Minority Language Survival : Obsolescence or Survival for Welsh in the Face of English Dominance ? 1

Cymraeg, Welsh, is one of the two surviving languages that formed the Brythonic branch of the Celtic family of languages. All of the four modern Celtic languages–Welsh, Breton (Brythonic), Irish Gaelic, and Scottish Gaelic (Goedelic)–are under threat of extinction. Centuries of political and social pressures from the English and French have contributed to their decline, both in status and usage (Dalby, 1998). Such pressure has led to the near-obliteration of Manx and Cornish. (Manx is a Goedelic language of which only a few hundred speakers remain, most of whom learned it as adults, although some claim to have learned it as a first language from their grandparents. Cornish is a Brythonic language that died out in the 18 century; however, it has since undergone a revivalist movement–Crystal, 1994). Due to such pressures, most native Welsh speakers (excluding infants) are by now Welsh-English bilinguals. However, although “the history of the Welsh speaking population in the 20 century is a history of decline” (Baker, 1985: 1), recent efforts towards reviving the language have resulted in a promising increase in the number of speakers at the dawn of the 21 century. Adults living in Wales have been encouraged to learn Welsh as a second language, with over 13,000 adults reported to have attended Welsh language classes in 1993 (Jones, 1998). There has also been an increase in bilingual education over the past century. The Education Act of 1988 ensured that Welsh was an obligatory subject in all secondary schools in Wales, and since 1996, Welsh has been compulsory in the primary schools (Davies, 1999). This has undoubtedly affected the success of the revitalization process. Welsh is currently spoken by approximately 600,000 speakers–21% of the population of Wales (2001 Census data). However, the future of the language remains uncertain. Although Welsh seems to be in the strongest position for survival of all the Celtic languages, in many areas Welsh is becoming less of a community language. Such is the impact of this decline that, for many people living in Wales, the imminent death of the language is a foregone conclusion. All the surviving Celtic languages–Welsh, Breton, Scottish Gaelic, and Irish Gaelic–have retained most of their Celtic characteristics, one of which is their relatively unique mutation system. When language death is underway, it is possible to assume that grammatical categories or syntactic structures that are present in the minority language but that are not present in the dominant language will be the most likely to undergo change or decay. The mutation system is one such system. However, in cases where language shift is underway–where “a new language is gradually replacing the original language of a community” (Dorian, 1981: 114) –the remaining speakers of the original language of the community often display differing abilities with the language; this is especially relevant within the adult population. Recently, Jones (1998) has suggested, from a comprehensive study of linguistic change in two sociolinguistically contrasting Welsh communities, that language obsolescence is underway in Welsh in Rhosllannerchrugog and Rhymni. A key piece of evidence for this death is observed differences in adults’ abilities with grammatical gender (and with other constructions) in Welsh at distinct ages. Older adults’ speech was found to retain the use of more consistency of forms and greater conformity to the expected norms than that of the younger speakers. However, these two communities studied by Jones are communities in which Welsh is spoken by a very small minority.