Elinor Staniforth from Cardiff hated Welsh lessons at her English-medium school – after her GCSEs, she said, she “forgot all about it”. Winning a place at Oxford University, however, made Staniforth reassess her identity and relationship with the language.
“I suddenly became very aware of being Welsh,” the 28-year-old said. “There were only two Welsh people in the whole college. People would ask if I spoke Welsh, and I’d have to say no. It’s like a switch turned on while I was at uni. I was thinking that I’d missed out on something.”
