Welsh language

Welsh
Cymraeg
Pronunciation	kəmˈrɑːɨɡ
Native to	United Kingdom, Argentina, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand
Region	Wales
Native speakers	610,000
Language family	Indo-European Celtic Insular Celtic Brythonic Welsh
Official status
Official language in	Wales
Language codes
ISO 639-1	cy
ISO 639-2	wel (B) cym (T)
ISO 639-3	cym
ELP	Welsh

Welsh (Cymraeg or y Gymraeg, pronounced [kəmˈrɑːɨɡ], [ə ɡəmˈrɑːɨɡ]), not to be confused with Welsh English (the English language as spoken in Wales), is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in Wales (Cymru), England by some along the Welsh border, and in the Chubut Valley, a Welsh immigrant colony in the Patagonia region of Argentina.

There are also speakers of Welsh throughout the world, most notably in the rest of Great Britain, the United States and Australia.

Status

The 2001 census gives a figure of 20.5% of the population of Wales as Welsh speakers (up from 18.5% in 1991), out of a population of about 3 million; however, the same census shows that 25% of residents were born outside Wales. The number of Welsh speakers throughout the rest of Britain is uncertain, but numbers are high in the main cities and there are speakers along England's border with Wales. In 1993, S4C, the Welsh-language TV channel published the results of a survey into the numbers of people speaking/understanding Welsh, and this estimated that there were some 133,000 Welsh-speakers living in England, about 50,000 of them in the Greater London area [1].

Even among the Welsh-speakers, few residents of Wales are monolingual in Welsh. However, a large number of Welsh speakers are more comfortable expressing themselves in Welsh than in English. A speaker's choice of language can vary according to the subject domain (known in linguistics as code-switching).

Although Welsh is a minority language, and thus threatened by the dominance of English, support for the language grew during the second half of the 20th century, along with the rise of nationalist political organisations such as the political party Plaid Cymru and Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (the Welsh Language Society).

Welsh as a first language is largely concentrated in the less urban north and west of Wales, principally Gwynedd, Denbighshire, Anglesey (Ynys Môn), Carmarthenshire, North Pembrokeshire, Ceredigion, and parts of western Glamorgan, although first-language and other fluent speakers can be found throughout Wales.

Welsh is very much a living language. It is used in conversation every day by thousands and seen in Wales everywhere. The Welsh Language Act 1993 and the Government of Wales Act 1998 provide that the Welsh and English languages should be treated on a basis of equality. Public bodies are required to prepare and implement a Welsh Language Scheme. Thus local councils and the Welsh Assembly use Welsh as an official language, issuing official literature and publicity in Welsh versions (e.g. letters to parents from schools, library information, and council information) and all road signs in Wales should be in English and Welsh, including the Welsh versions of place names. The teaching of Welsh is now compulsory in all schools in Wales up to age 16, and this has had a major effect in stabilising and to some extent reversing the decline in the language. It means, for example, that even the children of English monoglot migrants to Wales grow up with a knowledge of the language. However, in everyday life the language is virtually never used in the main population centres in the south of Wales.

Welsh also has a substantial presence on the Internet, but this is strongly biased towards public bodies: the ratio of search engine hit frequencies for Welsh words to their English equivalents tends to be about 0.1% for formal terms such as addysg (education), cymdeithas (society) or llywodraeth (government), but only about 0.01% for everyday terms such as buwch (cow), eirlaw (sleet) or cyllell (knife).

File:Wales.cardiff.slow.arp.750pix.jpg

Bilingual road markings in Wales

The UK government has ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in respect to Welsh.

The language has greatly increased its prominence since the creation of the television channel S4C in November 1982, which broadcasts exclusively in Welsh during peak viewing hours. The main evening television news provided by the BBC can be found here (Real Media).

Bilingual road sign in Cardiff.

Given the British Government's current plans (since December 2001) to ensure that all immigrants know English, it remains to be seen if Welsh will be considered a separate case. At present, a knowledge of either Welsh, English or Scottish Gaelic is sufficient for naturalisation purposes and it is believed that this policy will be continued in any proposed changes to the law.

History

Like most languages, there are identifiable periods within the history of Welsh, although the boundaries between these are often indistinct.

The earliest extant sources of a language identifiable as Welsh go back to about the 6th century, and the language of this period is known as Early Welsh. Very little of this language remains. The next main period, somewhat better attested, is Old Welsh (Hen Gymraeg) (9th to 11th centuries); poetry from both Wales and Scotland has been preserved in this form of the language. As Germanic and Gaelic colonisation of Great Britain proceeded, the Brythonic speakers in Wales were split off from those in northern England, speaking Cumbrian, and those in the south-west, speaking what would become Cornish, and so the languages diverged.

Middle Welsh (or Cymraeg Canol) is the label attached to the Welsh of the 12th to 14th centuries, of which much more remains than for any earlier period. This is the language of nearly all surviving early manuscripts of the Mabinogion, although the tales themselves are certainly much older. It is also the language of the existing Welsh law manuscripts. Middle Welsh is reasonably intelligible, albeit with some work, to a modern-day Welsh speaker.

Modern Welsh can be divided into two periods. The first, Early Modern Welsh ran from the 14th century to roughly the end of the 16th century and was the language used by Dafydd ap Gwilym.

Late Modern Welsh began with the publication of William Morgan's translation of the Bible in 1588. Like its English counterpart, the King James Version, this proved to have a strong stabilising effect on the language, and indeed the language today still bears the same Late Modern label as Morgan's language. Of course, many minor changes have occurred since then.

The language enjoyed a further boost in the 19th century, with the publication of some of the first complete and concise Welsh dictionaries. Early work by Welsh lexicographic pioneers such as Daniel Silvan Evans ensured that the language was documented as accurately as possible, and modern dictionaries such as the Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru (the University of Wales Dictionary), are direct descendants of these dictionaries.

However, the influx of English workers during the Industrial Revolution in Wales from about 1800 led to a substantial dilution of the Welsh-speaking population of Wales. English migrants seldom learnt Welsh and their Welsh colleagues tended to speak English in mixed Welsh–English contexts, and bilingualism became almost universal. The legal status of Welsh was inferior to that of English, and so English gradually came to prevail, except in the most rural areas, particularly in north west and mid Wales. An important exception, however, was in the non-conformist churches, which were strongly associated with the Welsh language.

By the twentieth century, the numbers of Welsh speakers were shrinking at a rate which suggested that it would be extinct within a few generations. The 10-yearly census first started to ask language questions in 1891, by which time 54% of the population still spoke Welsh. The percentage fell with every subsequent census, until reaching an all-time low in 1981 (19%). In 1991 the position was stable (19% as in 1981) and in the most recent census, 2001, it has risen to 21% able to speak Welsh. The 2001 census also recorded that 20% could read Welsh, 18% could write Welsh, and an impressive 24% could understand Welsh. Furthermore, the highest proportion of Welsh speakers was among young people, which bodes well for the future. In 2001, 39% of children aged 10 to 15 were able to speak, read and write Welsh (many of them having learnt it at school), compared with 25% of 16 to 19 year olds.

It seems that the rise of Welsh nationalism rallied supporters of the language, and the establishment of Welsh television and radio found a mass audience which was encouraged in the retention of its Welsh. Perhaps most important of all, at the end of the twentieth century it became compulsory for all school children to learn Welsh up to age 16, and this both reinforced the language in Welsh-speaking areas and reintroduced at least an elementary knowledge of it in areas which had become more or less wholly Anglophone. The decline in the percentage of people in Wales who can speak Welsh has now been halted, and there are even signs of a modest recovery. However, although Welsh is the daily language in many parts of Wales, English is almost universally understood.

Grammar

Phonology

Consonants

Welsh has the following consonant phonemes:

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Labiovelar	Dental	Alveolar	Alveolar lateral	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	p  b				t  d				k  g
Affricate							tʃ  dʒ
Nasal	(m̥)  m				(n̥)  n				(ŋ̊)  ŋ
Fricative		f  v		θ  ð	s  (z)	ɬ	ʃ		x	h
Trill					r̥  r
Approximant			w			l		j

/z/ occurs only in unassimilated loanwords; the voiceless nasals /m̥/, /n̥/, /ŋ̊/ occur only as a consequence of the nasal mutation.

Vowels

Monophthongs	Front	Central	Back
Close	iː	ɨː	uː
Near-close	ɪ	ɨ̞	ʊ
Close mid	eː	ə	oː
Open mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open	a	ɑː

The vowels /ɨ̞/ and /ɨː/ occur only in Northern dialects; in Southern dialects they are replaced by /ɪ/ and /iː/ respectively. In Southern dialects, the contrast between long and short vowels is found in stressed syllables only; in Northern dialects, the contrast is found only in stressed word-final syllables (including monosyllabic words).

The vowel /ə/ does not occur in the final syllable of words.

Diphthongs	Second component is front	Second component is central	Second component is back
First component is close		ʊɨ	ɪu, ɨu
First component is mid	əi, ɔi	əɨ, ɔɨ	ɛu, əu
First component is open	ai	aɨ, ɑːɨ	au

The diphthongs containing /ɨ/ occur only in Northern dialects; in Southern dialects /ʊɨ/ is replaced by /ʊi/, /ɨu, əɨ, ɔɨ/ are merged with /ɪu, əi, ɔi/, and /aɨ, ɑːɨ/ are merged with /ai/.

Stress

Stress in polysyllabic words occurs most commonly on the penultimate syllable, more rarely on the final syllable.

The positioning of the stress means that related words or concepts (or even plurals) can sound quite different, as syllables are added to the end of a word and the stress moves correspondingly, e.g.:

• Ysgrif — /ˈəsgriv/ — an article or essay
• Ysgrifen — /əsˈgriven/ — writing
• Ysgrifennydd — /əsgriˈvenɨð/ — a secretary
• Ysgrifenyddes — /əsgriveˈnəðes/ — a female secretary

(Note also how adding a syllable to ysgrifennydd to form ysgrifenyddes changes the pronunciation of the second "y". This is because the pronunciation of "y" depends on whether or not it is in the final syllable.)

The connection between the Welsh word ysgrif and the Latin scribo "I write", from which it is derived, is fairly clear, taking diachronic sound shifts into account.

Orthography

Alphabet

Letter	Name of letter	Corresponding sounds
a	â	/a, ɑː/
b	bî	/b/
c	èc	/k/
ch	èch	/x/
d	dî	/d/
dd	èdd	/ð/
e	ê	/ɛ, eː/
f	èf	/v/
ff	èff	/f/
g	èg	/g/
ng	èng	/ŋ/
h	âets, hâ	/h/
i	î	/ɪ, iː/
l	èl	/l/
ll	ell	/ɬ/
m	èm	/m/
n	en	/n/
o	ô	/ɔ, oː/
p	pî	/p/
ph	ffî	/f/
r	èr	/r/
rh	rhî, rhô	/r̥/
s	ès	/s/
t	tî	/t/
th	èth	/θ/
u	û	/ɨ̞, ɨː/ (N), /ɪ, iː/ (S)
w	ŵ	/ʊ, uː/
y	ŷ	/ɨ̞, ɨː, ə/ (N), /ɪ, iː, ə/ (S)

• h indicates voicelessness in mh, nh, and ngh.
• ph occurs occasionally in words derived from Greek (e.g. phenol) but more commonly as a result of aspirate mutation (e.g. ei phen-ôl)
• y indicates /ə/ in unstressed monosyllabic words (e.g. y "the", fy "my") or non-final syllables, but /ɨ̞, ɨː/ (N) or /ɪ, iː/ (S) everywhere else.
• The digraphs (letters consisting of two characters) are treated as a single letter (with the collation order as listed above), although the same combinations of characters can sometimes also arise as a juxtaposition of two separate letters. For example, the digraph ng representing /ŋ/ is alphabetised between g and h (alphabetical order llegach, lleng, lleiaf), but when ng is two letters representing /ŋg/ it is alphabetised between nf and nh (alphabetical order danfon, dangos, danheddog).
• si indicates /ʃ/ when followed by a vowel
• di and ti sometimes indicate /dʒ/ and /tʃ/ respectively when followed by a vowel. Otherwise /dʒ/ and /tʃ/ are spelled j and ts, but only in loanwords like jẁg "jug" and wats "watch".

Spelling the diphthongs

Orthography	Northern dialects	Southern dialects
ae	/ɑːɨ/	/ai/
ai	/ai/	/ai/
au	/aɨ/ but as plural ending /a/	/ai/ but as plural ending /e/
aw	/au/	/au/
ei	/əi/	/əi/
eu	/əɨ/	/əi/
ew	/ɛu/	/ɛu/
ey	/əɨ/	/əi/
iw	/ɪu/	/ɪu/
oe	/ɔɨ/	/ɔi/
oi	/ɔi/	/ɔi/
ou	/ɔɨ/	/ɔi/
uw	/ɨu/	/ɪu/
wy	/ʊɨ/	/ʊi/
yw	/ɨu/	/ɪu/

Diacritics

Welsh makes use of a number of diacritics.

The circumflex is used to mark long vowels (although not all long vowels are marked with a circumflex). Thus â, ê, î, ô, û, ŵ, ŷ are always long, but a, e, i, o, u, w, y are not necessarily short.

The grave accent is sometimes to mark vowels that should be short, when a long vowel would normally be expected, e.g. pas /paːs/ (a cough), pàs /pas/ (a pass/permit); mwg /muːg/ (smoke), mẁg /mʊg/ (a mug) [2].

The acute accent is sometimes used to mark a stressed final syllable in a polysyllabic word. Thus the words gwacáu (to empty) and dicléin (decline) have final stress. However, not all polysyllabic words with final stress are marked with the acute accent.

The diaeresis indicates that a vowel letter is to be pronounced fully, not as a semivowel, e.g. copïo (to copy) — pronounced /kɔˈpiːɔ/, not */ˈkɔpjɔ/.

Predicting vowel length from orthography

As mentioned above, vowels marked with the circumflex are always long, and those marked with the grave accent are always short. If a vowel is not marked with a diacritic, its length must be determined by its environment.

An unmarked vowel is long:

• in a stressed monosyllabic word when no consonant follows, e.g. da /dɑː/ (good)
• before b, ch, d, dd, g, f, ff, s, th, e.g. mab /mɑːb/ (son), hoff /hoːf/ (favourite), peth /peːθ/ (thing)
• before l, n, r (in the case of i, u), e.g. sgil /sgiːl/ ("behind), llun /ɬɨːn/ (picture), hir /hiːr/ (long)
• in Northern dialects, before clusters of two consonants when the first one is ll or s, e.g. gwallt /gwɑːɬt/ (hair), tyst /tɨːst/ (witness)

An unmarked vowel is short:

• in an unstressed (proclitic) word, e.g. a /a/ (and)
• before p, t, c, m, ng, e.g. cam /kam/ (step), llong /ɬɔŋ/ (ship)
• before l, n, r (in the case of a, e, o, w, y), e.g. tal /tal/ (tall), llen /ɬɛn/ (curtain), ffwr /fʊr/ (fur)
• in Southern dialects, before clusters of two consonants, e.g. sant /sant/ (saint), gwallt /gwaɬt/ (hair), tyst /tɪst/ (witness)
• in Northern dialects, before clusters of two consonants when the first one is n or r, e.g. sant /sant/ (saint), perth /pɛrθ/ (hedge)
• in Northern dialects, in any syllable that is not both stressed and word-final
• in Southern dialects, in any unstressed syllable

Morphology

Main article: Welsh morphology

Welsh morphology has much in common with that of the other modern Insular Celtic languages, such as the use of initial consonant mutations, and the use of so-called "conjugated prepositions" (prepositions that fuse with the personal pronouns that are their object). Welsh nouns belong to one of two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine, but are not inflected for case. Welsh has a variety of different endings to indicate the plural, and two endings to indicate the singular of some nouns. In spoken Welsh, verb inflection is indicated primarily by the use of auxiliary verbs, rather than by the inflection of the main verb. In literary Welsh, on the other hand, inflection of the main verb is usual.

Counting system

The traditional counting system used by the Welsh language is vigesimal, i.e. based on twenties, as in French, where numbers from 11–14 are "x on ten", 16–19 are "x on fifteen" (though 18 is more usually "two nines"); numbers from 21–39 are "1–19 on twenty", 40 is "two twenties", 60 is "three twenties", etc.

There is also a decimal counting system, favoured by younger people, more common in South Wales, and which appears to be commonly used in Patagonian Welsh, where numbers are "x tens y", e.g. thirty-five in decimal is tri deg pump (three ten five) while in vigesimal it is pymtheg ar ugain (fifteen (itself "five-ten") on twenty).

A further complication is that while there is only one word for "one" (un) there are masculine and feminine forms of the numbers "two" (dau and dwy), "three" (tri and tair) and "four" (pedwar and pedair), which must agree with the grammatical gender of the objects being counted, though this rule is less strictly observed with the decimal counting system.

Number	Vigesimal system	Decimal system
1	un
2	dau (m), dwy (f)
3	tri (m), tair (f)
4	pedwar (m), pedair (f)
5	pump
6	chwech
7	saith
8	wyth
9	naw
10	deg
11	un ar ddeg	un deg un
12	deuddeg	un deg dau/dwy
13	tri/tair ar ddeg	un deg tri/tair
14	pedwar/pedair ar ddeg	un deg pedwar/pedair
15	pymtheg	un deg pump
16	un ar bymtheg	un deg chwech
17	dau/dwy ar bymtheg	un deg saith
18	deunaw ("two nines")	un deg wyth
19	pedwar/pedair ar bymtheg	un deg naw
20	ugain	dau ddeg
21	un ar hugain	dau ddeg un
22	dau/dwy ar hugain	dau ddeg dau/dwy
23	tri/tair ar hugain	dau ddeg tri/tair
24	pedwar/pedair ar hugain	dau ddeg pedwar/pedair
25	pump ar hugain	dau ddeg pump
26	chwech ar hugain	dau ddeg chwech
27	saith ar hugain	dau ddeg saith
28	wyth ar hugain	dau ddeg wyth
29	naw ar hugain	dau ddeg naw
30	deg ar hugain	tri deg
31	un ar ddeg ar hugain	tri deg un
32	deuddeg ar hugain	tri deg dau/dwy
etc.
40	deugain ("two twenties")	pedwar deg
41	deugain ac un	pedwar deg un
50	hanner cant ("half a hundred")	pump deg
51	hanner cant ac un	pum deg un
60	trigain	chwe deg
61	trigain ac un	chwe deg un
70	deg a thrigain	saith deg
71	un ar ddeg a thrigain	saith deg un
80	pedwar ugain	wyth deg
81	pedwar ugain ac un	wyth deg un
90	deg a phedwar ugain	naw deg
91	un ar ddeg a phedwar ugain	naw deg un
100	cant
200	dau gant
300	tri chant
400	pedwar cant
500	pum cant
600	chwe chant
1000	mil
2000	dwy fil
1,000,000	miliwn

Notes:

• The words deg (ten), deuddeg (twelve) and pymtheg (fifteen) often become deng, deuddeng and pymtheng respectively when before a word beginning with 'm', e.g. deng munud (ten minutes), deuddeng milltir (twelve miles), pymtheng mlynedd (fifteen years).

• The numbers pump (five), chwech (six) and cant (hundred) drop the final consonant when they stand immediately in front of a noun, e.g. pum potel (five bottles), chwe llwy (six spoons), can punt (a hundred pounds).

• Larger numbers tend to use the decimal system, e.g. 1,965 mil, naw cant chwe deg pump. An exception to this rule is when referring to years, where after the number of thousands, the individual digits are spoken, e.g. 1965 mil naw chwe(ch) pump. This system appears to have broken down for years after 2000, e.g. 2005 is dwy fil a phump.

Other features of Welsh grammar

Possessives as object pronouns

The Welsh for "I like Rhodri" is "Dw i'n hoffi Rhodri" ("I am liking Rhodri"), but "I like him" is "dw i'n ei hoffi fe" — literally, "I am his liking him"; "I like you" is "dw i'n dy hoffi di" ("I am your liking you"), etc.

Significant use of auxiliary verbs

While English can either use verbs directly (e.g. "I go") or with the aid of an auxiliary verb ("I am going", here using "to be" as the auxiliary), Welsh inclines very strongly towards the latter use. In the present tense, all verbs are used with the auxiliary "bod" (to be), so "dwi'n mynd" is literally "I am going", but also means simply "I go". In the past and future tenses, there are inflected forms of all verbs (which are invariably used in the written language) , but it is more common nowadays in speech to use the verbal noun (berfenw, loosely equal to the infinitive in English) together with the inflected form of "gwneud" (to do), so "I went" can be "mi es i" or "mi wnes i fynd" and "I will go" can be "mi a' i" or "mi wna i fynd". There is also a future form using the auxiliary bod, giving "fydda i'n mynd" (perhaps best translated as "I will be going") and an imperfect tense (a continuous/habitual past tense) also using bod, with "roeddwn i'n mynd" meaning "I used to go/I was going".

Affirmative markers

Mi (mainly North) and Fe (mainly South) are often placed before inflected verbs to show that they are declarative. This is mainly a colloquial formation and is not often seen in Written Welsh or more formal language.

Dialects

Like any natural language, Welsh has a number of different dialects.

These are very evident in the spoken, and to a lesser extent the written, language. A convenient, if slightly simplistic, classification is into North Walian and South Walian forms (or "Gog" and "Hwntw" based on the word for North, gogledd, and the South Walian word for "them over there"). The differences between dialects encompass vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar, although particularly in the last regard the differences are in fact relatively minor. Much more fine-grained classifications exist beyond north and south: Beth Thomas and Peter Wynn Thomas's book on the dialects of Welsh ^[3] refers to the earlier Linguistic Geography of Wales (Alan R Thomas, 1973) as describing six different regions which could be identified as having words specific to those regions; the cassette accompanying their book includes recordings of fourteen different speakers demonstrating aspects of different dialects.

Another dialect is Patagonian Welsh, which has developed since the start of the Welsh settlement in Argentina in 1865; it includes Spanish loanwords and terms for local features.

An example of the difference between North and South Walian usage would be the question "Do you want a cup of tea?". In the North this would typically be "Dach chi isio panad?", while in the South the question "Dych chi'n moyn dishgled?" would be more likely. An example of a pronunciation difference between Northern and Southern Welsh is the tendency of Southern dialects to "lisp" the letter "s", e.g. mis, a month, would tend to be pronounced [mi:s] in the north, and [mi:ʃ] in the south.

In fact, the difference between dialects of modern spoken Welsh pale into insignificance compared to the difference between the spoken and literary languages. The latter is significantly more formal and is the language of Welsh translations of the Bible, amongst other things (although the Beibl Cymraeg Newydd — New Welsh Bible — is significantly less formal than the traditional 1588 Bible). Gareth King, author of a Welsh grammar, goes so far as to observe that "The difference between these two is much greater than between the virtually identical colloquial and literary forms of English — so great, in fact, that there are good grounds for regarding them as separate languages", and comments that whilst colloquial Welsh is a mother tongue requiring no special learning to acquire, literary Welsh is the mother tongue of no-one, and must be taught to people ^[4].

Although the question "do you want a cup of tea?" is not likely to occur in literary Welsh usage, if it did it would be along the lines of "a oes arnoch eisiau cwpanaid o de?".

Amongst the characteristics of the literary, as against the spoken, language are a higher dependence on inflected verb forms, a shift in the usage of some of the tenses, a reduction in the explicit use of pronouns (since the information is usually conveyed in the verb/preposition inflections) and a greatly reduced tendency to substitute English loanwords for native Welsh words.

Welsh in education

The decade around 1840 was a period of great social upheaval in Wales, manifested in the Chartist movement, which culminated in 20,000 people marching on Newport in 1839 resulting in a riot when 20 people were killed by soldiers defending the Westgate Hotel, and the Rebecca Riots when tollbooths on turnpikes were systematically destroyed. This unrest brought the state of education in Wales to the attention of the English establishment, as social reformers of the time considered education as a means of dealing with social ills, The Times newspaper being prominent among those who considered that the lack of education of the Welsh people was the root cause of most of the problems, although the population was generally literate in Welsh because of the activities of Sunday Schools and the need to read the Bible. In July 1846, three commissioners, R. R. W. Lingen, Jellynger C. Symons and H. R. Vaughan Johnson, were appointed to inquire into the state of education in Wales; the Commissioners were all Anglicans, and hence unsympathetic to the Non-conformist majority in Wales, and were monoglot English-speakers.

The Commissioners presented their report to the Government on 1 July 1847 in three large blue-bound volumes. This report quickly became known as Brad y Llyfrau Gleision (The Treachery of the Blue Books) as, apart from documenting the state of education in Wales, the Commissioners were also free with their comments disparaging the language, Non-conformity, and the morals of the Welsh people in general. An immediate effect of the report was for a belief to take root in the minds of ordinary people that the only way for Welsh people to get on in the world was through the medium of English, and an inferiority complex developed about the Welsh language whose effects have not yet been completely eradicated. The historian Professor Kenneth O. Morgan referred to the significance of the report and its consequences as "the Glencoe and the Amritsar of Welsh history".

In the later 19th century virtually all teaching in the schools of Wales was in English, even in areas where the pupils barely understood English. Some schools used the Welsh Not, a piece of wood, often bearing the letters "WN", which was hung around the neck of any pupil caught speaking Welsh. The pupil could pass it on to any schoolmate heard speaking Welsh, with the pupil wearing it at the end of the day being given a beating. Towards the beginning of the 20th century this policy slowly began to change, partly owing to the efforts of Owen Morgan Edwards when he became chief inspector of schools for Wales in 1907.

The Aberystwyth Welsh School (Ysgol Gymraeg Aberystwyth) was founded in 1939 by Sir Ifan ap Owen Edwards, the son of O.M. Edwards as the first Welsh Primary School. The headteacher was Norah Isaac. Ysgol Gymraeg is still a very successful school and now there are Welsh language Primary Schools all over the country.

Welsh is now widely used in education. All Welsh universities teach some courses in Welsh (most notably the University of Wales, Bangor and the University of Wales, Aberystwyth) but are primarily English language.

Under the National Curriculum, school children in Wales must study Welsh up to the age of 16. According to the Welsh Language Board [5], over a quarter of children in Wales attend schools which teach predominantly through the medium of Welsh. The remainder study Welsh as a second language in English-medium schools. Specialist teachers of Welsh called Athrawon Bro support the teaching of Welsh in the National Curriculum.

Welsh in the economy

The economic benefits of the Welsh language are also increasingly being recognised, both by employers and by employees.

Throughout Wales more and more employers — in the public, private and voluntary sectors — in response to the growing expectations of their customers, are becoming aware of the benefits of using the language, such as:

• improving the quality of customer service
• attracting new customers
• increasing customer loyalty
• harnessing goodwill at relatively low cost
• gaining a marketing edge over competitors
• enhancing public relations efforts

With organisations in all sectors offering more and more bilingual services, they obviously need people with bilingual skills to deliver them.

And, in the workplace, the ability to speak or write in Welsh and in English is a valuable skill, just like computer or financial skills. The number of people with bilingual skills needed will of course vary from one organisation to the next, depending on its location what type of service it provides and how it deals with its customers.

The reality is that over the next decade in Wales, this situation will continue to develop, in response to customers' wishes and expectations. There will be jobs at all levels for which an ability to work bilingually will be desirable, if not essential.

This is one of the major factors which continues to drive the demand for Welsh-medium education and vocational training, as young people and their parents recognise the economic value of the Welsh language.

Welsh in warfare

Secure communications are often difficult to achieve in wartime. Cryptography can be used to protect messages, but this can be a time-consuming process and may not be feasible if the message is urgent. Instead, Navajo code talkers were used by the Americans during World War II. It has been rumoured that British forces used Welsh in a similar manner.

More recently, Welsh regiments serving in Bosnia used Welsh for emergency communications that needed to be secure.

Contemporary Welsh speakers

• Max Boyce, entertainer
• John Cale, musician
• Chris Cope, humourist
• Myrddin ap Dafydd, bard, publisher
• Jonathan Davies, sports pundit
• Gareth Edwards, rugby player
• Huw Edwards, BBC journalist
• Dafydd Elis Thomas, presiding officer, Welsh Assembly Government
• John Good, President of The Welsh League of Arizona (USA)
• Ray Gravell, broadcaster
• Ioan Gruffudd, actor
• Guto Harri, BBC journalist
• John Hartson, soccer international
• Emyr Humphreys, writer/poet
• Rhys Ifans, actor
• Dafydd Iwan, politician
• Geraint Jarman, poet, musician
• Katherine Jenkins, singer
• Barry John, rugby [[fly-half
• Aled Jones, Anglesey choirboy
• Gareth Jones, television broadcaster
• Glyn Jones, writer
• Glenys Kinnock, politician, academic
• Dewi Llwyd, journalist
• Sian Lloyd, television personality
• Cerys Matthews, singer/songwriter
• Alun Michael, politician
• Rhodri Morgan, First Minister of Wales
• Jan Morris, writer
• Daniel Mullins, Roman Catholic Bishop Emeritus of Menevia
• Paul Murphy, politician
• Roy Noble, broadcaster
• Sian Phillips, actress
• Huw Stephens, radio presenter
• Bryn Terfel, baritone opera singer
• Henry Thomas, American actor who taught himself Welsh (proficiency never evaluated)
• Emlyn Williams, actor/playwright
• Rowan Williams, current Archbishop of Canterbury
• All of the presenters on BBC Radio Cymru
• All of the members of the band Super Furry Animals, several of whose songs are in Welsh

See also

• Welsh Tract
• Welsh Bible
• List of Welsh principal areas by percentage Welsh language
• Languages in the United Kingdom
• Welsh Language Board
• List of Welsh people
• Association of Welsh Translators and Interpreters
• Honorable Society of Cymmrodorion
• Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

References

• ^ Modern Welsh: a comprehensive grammar, Gareth King, published by Routledge, ISBN 0-415-09269-8 p3 in that edition.
• ^ Cymraeg, Cymrâg, Cymrêg: cyflwyno'r tafodieithoedd, Beth Thomas and Peter Wynn Thomas, published by Gwasg Taf, ISBN 0-948469-14-5. Now out of print. An accompanying tape was also available.

External links

About the language

• History and status of the Welsh language
• Gwybodiadur: a Welsh informationary
• The Story of Welsh — BBC Wales
• The University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies
• The Blue Books of 1847 — National Library of Wales Digital Mirror.

Dictionaries

• Welsh–English Dictionary
• Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru: University of Wales Dictionary of the Welsh Language, a historical dictionary of Welsh (with a second edition in progress, including an embryonic on-line version)

Learning the language

• Learn Welsh from the BBC
• A Welsh Course by Mark Nodine
• Clwb malu cachu, a website for Welsh learners (lit: "bullshitter's club")
• Welsh for Adults, University of Bangor: lists Welsh class venues throughout North Wales.