Newcastle Emlyn’s Siop Iago took part in the Welsh Government’s Cymraeg yn Gyntaf / Welsh Give it a Go campaign last week.

The campaign aims to encourage Welsh speakers in traditional strongholds of the language to speak Welsh first as they go about their daily business.

Carol Davies, local Development Officer for the Welsh Government’s Welsh in the Community Unit said: “It is often the case that Welsh speakers automatically speak English first in an everyday situation such as going into a shop, bank, post office and so on. Once the conversation has started in English it continues as such and sometimes two fluent Welsh speakers can end up conducting the whole exchange in English instead of Welsh.

“To raise awareness of this issue, we at the Welsh in the Community Unit partnered with Siop Iago and handed out promotional goods in order to take our message out to local homes and businesses.”

Sharon Tobias, who works at Siop Iago, said: “It was great to support this fantastic campaign. We wholeheartedly support the aim of encouraging people to “give Welsh a go” and hope that simple activities like this will start the ball rolling so that we hear more Welsh spoken on a day to day basis in our community.”