In reply to:
...but said that she got tired of people in shops who were speaking English switching to Welsh as soon as she entered...
Something similar is known to happen in the Hokianga - not exactly courteous.
Max, we weren't on the tourist routes much ... back roads, little villages. One place we stayed at, a B&B attached to a restaurant in some place with a name that began with a "D" and ended with a spit, was hosting the Welsh equivalent of a CWI meeting. They were laughing and shouting in Welsh long before they saw us. The waitress worked for the local council during the day and said that some of the locals wouldn't even speak to her on the phone unless she used Welsh. Her English was halting, I don't think she was faking it.
The shops we went into were mostly local groceries/dairies, and they switched from Welsh to English to talk to us.
The only place where Welsh was flogged as a tourist concept was at Portmeirion, but we went there because of "The Prisoner", not because it was Welsh.
I remember going into a tearooms in Wairoa in the early 1970s and hearing Maori being used conversationally for the first time by the woman behind the counter and a customer or friend. Most Maori usage I hear these days is painfully "learned" with large gaps, much the same as me speaking French. The women in that tearooms made me understand why Maori was seen as an orator's language early in the 19th century. That tearooms has been my yardstick for the fluidity and expression of Maori speech ever since!
