The Welsh Language
Welsh counts in twenties, bends its first letters like putty and was kept alive by a 1588 Bible. Today it is being taught back into a new generation.
Published
Quick Facts
- Welsh name
- Cymraeg
- Language family
- Brythonic Celtic, related to Cornish and Breton
- Earliest big poem
- Y Gododdin, attributed to Aneirin, about the 6th century
- Alphabet
- 29 letters, including ch, dd, ff, ng, ll, ph, rh and th
- Speakers in 2021
- About 538,000 people aged three and over, roughly 17.8 per cent of Wales
- Key milestone
- William Morgan's Welsh Bible, 1588
- TV channel
- S4C, launched in 1982
- Official target
- One million Welsh speakers by 2050
The word 'Wales' is an insult that stuck
Welsh is a descendant of Common Brittonic, the Celtic tongue spoken across much of Britain before English existed. As the Anglo-Saxons took over most of what became England, the Britons who kept their language in the west and north were called wealas, an Old English word for foreigners. That is where 'Wales' comes from. The Welsh called themselves Cymry, meaning fellow countrymen, and their country Cymru. The language is Cymraeg. Some of the earliest Welsh poetry is attributed to Aneirin, whose Y Gododdin mourns a doomed war-band. It was composed around the 6th century, though it survives in a manuscript from the 13th. The Cadfan Stone at Tywyn, now generally dated to the ninth century, carries one of the earliest surviving inscriptions in Welsh.
How a Bible saved a language
In 1536 the Act of Union made English the language of the courts and of anyone holding office in Wales. For ordinary people, though, church was the one place they still heard their own language written down. An Elizabethan act of 1563 ordered the Bible and prayer book to be translated into Welsh. In 1588 William Morgan, later Bishop of St Asaph, finished the job. His Bible fixed a dignified, shared written standard that Welsh speakers from Anglesey to Glamorgan could all read. The 19th century was harsher. The 1847 education inquiry, known in Wales as Brad y Llyfrau Gleision, the Treachery of the Blue Books, branded Welsh a barrier to progress. Some schools hung a wooden 'Welsh Not' round the neck of any child caught speaking Welsh. In 1901 about half the population spoke Welsh. By 1981 it was roughly one in five.
The lecture that launched a campaign
In 1962 Saunders Lewis gave a BBC radio lecture called Tynged yr Iaith, The Fate of the Language. He warned that Welsh could be dead by the early 21st century unless people took drastic action. Within months Cymdeithas yr Iaith, the Welsh Language Society, was formed. Its members painted over English-only road signs, refused to fill in English-only forms and filled courtrooms. The result was bilingual signs and official forms. The biggest prize was a Welsh-language television channel. When the government backed away from its promise, the Plaid Cymru leader Gwynfor Evans threatened a hunger strike in 1980. The government changed course, and S4C went on air in 1982. A Welsh Language Act followed in 1993, and in 2011 Welsh became officially recognised in Wales alongside English.
No yes, no no, and a first letter that shape-shifts
Welsh has no single word for 'yes' or 'no'. You answer by echoing the verb in the question, so 'Are you coming?' might get 'Ydw' or 'Nac ydw'. Then there are the mutations. The first letter of a word changes depending on what comes before it. Cymru becomes 'yng Nghymru' when you are in Wales. Cath, a cat, becomes 'ei gath' for his cat and 'ei chath' for her cat. Traditional counting works in twenties, so forty is deugain, literally two twenties. Schools now teach a simpler decimal system, but older speakers still use the old one for things like ages. W and y count as vowels, which is why cwm and crwth are perfectly good words. The language has lent English a few words. 'Cwtch' (a cuddle, or a cosy nook) is everyday talk in south Wales, and the corgi takes its name from a Welsh phrase usually explained as 'dwarf dog'. Today the growth is in the classroom. The first state Welsh-medium primary opened in Llanelli in 1947, and Welsh-medium schools now sit at the heart of the push towards a million speakers by 2050.
Milk, now and the Caernarfon accent
Welsh is not one voice. Broadly, north and south differ in vocabulary and grammar. Milk is generally llefrith in the north and llaeth in the south. 'Now' is rŵan in the north and nawr in the south. A boy is a hogyn in the north and a crwt or bachgen in the south, and 'hello, how are you?' is Shwmae in the south and something closer to Sut wyt ti in the north. The heartland is the north-west, with Gwynedd and Anglesey (Ynys Môn) among the strongest Welsh-speaking areas. Caernarfon has its own brash, fast-talking dialect, and a native of the town is a Cofi. The National Eisteddfod keeps the peace by alternating between north and south each August. Welsh is its language, and Welsh-speaking poets compete for the chair and the crown. In 1917 the chair went to Hedd Wyn, who had been killed at Passchendaele weeks earlier. The empty chair was draped in black.
A little Wales at the bottom of the world
In 1865 about 150 settlers sailed from Liverpool on the Mimosa to found Y Wladfa, a Welsh colony in Patagonia, Argentina. They wanted a place where Welsh could be the language of church, school and government. The colony survives around Trelew, Gaiman and Trevelin. Gaiman is famous for its Welsh tea rooms, where cakes and Welsh-speaking hosts are still part of the offer. Teachers from Wales now travel there to help keep the language going. Back home, the longest village name is Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch on Anglesey. It has 58 letters and is usually said to have been lengthened in the 1860s to attract visitors. Locals just say Llanfairpwll, or Llanfair PG.
Notable people
- William Morgan
- Aneirin
- Taliesin
- Saunders Lewis
- Gwynfor Evans
- Ifan ab Owen Edwards
- Hedd Wyn
- Dafydd ap Gwilym
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