it needs to be in active use. This is why we all remember snippets of the Irish phrases that were used every day in school ("An bhfuil cead agam dul go dti an leithreas mas e do thoil e"), and not a whole lot else.

Examination is also a mess. Remember the Aurals? A mixture of accents from all over Ireland. Imagine a non-English speaker doing an English Aural exam with accents from Kerry, Bangladesh, Yorkshire and Derry. A native English speaker would struggle with that. It's batshit crazy when you think about it.

How we make this better, I don't really know. But I know driving wider use of the language seems like a no-brainer. Perhaps all the way through school conversational Irish should be at the centre. At the beginning of primary school it's a topic of its own, but over time it gets expanded so that a certain percentage of the day is taught in Irish, and by the time you get to secondary school, at least 2 hours of the day are taught in Irish.

We know that languages are learned better when they're learned earlier, perhaps it should be in at the deep end and from junior infants your day is entirely bilingual, so within 3-4 years it is completely and utterly natural and normal. There would be no stigma with the kids then. They wouldn't see talking to each other in Irish to be stupid, something that only losers do.

You could trial this in schools in various small towns (< 5k people) around the country, along with reliefs/grants for businesses that make an effort to operate as Gaeilge, public events conducted entirely in Irish, open education for adults to polish up and encourage them to use the language daily, etc etc.

I'm using duolingo at the moment to bring my Irish back up as the kids are learning it in school, and while I'm finding it immensely helpful, the lack of opportunities to actually use it day-to-day is really glaring.

I take it you didn't go anywhere near Rhyl, OP?

The father-in-law used to work for Irish Ferries and got us a free trip over so we made a cheap holiday of it with the kids about 10 years ago. The deprivation was palpable. Honestly felt like being on-set for the Welsh re-make of Shameless.

Regarding the Public Amenities, Wales is about a fifth the size of Ireland (and not the whole island of Ireland).

An interesting thing about Wales is that it is probably the most atheist region in Britain or Ireland. There is no Church of England there and they have no actual official religion.

It's a bit puzzling that they are so integrated with England, given that they are a Celtic nation and have their own language. That may change in future though : if Scotland and NI were to leave the union, they could well be tempted to leave themselves.

Parts of Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire in the south west have long been traditionally English speaking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsker_Line

Like Ireland, the Anglican official church was disestablished, they changed the name though; and it really isn't that heavily adhered to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_in_Wales