The Welsh Language

Wales is a country in Great Britain which borders England and is just across the Irish Sea from Ireland. It has a population of about 3 million, the majority of whom live in the south. Cardiff is the capital city and has a population of around 317,500 people.

Welsh is spoken more in some regions than in others. This might be due to their proximity to the border between the two countries (further into Wales more people spoke Welsh only) or perhaps whether, historically, the people were happy to be part of England or not.

England conquered Wales in the 13th Century and since then there have been many conflicts between the two countries and some people still do not wish to be part of Britain but to be an independent country in their own right. When Wales became part of Britain the Welsh language was scorned upon but now they have lots of their own laws and the National Assembly for Wales was established in 1999. Both Welsh and English are official languages of equal status.

Welsh is written in a version of the Latin alphabet consisting of 28 letters, of which eight are made up of two letters joined together and treated as single letters

a, b, c, ch, d, dd, e, f, ff, g, ng, h, i, l, ll, m, n, o, p, ph, r, rh, s, t, th, u, w, y

The letter "k" was in common use until the sixteenth century, but was dropped when the New Testament in Welsh was published. This was because, according to William Salesbury, the Welsh printers did not have enough letter K’s to be able to print all that were required. This was not a popular decision.

a, e, i, o, u, w & y are all considered to be vowels in Welsh.

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Welsh is a Celtic language and therefore very similar to Irish and Scottish.

Around 20% of the population of Wales speaks Welsh. 133,000 speak it in England and another 25,000 in Argentina.

The numbers being able to understand and speak Welsh did decline due to the predominance of English but since the Welsh Language Act 1993 the numbers are increasing again. In 2000 Welsh became a compulsory subject in schools in Wales until the age of 16. This has been a major reason for the increase in the language usage although the majority of the population in the main centres do not speak it on a daily basis.

The creation of S4C, the Welsh language TV channel, in 1982, and the radio station, BBC Radio Cymru, in 1977, have both helped to keep the usage increasing but there is no daily newspaper written in Welsh.

The heir apparent of the reigning British monarch is traditionally bestowed the title of “Prince of Wales”. Prince Charles is the current Prince of Wales.

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