A university lecturer says he has been sacked for saying that bilingual road signs are “dangerous”.
Dr Nigel Hunt made the initial comments in the Facebook group Department of Rage 2.
His honorary position as a visiting professor at Wrexham University has since been terminated, Sky News understands.
Wrexham University has been approached for a statement in response.
In the post, Dr Hunt said bilingual road signs were “confusing” because they contained “irrelevant – and to most people – unintelligible information”.
He said signs in two languages were “potentially dangerous as it takes longer to determine the message”.
Dr Hunt added that “most people even in Wales do not understand these signs”.
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“The Welsh language is declining despite the attempts to popularise it,” he added.
Around 538,000 people aged three and older who usually live in Wales speak Welsh, according to the 2021 census – 17.8% of the country’s population.
That’s a decrease of 24,000 since 2011, despite the Welsh government’s target of reaching one million Welsh speakers by 2050.
In a statement following Dr Hunt’s initial comments, Wrexham University said it would like to “apologise for the offence caused by recent remarks”.
The university said it was in the process of an internal investigation.
“We are keen to stress that these comments absolutely do not reflect the views or values of our university or its staff,” a spokesperson added.
In a statement to Sky News, Dr Hunt said he would not apologise for his comments “which reflect [his] beliefs”.
But he did apologise for “the way in which these comments emerged”.
He called Welsh and other Celtic languages “moribund languages” which are “unlikely to survive” if left alone.
“Welsh is strongly supported by the Welsh government and other parties, but even then it does not appear to have a groundswell of support,” he added.
Dr Hunt said he was “disappointed” by some people’s responses to his post, in which he was called “many names, even called a racist”.
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He went on to say these were “dangerous times”.
“While I accept that the University of Wrexham has a position on the Welsh language, it is critical that members of that university are free to express opinions that go against that position,” he said.
“This is academic freedom, and more fundamentally, free speech.
“We should not be restricting freedom of speech, the right to have opinions that differ from other people.”
