Sirajul Islam talks about his linguistic background

Description

Short video clip in Welsh. Sirajul Islam talks about his linguistic background and why he has learnt Welsh.
English translation:
 
My name is Sirajul Islam. I live in Wales. I speak Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, English and Welsh.
 
I come originally from Bangladesh. I came here in 1963 as an economic migrant to search for a new life, and to keep my family in the old country from poverty, hardship and suffering. At home, we speak Sylheti Bengali, not pure Bengali. Because our area belonged to Assam – where the tea comes from – so it was totally different to pure Bengali. So I spoke Sylheti at home, and pure Bengali at school. But after independence in 1947, Pakistanis came into our area like Vikings, with their culture and their Urdu language too. We had to learn Urdu straight away. It was rather like an official language – Urdu and English. So when I was working in an office as a civil servant, I couldn’t use my Bengali mother tongue at all. Urdu or English. So that’s why I can speak it  – I had no choice but to learn Urdu, to please the Pakistani government. The same thing happened a century ago in rural Wales, didn’t it – the Welsh Not.
I’m very grateful to Wales and her people, and I’ve achieved a lot here. I had the opportunity to do things, to realise my dreams, things I couldn’t do anywhere else.
I decided to learn Welsh to say ‘Thank you very much, Wales, for everything.’ In her own language. And that was important. That was important to me.