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Welsh (Cymraeg or y Gymraeg, pronounced [kəmˈrɑːɨɡ], [ə ɡəmˈrɑːɨɡ]), is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in Wales (Cymru), in England by some along the Welsh border and in the Welsh immigrant colony in the Chubut Valley in Argentine Patagonia.
There are also speakers of Welsh throughout the world, most notably in the rest of Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Due to the increasing use of the English language the numbers of Welsh speakers had been declining for decades. However, following a number of measures, including the introduction of the Welsh Language Act 1993, Welsh has enjoyed a strong revival in recent years and has an equal status with English in the public sector in Wales. Of the 611,000 Welsh speakers in Wales, 62% claim to use Welsh daily, and 88% of those fluent in the language use it daily.Welsh Language Board.
See Welsh English for the English language as spoken in Wales.
Contents |
Bilingual road markings in Wales
The 2004 Welsh Language Use Survey shows 21.7% of the population of Wales are Welsh speakers. This is an increase from 20.5% in the 2001 census, and from 18.5% in 1991. The 2001 census also shows that about 25% of Welsh residents were born outside Wales. The number of Welsh speakers in the rest of Britain is unknown. In 1993, S4C, the Welsh-language TV channel published the results of a survey into the numbers of people who speak or understand 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 and border towns and villages in the Welsh Marches such as Oswestry.Summary of 1993 S4C survey
Historically, large numbers of Welsh people spoke only Welsh, but monoglot Welsh speakers are now virtually non-existent, at least above school age. Almost without exception, Welsh speakers in Wales also speak English (or Spanish in Chubut Province, Argentina, see Welsh settlement in Argentina). 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 and the social context, even within a single discourse (known in linguistics as code-switching).
Although Welsh is a minority language, support for the language grew during the second half of the 20th century, along with the rise of organisations such as the nationalist political party Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Language Society, Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg.
Welsh as a first language is largely concentrated in the less urban north and west of Wales, principally Gwynedd, Conwy, Denbighshire (Sir Ddinbych), Anglesey (Ynys Môn), Carmarthenshire (Sir Gaerfyrddin), north Pembrokeshire (Sir Benfro), Ceredigion, parts of west Glamorgan (Morgannwg), north-west and extreme south-west Powys, although first-language and other fluent speakers can be found throughout Wales.
Bilingual road sign in Cardiff.
Welsh is a living language, used in conversation by thousands and seen throughout Wales. The Welsh Language Act 1993 and the Government of Wales Act 1998 provide that the Welsh and English languages should be treated equally. Public bodies are required to prepare and implement a Welsh Language Scheme.
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. However, references to English destinations are still given in English only; for example, distance signs on the eastbound A55 refer to Chester but not Caer.
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, the vast majority of people in the main population centres of South Wales do not use the language in daily life.
Although official road signs throughout Wales are bilingual, the wording on money is English only (apart from the legend on Welsh pound coins: Pleidiol wyf i\'m gwlad). Although many shops employ bilingual signage, Welsh only very rarely appears on product packaging or instructions.
The UK government has ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in respect of 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 in Welsh is available for download.At the BBC website (Real Media). There is also a Welsh language radio station, BBC Radio Cymru, which was launched in 1977.
There is, however, no daily newspaper in Welsh, the only national newspaper Y Cymro, being published once a week, although a daily newspaper called Y Byd ("The World") was scheduled to be launched on 3 March 2008 but has been scrapped.
Since December 2001 the British Government has planned 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.
Welsh as a distinct language emerged in the 6th century from Brythonic, the common ancestor of Welsh, Cumbric (extinct), Breton, and Cornish.
Like most languages, there are identifiable periods within the history of Welsh, although the boundaries between these are often indistinct.
Welsh vocabulary draws mainly from original Brythonic words (ŵy, carreg), and loans from Latin (ffenest, gwin) and English (sicr, fideo). There are many Welsh words that are spelled the same as English words, but have different pronunciations and meanings.
Welsh is written in a version of the Latin alphabet traditionally consisting of 28 letters, of which eight are digraphs treated as single letters for collation:
The letter "j" is now often included in the alphabet, between "i" and "l", due to its use in several loanwords from English (especially the common surname Jones). The letters "k", "v", "x" and "z" are used in some technical terms, like kilogram, volt, xeroser and zero, but in all cases can be, and often are, replaced by Welsh letters: cilogram, folt, seroser and sero.Thomas, Peter Wynn (1996) Gramadeg y Gymraeg. Cardiff: University of Wales Press: 757.
The most common diacritic is the circumflex, which is used in some cases to mark a long vowel.
Welsh has the following consonant phonemes:
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | lateral | ||||||
| Nasal | (m̥) m | (n̥) n | (ŋ̊) ŋ | ||||
| Plosive | p b | t d | k g | ||||
| Affricate | (tʃ) (dʒ) | ||||||
| Fricative | f v | θ ð | s (z) | ɬ | ʃ | x | h |
| Trill | r̥ r | ||||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | ||||
Symbols in parentheses are either allophones, or found only in loanwords. The sound /z/ occurs only in unassimilated loanwords. The postalveolar affricates /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ occur mainly in loanwords, but also in some dialects as developments from /tj/ and /dj/; the voiceless nasals /m̥/, /n̥/, /ŋ̊/ occur only as a consequence of nasal mutation.
A chart plotting the vowel formants of a Welsh speaker from Bangor.
| Monophthongs | Front | Central | Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | iː | ɨː | uː |
| Near-close | ɪ | ɨ̞ | ʊ |
| Close mid | eː | ə(ː) | 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 (except a few monosyllables). In Southern dialects, schwa can be long or short. In Northern dialects, schwa is always short, because long vowels appear only in word-final syllables, a position where schwa never appears.
| Diphthongs | Second component | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| First component | front | central | back |
| close | ʊɨ | ɪu, ɨu | |
| mid | əi, ɔi | əɨ, ɔɨ | ɛu, əu |
| 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 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.:
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.
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.
The Welsh for "I like Rhodri" is Rydw i\'n hoffi Rhodri ("I am liking [of] Rhodri"), but "I like him" is Rydw i\'n ei hoffi — literally, "I am his liking him" —; "I like you" is Rydw i\'n dy hoffi di ("I am your liking you"), etc.
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), non-literary Welsh inclines very strongly towards the latter use. In the present tense, all verbs are used with the auxiliary bod (to be), so dw i\'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".
Mi or fe is often placed before inflected verbs to show that they are declarative. In the present and imperfect of the verb bod (to be), yr is used instead. Mi is mainly restricted to colloquial Northern Welsh, with fe predominating in the South and in the formal or literary register. Such marking of the declarative is, in any case, rather less common in higher registers.
The traditional counting system used by the Welsh language is vigesimal, which is to say it is based on twenties, as in Parisian French numbers 70 (soixante-dix, literally "sixty-ten") through 99 (quatre-vingts-dix-neuf, literally "four twenties nineteen").The counting system of Modern French is likely influenced by a Celtic vigesimal system. In Parisian French (the standard in France but not in Belgium, Québec, Switzerland, etc.) the Latin/Roman counting system rules zero through sixty-nine, at which point the Celtic pattern takes over and the language starts counting by scores, literally sixty-ten (70), sixty-eleven (71), sixty-twelve (72), sixty-thirteen (73), etc. "Eighty" is quatre-vingts (four twenties; cf. "fourscore"), followed by the equivalent of "four-twenties plus one" etc. through 99 (ninety is quatre-vingts-dix or literally "four-twenties ten"). Sociolinguistically the Celts probably took on a base-20 arithmetical system (counting by scores) by counting on both fingers and toes while the Romans (Latin speakers) counted solely on the digits of the hands. French-language counting outside of France generally levels to the base-10 decimal system throughout. Thus in Belgium, Québec, and Switzerland, 70, 80, and 90 are respectively septante, huitante or octante, and nonante; and 71 becomes septante-un etc. Welsh numbers from 11 through 14 are "x on ten", 16 through 19 are "x on fifteen" (though 18 is more usually "two nines"); numbers from 21 through 39 are "1–19 on twenty", 40 is "two twenties", 60 is "three twenties", etc.
There is also a decimal counting system, 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 hugain (fifteen – itself "five-ten" – on twenty).
While there is only one word for "one" (un), it triggers lenition on feminine nouns. There are separate 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.
Dialectal differences are very pronounced 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 they are in fact fairly minor.
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 moyn dishgled? would be more likely. An example of a pronunciation difference between Northern and Southern Welsh is the tendency in southern dialects to "lisp" the letter "s", e.g. mis (month), would tend to be pronounced [miːs] in the north, and [miːʃ] in the south. This normally occurs next to a high front vowel like /i/, although exceptions include the pronunciation of sut "how" as [ʃʊd] in the south (compared with northern [sɨt]). This is most likely the result of a change in the vowel quality.
Much more fine-grained classifications exist beyond north and south: the book Cymraeg, Cymrâg, Cymrêg: cyflwyno\'r tafodieithoedd,Thomas, B. and Thomas, P. W. Cymraeg, Cymrâg, Cymrêg: cyflwyno\'r tafodieithoedd, published by Gwasg Taf, ISBN 0-948469-14-5. Out of print about Welsh dialects was accompanied by a cassette containing recordings of fourteen different speakers demonstrating aspects of different dialects. The book refers to the earlier Linguistic Geography of WalesThomas, A. R. 1973 Linguistic Geography of Wales as describing six different regions which could be identified as having words specific to those regions. 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, but a survey in the 1970s showed that the language in Patagonia is consistent throughout the lower Chubut valley and in the Andes and is basically the northern Welsh dialect (which is a little surprising as the majority of settlers came from the south, but the northern pronunciation seems to have been preferred - one settler recounted in his memoirs how he was marked down at the eisteddfod as a child for using southern diction).
Modern Welsh can be written in two styles — Colloquial Welsh (Cymraeg llafar) or Literary Welsh (Cymraeg llenyddol). The grammar described on this page is that of Colloquial Welsh, which is used for speech and informal writing. Literary Welsh is closer to the form of Welsh used in the 1588 translation of the Bible and is found in official documents and other formal registers, including much literature. As a standardised form, literary Welsh shows little if any of the dialectal variation found in colloquial Welsh. Some differences include:
| Literary Welsh | Colloquial Welsh |
|---|---|
| Can omit subject pronouns (pro-drop) | Subject pronouns rarely omitted |
| Extensive use of simple verb forms | Extensive use of periphrastic verb forms |
| No distinction between simple present and future (e.g. gwelaf "I see"/"I shall see") | Simple form expresses only future (e.g. gwela i "I\'ll see") |
| Subjunctive verb forms | Subjunctive in fixed idioms |
| 3rd.pl ending –nt | 3rd.pl ending –n |
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. In addition, more archaic pronouns and forms of mutation may be observed in Literary Welsh.
| English | Literary Welsh | Colloquial Welsh |
|---|---|---|
| I get up early every day. | Codaf yn gynnar bob dydd. | Dw i\'n codi\'n gynnar bob dydd. |
| I\'ll get up early tomorrow. | Codaf yn gynnar yfory. | Coda i\'n gynnar fory/wna i godi\'n gynnar fory. |
| He had not stood there long. | Ni safasaiKlingebiel, Kathryn. 234 Welsh Verbs: Standard Literary Forms. Ford & Bailie, 223. ISBN 0-926689-04-5. yno\'n hir. | Doedd o ddim wedi sefyll yno\'n hir. |
| They\'ll sleep only when there\'s a need. | Ni chysgant ond pan fo angen. | Byddan nhw ddim ond yn cysgu pan fydd angen. |
In fact, the differences 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, observes that "The difference between these two is much greater than between the virtually identical colloquial and literary forms of English" and goes so far as to state "that there are good grounds for regarding them as separate languages". He 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.King, G. Modern Welsh: a comprehensive grammar, published by Routledge, ISBN 0-415-09269-8 p3 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? A complete grammar of Literary Welsh can be found in A Grammar of Welsh (1980) by Stephen J. Williams.
Most Welsh writing, especially that found on the Internet or in magazines, is closer to the colloquial form. This is also becoming more common in artistic literature.
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 was 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. Ysgol Glan Clwyd was established in Rhyl in 1955 as the first Welsh language school to teach to a secondary level.
Welsh is now widely used in education. All Welsh universities teach some courses in Welsh (most notably Bangor University and Aberystwyth University) but are primarily English language. Under the National Curriculum, schoolchildren in Wales must study Welsh up to the age of 16. Over a quarter of children in Wales attend schools which teach predominantly through the medium of Welsh.Figures for 2002-03: Welsh medium or bilingual provision, Welsh Language Board. 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 is also taught in adult education classes. The ability to speak Welsh or to have Welsh as a qualification is essential or desirable for certain career choices in Wales, such as teaching or customer service.
Welsh has a substantial presence on the Internet, ranging from formal lists of terminology in a variety of fieldsThe Welsh National Database of Standardised Terminology was released in March 2006. to Welsh language interfaces for parts of Microsoft Windows XP, a variety of Linux distributions, and some online services to blogs kept in Welsh.Selections of Welsh-language blogs are listed on the sites Y Rhithfro and Blogiadur.
There is a campaign for a new .cym TLD for Welsh-language websites, and websites that are of Welsh interest. A petition has been set up to gather support for the domain.Petition for .cym TLD.
Secure communications are often difficult to achieve in wartime. Cryptography can be used to protect messages, but codes can be broken. Therefore, little-known languages are sometimes encoded, so that even if the code is broken, the message is still in a language few people know. For example, Navajo code talkers were used by the United States military during World War II. Similarly, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, a Welsh regiment serving in Bosnia, used Welsh for emergency communications that needed to be secure.Heath, Tony. "Welsh speak up for their ancient tongue", The Independent, 1996-08-26, pp. 6.
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| Welsh linguistics | |
|---|---|
| History of the language · Old Welsh · Middle Welsh · Modern Welsh |  |
| Morphology · Numerals · Alphabet | |
| Celtic languages | |
|---|---|
| Continental Celtic† | Celtiberian† · Galatian† · Gaulish† · Lepontic† · Noric† |
| Insular Celtic | Brythonic (British/Brittonic): Breton · British† · Cornish · Cumbric† · Pictish† · Welsh Goidelic (Gaelic): Irish · Manx · Scottish Gaelic |
| Mixed languages | Bungee† · Shelta |
| † denotes an extinct language. | |
| Celtic nations and their culture | ||
|---|---|---|
| Nations |
Brittany (Breizh) · Cornwall (Kernow) · Wales (Cymru) · Ireland (Éire) · Isle of Man (Mannin) · Scotland (Alba) |
|
| Languages |
Brythonic:
Breton ·
Cornish ·
Welsh | |
| Culture |
Brittany · Cornwall · Ireland · Isle of Man · Scotland · Wales | |
| Music |
Brittany · Cornwall · Ireland · Isle of Man · Scotland · Wales | |
| Sport |
Cammag · Cornish hurling · Cornish wrestling · Curling · Gaelic football · Gaelic handball · Golf · Gouren · Rounders · Highland games · Hurling · Road bowls · Shinty | |
| Peoples | Breton · Cornish · Irish · Irish Traveller · Manx · Scottish · Ulster-Scots · Welsh | |
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