Welsh

## Overview

**Welsh** (*Cymraeg* or *y Gymraeg*) is a member of the Brittonic branch of the Celtic languages. It is spoken natively in Wales, by some in England, and in *Y Wladfa* (the Welsh colony in Chubut Province, Argentina). Historically, it has also been known in English as "Cambrian", "Cambric" and "Cymric".

19.0 per cent of usual residents in Wales aged three and over reported that they could speak Welsh in the United Kingdom Census 2011. According to the 2001 Census, 20.8 per cent of the population aged 3+ reported that they could speak Welsh. The Censuses suggested that there was a decrease in the number of Welsh speakers in Wales from 2001 to 2011 – from approximately 582,000 to 562,000 respectively. However, according to the Welsh Language Use Survey 2013–15, 24 per cent of people aged three and over living in Wales were able to speak Welsh, demonstrating a possible increase in the prevalence of the Welsh language since the last Census in 2011.

The Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011 gave the Welsh language official status in Wales, making it the only language that is *de jure* official in any part of the United Kingdom, with English being *de facto* official. The Welsh language, along with English, is also a *de jure* official language of the National Assembly for Wales.

## History

Welsh evolved from Common Brittonic, the Celtic language spoken by the ancient Celtic Britons. Classified as Insular Celtic, the British language probably arrived in Britain during the Bronze Age or Iron Age and was probably spoken throughout the island south of the Firth of Forth. During the Early Middle Ages the British language began to fragment due to increased dialect differentiation, thus evolving into Welsh and the other Brittonic languages. It is not clear when Welsh became distinct.

Kenneth H. Jackson suggested that the evolution in syllabic structure and sound pattern was complete by around 550, and labelled the period between then and about 800 "Primitive Welsh". This Primitive Welsh may have been spoken in both Wales and the Hen Ogledd ("Old North") – the Brittonic-speaking areas of what is now northern Englandand southern Scotland – and therefore may have been the ancestor of Cumbric as well as Welsh. Jackson, however, believed that the two varieties were already distinct by that time. The earliest Welsh poetry – that attributed to the *Cynfeirdd* or "Early Poets" – is generally considered to date to the Primitive Welsh period. However, much of this poetry was supposedly composed in the Hen Ogledd, raising further questions about the dating of the material and language in which it was originally composed. This discretion stems from the fact that Cumbric was widely believed to have been the language used in Hen Ogledd. An 8th century inscription in Tywyn shows the language already dropping inflectionsin the declension of nouns.

Janet Davies proposed that the origins of Welsh language were much less definite; in *The Welsh Language: A History*, she proposes that Welsh may have been around even earlier than 600 AD. This is evidenced by the dropping of final syllables from Brittonic: *\*bardos* "poet" became *bardd*, and *\*abona* "river" became *afon*.[20] Though both Davies and Jackson cite minor changes in syllable structure and sounds as evidence for the creation of Old Welsh, Davies suggests it may be more appropriate to refer to this derivative language as Lingua Brittanica rather than characterizing it as a new language altogether.

## Geographic Distribution

Welsh has been spoken continuously in Wales throughout recorded history, but by 1911 it had become a minority language, spoken by 43.5 per cent of the population. While this decline continued over the following decades, the language did not die out. By the start of the 21st century, numbers began to increase once more, at least partly as a result of the increase in Welsh medium education.

The 2004 Welsh Language Use Survey showed that 21.7 per cent of the population of Wales spoke Welsh, compared with 20.8 per cent in the 2001 Census, and 18.5 per cent in 1991 Census. The 2011 Census, however, showed a slight decline to 562,000, or 19 per cent of the population. The census also showed a "big drop" in the number of speakers in the Welsh-speaking heartlands, with the number dropping to under 50 per cent in Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire for the first time. However, according to the Welsh Language Use Survey in 2013–15, 24 per cent of people aged three and over were able to speak Welsh.

Historically, large numbers of Welsh people spoke only Welsh. Over the course of the 20th century this monolingual population "all but disappeared", but a small percentage remained at the time of the 1981 census. Most Welsh-speaking people in Wales also speak English (while in Chubut Province, Argentina, most speakers can speak Spanish). However, many Welsh-speaking people are more comfortable expressing themselves in Welsh than in English. A speaker's choice of language can vary according to the subject domain and the social context, even within a single discourse (known in linguistics as code-switching).

Welsh speakers are largely concentrated in the north and west of Wales, principally Gwynedd, Conwy, Denbighshire (*Sir Ddinbych*), Anglesey (*Ynys Môn*), Carmarthenshire (*Sir Gâr*), north Pembrokeshire (*Sir Benfro*), Ceredigion, parts of Glamorgan (*Morgannwg*), and north-west and extreme south-west Powys. However, first-language and other fluent speakers can be found throughout Wales.

### Outside of Wales

he number of Welsh-speaking people in the rest of Britain has not yet been counted for statistical purposes. In 1993, the Welsh-language television channel S4C published the results of a survey into the numbers of people who spoke or understood Welsh, which estimated that there were around 133,000 Welsh-speaking people living in England, about 50,000 of them in the Greater London area. The Welsh Language Board, on the basis of an analysis of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Longitudinal Study, estimated there were 110,000 Welsh-speaking people in England, and another thousand in Scotland and Northern Ireland. In the 2011 Census, 8,248 people in England gave Welsh in answer to the question "What is your main language?" The ONS subsequently published a census glossary of terms to support the release of results from the census, including their definition of "main language" as referring to "first or preferred language" (though that wording was not in the census questionnaire itself). The wards in England with the most people giving Welsh as their main language were the Liverpool wards: Central and Greenbank, and Oswestry South. In terms of the regions of England, North West England (1,945), London (1,310) and the West Midlands (1,265) had the highest number of people noting Welsh as their main language.

The American Community Survey 2009–2013 noted that 2,235 people aged 5 years and over in the United States spoke Welsh at home. The highest number of those (255) lived in Florida.

## Welsh excerpt from Wikipedia article "Cymraeg"

Mae'r Gymraeg wedi bod yn elfen flaenllaw yn yr ymwybyddiaeth o'r hunaniaeth Gymreig. Mae'r ymwybyddiaeth hon yn treiddio gwaith llenorion Cymru, yn Gymraeg ac yn Saesneg. Efallai mai'r man amlycaf y crybwyllir y Gymraeg yw yn yr anthem genedlaethol 'Hen Wlad fy Nhadau': 'a bydded i'r heniaith barhau.' Mae'r Gymraeg, Cymreictod a cholli iaith yn thema i nifer o weithiau llenyddol. Ymhlith y mwyaf amlwg o'r rhain mae nofel Islwyn Ffowc Elis Wythnos yng Nghymru Fydd, a cherddi Gerallt Lloyd Owen gan gynnwys 'Etifeddiaeth', cerdd Gwyneth Lewis *Y Llofrudd Iaith*, cerddi Jac Glan-y-gors 'Dic Siôn Dafydd', a cherddi Waldo Williams 'Yr Heniaith' a 'Cymru a Chymraeg'. Dylid hefyd grybwyll cerdd arall gan Waldo Williams, 'Cofio', sy'n alarnad i ieithoedd a phobloedd golledig y ddaear gyfan.

Yn ogystal â cherddi moliant i'r Gymraeg neu weithiau yn galaru amdani neu'n ymgyrchu trosti, ceir hefyd gweithiau yn mynegi'r profiad o fod yn Gymro Cymraeg. Mae'r profiad hwn yn annatod glwm wrth ddylanwad cenedligrwydd, cenedlaetholdeb, galar, y cymhlyg israddoldeb, rhamant y gorffennol, gwawd y Sais, yr ymgecru ymysg y Cymry, y perthyn i draddodiad hir a gwerthfawr, a'r perthyn i fro.

Ceir ymateb cymhleth i'r Gymraeg a'r ymwybyddiaeth o Gymreictod hefyd yng ngweithiau rhai llenorion Cymreig yn ysgrifennu yn Saesneg yn enwedig o'r 1930au ymlaen. Yn eu plith mae gweithiau Caradoc Evans, Cymro Cymraeg, megis *My People*, gweithiau R. S. Thomas a ddysgodd Gymraeg (megis 'Reservoirs' yn ei *Collected Poems 1945-1990*), a Gwyn Thomas, yn Gymro di-Gymraeg o'r union genhedlaeth na fagwyd yn Gymry Cymraeg. Rhoddwyd mynegiant am y tro cyntaf i ymdeimlad o Gymreictod di-Gymraeg gan rai o'r llenorion hyn. Ffenomenon yn perthyn i Gymru'r 20g yw'r diwylliant Cymreig di-Gymraeg a dyfodd yn sgil y mewnlifiad mawr i'r cymoedd diwydiannol yn ystod y ddau ddegawd cyntaf o'r ganrif. Diddorol sylwi bod T. Llew Jones, a hanai o'r un ardal â Caradoc Evans, wedi galw ei hunangofiant o fwriad yn *Fy Mhobol I*; ynddo mae'n trafod Caradoc Evans, yn ymateb i ymateb Evans i'r Gymraeg fel petai.

Er mai digon gelyniaethus oedd rhai o'r llenorion Cymraeg a Saesneg ar ddechrau'r 20g, erbyn diwedd y ganrif cymodi yn hytrach nag ymgecru oedd fwyaf amlwg. Llwyddwyd i gyhoeddi casgliad o farddoniaeth yn *The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse in English* ym 1977 a gynhwysai gerddi Saesneg a cherddi a gyfieithwyd o'r Gymraeg mewn un gyfrol. Ym 1986 cyhoeddwyd *Cydymaith i Lenyddiaeth Cymru* ar y cyd â *The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales*. Erbyn hyn ceir nifer o gyfrolau a gyhoeddir yn Saesneg a Chymraeg ar y cyd, megis llyfrau yn adrodd hanes bro neu'n dathlu digwyddiad hanesyddol.