Welsh Language

Welsh language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
See Welsh English, known as "Wenglish", for the English language as spoken in Wales. ... of the Welsh language. Welsh as a distinct language emerged in the ...
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Welsh language, alphabet and pronunciation
Welsh is a Celtic language spoken as a community language in Wales (Cymru) by ... There are a number of Welsh language theatre groups, and regular eisteddfodau or ...
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{{Infobox Language|name=Welsh|nativename=Cymraeg|familycolor=Indo-European|pronunciation=|states=United Kingdom, Argentina, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, [Chubut Province|speakers=750,000+:
— Wales: 611,000http://www.bwrdd-yr-iaith.org.uk/cynnwys.php?pID=109&nID=2122&langID=2
— England: 133,000http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/archives/welsh-l/welsh-l/1993/Mar/More-Welsh-Speakers
— Chubut Province, Argentina: 25,000
— Canada: 3,160 Ethnologue.
— United States: 2,655
— New Zealand: 1,155 Cultural Table, New Zealand government (XLS).
— Australia (Western Australia): 1,060 Western Australia.|fam2=Celtic languages|fam3=Insular Celtic languages|fam4=Brythonic languages|nation=Wales (de facto)] (Welsh alphabet)|map=|iso1=cy|iso2b=wel|iso2t=cym|iso3=cym-->

Welsh ( or , , ), is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales (Cymru), in England by some along the Welsh border and in the Welsh settlement in Argentina in the Chubut Valley in Argentina 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. It competes with Breton language (a close relative spoken in France) as the most-spoken Celtic language. 62% of the 611,000 Welsh speakers in Wales claim to use Welsh daily, and 88% of the ones fluent in the language use it daily. Welsh Language Board.

See Welsh English for the English language as spoken in Wales.

Status

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 United Kingdom Census 2001, 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 language in Chubut Province, 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 Welsh nationalism 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 (county borough), Denbighshire (), Anglesey (), Carmarthenshire (), north Pembrokeshire (), Ceredigion, parts of west Glamorgan (), north-west and extreme south-west Powys, although first-language and other fluent speakers can be found throughout Wales.

.

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. 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.

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, currently 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") is scheduled to be launched on 3 March 2008.

Since December 2001 the British Government has planned to ensure that all immigrants know English language. 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.

History {|border="0" align="right" margin="1" cellpadding="5" bgcolor="#ffffd9" style="margin-left:10px"|bgcolor="#ffffd9"|ImageSize = width:240 height:900PlotArea = right:40 top:10 left:40 bottom:10DateFormat = yyyyTimeAxis = orientation:vertical order:reversePeriod = from:500 till:2010AlignBars = earlyScaleMajor = unit:year increment:200 start:500Colors =id:canvas value:rgb(1,1,0.85) BackgroundColors = canvas:canvasPlotData =width:15 color:blue bar:test from:500 till:800 shift:(10,0) text:Early Welsh PlotData =width:15 color:black bar:test from:800 till:1050 shift:(10,0) text:[Old Welsh PlotData =width:15 color:white bar:test from:1050 till:1250 shift:(10,0) text:[Middle Welsh language PlotData =width:15 color:red bar:test from:1250 till:1588 shift:(10,0) text:Early Modern Welsh PlotData =width:15 color:green bar:test from:1588 till:2006 shift:(10,0) text:Late Modern Welsh PlotData =bar:test at:1588 mark:(line,white) at:1588 shift:(10,0) text:1588 William Morgan's~[Welsh Bible published bar:test at:1993 mark:(line,white) at:1980 shift:(10,0) text:[Welsh Language Act 1993 bar:test at:2001 mark:(line,white) at:2007 shift:(10,0) text:2001 Number of speakers increase~in the national Census |}Like most languages, there are identifiable periods within the history of Welsh, although the boundaries between these are often indistinct.

Old Welsh The earliest extant sources of a language identifiable as Welsh go back to about the 6th century, and the language of this period is known as Early Welsh. Very little of this language remains. The next main period, somewhat better attested, is Old Welsh (, 9th century to 11th century centuries); poetry from both Wales and Scotland has been preserved in this form of the language. As Anglo-Saxons and Gaels colonisation of Great Britain proceeded, the Brythonic speakers in Wales were split off from those in northern England, speaking Cumbrian language, and those in the south-west, speaking what would become Cornish language, and so the languages diverged. Both Canu Aneirin and Canu Taliesin were in this era.

Middle Welsh Middle Welsh language (or ) is the label attached to the Welsh of the 12th century to 14th century centuries, of which much more remains than for any earlier period. This is the language of nearly all surviving early manuscripts of the Mabinogion, although the tales themselves are certainly much older. It is also the language of the existing Welsh law manuscripts. Middle Welsh is reasonably intelligible, albeit with some work, to a modern-day Welsh speaker.

The famous cleric Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales) tells a story of King Henry II of England. During one of the kings many raids in the 12th century, Henry asked an old man of Pencader, Carmarthenshire, whether he thought the Welsh language had any chance.

{{quote |Never will it be destroyed by the wrath of man, unless the wrath of God be added, nor do I think that any other nation than this of Wales, or any other tongue, whatever may hereafter come to pass, shall on the day of the great reckoning before the Most High Judge, answer for this corner of the Earth. BBC.-->

Modern Welsh Early Modern Welsh Modern Welsh can be divided into two periods. The first, Early Modern Welsh ran from the early 15th century to roughly the end of the 16th century and was the language used by Dafydd ap Gwilym.

Late Modern Welsh Late Modern Welsh began with the publication of William Morgan (Bible translator)'s Welsh Bible in 1588. Like its English counterpart, the King James Version of the Bible, this proved to have a strong stabilising effect on the language, and indeed the language today still bears the same Late Modern label as Morgan's language. Of course, many minor changes have occurred since then.

19th century The language enjoyed a further boost in the 19th century, with the publication of some of the first complete and concise Welsh dictionary. Early work by Welsh lexicography pioneers such as Daniel Silvan Evans ensured that the language was documented as accurately as possible. Modern dictionaries such as the (the University of Wales Dictionary), are direct descendants of these dictionaries.

The influx of English workers during the Industrial Revolution in Wales from about 1800 led to a substantial dilution of the Welsh-speaking population of Wales. English migrants seldom learnt Welsh and their Welsh colleagues tended to speak English in mixed Welsh–English contexts. So bilingualism became almost universal. The legal status of Welsh was inferior to that of English, and so English gradually came to prevail, except in the most rural areas, particularly in north west and mid Wales. An important exception, however, was in the non-conformist churches, which were strongly associated with the Welsh language.

20th and 21st centuries By the twentieth century, the numbers of Welsh speakers were shrinking at a rate which suggested that it would be extinct within a few generations. The 10-yearly census first started to ask language questions in 1891, by which time 54% of the population still spoke Welsh. The percentage fell with every subsequent census, until reaching an all-time low in 1981 (19%). In 1991 the position was stable (19% as in 1981) and in the most recent census, as of 2001, it has risen to 21% able to speak Welsh. The United Kingdom Census 2001 also recorded that 20% could read Welsh, 18% could write Welsh, and 24% could understand spoken Welsh. Furthermore, the highest proportion of Welsh speakers was among young people, which bodes well for the future of Welsh. In 2001, 39% of children aged 10 to 15 were able to speak, read and write Welsh (many of them having learned it in school), compared with 25% of 16 to 19 year olds. However, the percentage of Welsh speakers in areas where Welsh is spoken by the majority is still in decline.

It seems that the rise of Welsh nationalism rallied supporters of the language, and the establishment of Welsh television and radio found a mass audience which was encouraged in the retention of its Welsh. Perhaps most important of all, at the end of the twentieth century it became compulsory for all school children to learn Welsh up to age 16, and this both reinforced the language in Welsh-speaking areas and reintroduced at least an elementary knowledge of it in areas which had become more or less wholly Anglophone. The decline in the percentage of people in Wales who can speak Welsh has now been halted, and there are even signs of a modest recovery. However, although Welsh is the daily language in many parts of Wales, English is almost universally understood.

Orthography Welsh is written in a version of the Latin alphabet traditionally consisting of 28 letters, of which eight are digraph (orthography)s treated as single letters for collation:

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 "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, Xerosere 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 vowel length.

Grammar Phonology Consonants Welsh has the following consonant phonemes:{]! rowspan=2|dental consonant! colspan=2|alveolar consonant!rowspan=2| palatal consonant!rowspan=2| velar consonant!rowspan=2| glottal consonant|-!plain!lateral consonant|-! nasal consonant| align=center | | | align=center | | | | align=center | | |-! plosive consonant| align=center | | | align=center | | | | align=center | | |-! affricate consonant| | | | | align=center | | | |-! fricative consonant| align=center | | align=center | | align=center | | align=center | | align=center | | align=center | | align=center | |-! Trill consonant| | | align=center | | | | | |-! Approximants, or found only in [loanwords. The sound occurs only in unassimilated loanwords. The postalveolar affricates and occur mainly in loanwords, but also in some dialects as developments from and ; the voiceless consonant nasal consonant , , occur only as a consequence of Welsh morphology#Initial consonant mutation.

Vowels s of a Welsh speaker from Bangor, Wales.{|class="wikitable"! Monophthongs! Front vowel! Central vowel! Back vowel|-| Close vowel| align=center | | align=center | | align=center | |-| Near-close vowel| align=center | | align=center | | align=center | |-| Close mid vowel| align=center | | rowspan=2 align=center | | align=center | |-| Open mid vowel| align=center | | align=center | |-| Open vowel| align=center | | | align=center | |}

The vowels and occur only in Northern dialects; in Southern dialects they are replaced by and 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 does not occur in the final syllable of words (except a few monosyllables).

{]s || colspan=3 | Second component|-! First component || front || central || back|-! close| | align=center | | align=center | |-! mid| align=center | | align=center | | align=center | |-! open| align=center | | align=center | | align=center | |}

The diphthongs containing occur only in Northern dialects; in Southern dialects is replaced by , are merged with , and are merged with .

Stress Stress (linguistics) in polysyllabic words occurs most commonly on the wikt: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.: — an article or essay — writing — a secretary — a female secretary

Note also how adding a syllable to to form 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.

The connection between the Welsh word and the Latin language "I write", from which it is derived, is fairly clear, taking Historical linguistics into account.

Morphology Welsh morphology (linguistics) 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 "Inflected preposition" (prepositions that fuse with the personal pronouns that are their object (grammar)). Welsh nouns belong to one of two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine, but are not inflected for grammatical case. Welsh has a variety of different endings to indicate the plural, and two endings to indicate the grammatical number of some nouns. In spoken Welsh, grammatical conjugation 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.

Other features of Welsh grammar Possessives as object pronouns The Welsh for "I like Rhodri" is ("I am liking Rhodri"), but "I like him" is — literally, "I am his liking him" —; "I like you" is ("I am your liking you"), etc.

Significant use of auxiliary verbs 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 (to be), so is literally "I am going", but also means simply "I go". In the past tense and future tense tenses, there are inflected language 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 (, loosely equal to the infinitive in English) together with the inflected form of (to do), so "I went" can be or and "I will go" can be or . There is also a future form using the auxiliary , giving (perhaps best translated as "I will be going") and an imperfect tense (a continuous/habitual past tense) also using , with meaning "I used to go/I was going".

Affirmative markers or is often placed before inflected verbs to show that they are declarative. In the present and imperfect of the verb (to be), 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.

Counting system The traditional counting system used by the Welsh language is vigesimal, i.e. based on twenties, as in French language numbers 80-99, where numbers from 11–14 are "x on ten", 16–19 are "x on fifteen" (though 18 is more usually "two nines"); numbers from 21–39 are "1–19 on twenty", 40 is "two twenties", 60 is "three twenties", etc.

There is also a decimal counting system, favoured by younger people, 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 (three ten five) while in vigesimal it is (fifteen – itself "five-ten" – on twenty).

One should note that while there is only one word for "one" () there are masculine and feminine forms of the numbers "two" ( and ), "three" ( and ) and "four" ( and ), which must agree with the grammatical gender of the objects being counted, though this rule is less strictly observed with the decimal counting system.

Dialects 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 and based on the word for North, , 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 , while in the south the question 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. (month), would tend to be pronounced in the north, and in the south. This normally occurs next to a high front vowel like /i/, although exceptions include the pronunciation of "how" as in the south (compared with northern ). This is most likely the result of a change in the Vowel#articulation.

Much more fine-grained classifications exist beyond north and south: the book ,Thomas, B. and Thomas, P. W. , 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 language 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).

Registers 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 Register (linguistics), including much literature. As a standardised form, literary Welsh shows little if any of the dialectal variation found in colloquial Welsh. Some differences include:

{| class="wikitable"|-! Literary Welsh! Colloquial Welsh|-| Can omit subject pronouns (Pro-drop language)| 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 language loanwords for native Welsh words. In addition, more archaic pronouns and forms of mutation may be observed in Literary Welsh.

Examples of sentences in literary and colloquial Welsh {| class="wikitable"|-! 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 safasai 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 Bible of the Bible, amongst other things (although the — 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 complete grammar of Literary Welsh can be found in A Grammar of Welsh (1980) by Stephen J. Williams.

Currently, 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.

Welsh in education The decade around 1840 was a period of great social upheaval in Wales, manifested in the Chartism 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 Toll roads 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 (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 Massacre of Glencoe and the Amritsar massacre 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 () 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. 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, Education 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 support the teaching of Welsh in the National Curriculum. Welsh is also taught in adult education classes.

Welsh in information technology 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 proposed .cym Top-Level_Domain for Welsh-language websites, and websites that are of Welsh interest. A petition has been set up to push the domain. Petition for .cym TLD.

Welsh in warfare 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 language code talkers were used by the Military of the United States during World War II. Similarly, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, a Welsh regiment serving in Bosnia and Herzegovina, used Welsh for emergency communications that needed to be secure.

Welsh in popular culture

In the summer of 2006, List of Big Brother 2006 housemates (UK)#Glyn and List of Big Brother 2006 housemates (UK)#Imogen entered the Big Brother (UK). These were fluent Welsh speakers and regularly spoke to each other in the Welsh language.

In Boom Town (Doctor Who), a 2005 episode of the British Broadcasting Corporation science fiction programme Doctor Who, a nuclear power plant project in Cardiff is code-named Blaidd Drwg — Welsh for "Bad Wolf," a Bad Wolf references in Doctor Who through the show's first series.

In Henry IV, part 1, Shakespeare has Owen Glendower (Welsh: Owain Glyndŵr), the Lady Mortimer and some Welsh women all speaking Welsh on stage. The play was written in the seventeenth century and set around 1400.

In an episode of "Da Ali G Show", Ali G, a character played by Sacha Baron Cohen goes to Wales and is taught Welsh by a Welsh-speaker.

In the band Bullet For My Valentine, a popular metalcore band from Wales, drummer Michael 'Moose' Thomas commonly speaks the Welsh language. He speaks English with a heavy accent.

See also

Welsh Tract

Welsh Bible

List of Welsh principal areas by percentage Welsh language

Languages in the United Kingdom

Welsh Language Board

List of Welsh people

Welsh literature

List of Welsh language authors

List of Welsh language poets (6th century to c.1600)

Association of Welsh Translators and Interpreters

Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

Notes References

J.W.Aitchison and H.Carter. Language,Economy and Society. The changing fortunes of the Welsh Language in the Twentieth Century. Cardiff. University of Wales Press. 2000.

J.W.Aitchison and H.Carter. Spreading the Word. The Welsh Language 2001. Y Lolfa. 2004

External links About the language

History and status of the Welsh language

Gwybodiadur: a Welsh informationary

The Story of Welsh: programme details for series from BBC Wales

The University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies

The Blue Books of 1847 — National Library of Wales Digital Mirror.

A Taste of Welsh Verse

Welsh Language Act website

Gwefan Deddf Iaith Newydd

Welsh Scrabble available (BBC News link)

Information on pronunciation.

Speech by North Wales Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom to Cymuned, 14 April 2007.

Guardian Unlimited: Llook who's talking — article on the place of Welsh in British culture.

Last of the Welsh Monoglots — article on the last Welsh monoglot speakers from Rhiw in North-Wales in the late 1960s.

Dictionaries

Welsh–English & English-Welsh Dictionary from the University of Wales, Lampeter

: University of Wales Dictionary of the Welsh Language, a historical dictionary of Welsh (with a second edition in progress, including an embryonic on-line version)

Learning the language

BBC Learn Welsh

A Welsh Course by Mark Nodine

Clwb malu cachu, a website for Welsh learners

Learn Welsh with S4C

E-Wlpan, Swansea University

University of Wales, Bangor - a list of Welsh class venues throughout North West Wales

Learncymraeg.org

BBC - Wales History - Welsh language
Minisite about the history of the Welsh language, on the BBC Wales History website. ... History of the Welsh language . Welsh is the oldest language in Britain. Its roots go back ...

BBC - Wales - Learn Welsh BBC - Wales - Learn Welsh
The Big Welsh Challenge Meet the celebrities and enjoy the exciting interactive ... Produced in association with ELWa and the Welsh Language Board

Caernarfon Bay Caravan Park - Welsh Language
Welsh language, caernarfon bay caravan park, Self Catering Accommodation,Caravan Parks North Wales, Holiday Parks, caravaning, dinas dinlle, cottages, chalets, holiday in wales

Welsh Language Scheme: 2006
Consultative Document - Welsh Language Scheme: 2006 ... This consultation runs from 3rd July 2006 until 14th August 2006. Daw'r ymgynghoriad i ben: 14 Awst 2006.

A Welsh Course
Introduction. This course is one suitable for beginners. The main emphasis of the course is in developing conversational skills in Welsh as it is currently spoken (as contrasted ...

Welsh Language Services From BT
Gwasanaethau Cymraeg BT Welsh Language Services From BT Mae BT wedi ymrwymo i gefnogi'r iaith ac wedi creu'r canllawiau isod er mwyn eich helpu i ddefnyddio'i wasanaethau.

Welsh Language Act 1993 (c. 38)
An Act to establish a Board having the function of promoting and facilitating the use of the Welsh language, to provide for the preparation by public bodies of schemes giving ...

New Welsh Language Act
Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (The Welsh Language Society) believe that everyone who lives in Wales — Welsh-speaking or not — should have the following rights:

Welsh Language Services Unit - Trinity College Carmarthen
Welsh Language Services Unit ... Main Responsibilities. Prepare and monitor the College’s Welsh Language Scheme ; Promote bilingualism and raise awareness of the Welsh ...

Welsh Language Scheme : WJEC
WJEC aims to treat Welsh and English on an equal basis in its conduct of public business in Wales.