My friend, tutor and mentor, Colin Williams, who has died aged 75, was an academic with a special focus on how politics and policies can shape the future of the world’s languages.
As a Welshman he had a particular interest in the Welsh language, but his comparative work also took him well beyond his home country, including to Canada, South Africa, the US and Ireland. Aspects of papers he wrote on language rights and cultural diversity for the 1998 Good Friday agreement became enshrined in its formal position on respecting the Irish and Ulster Scots languages.
