Welsh English: A National Language (original) (raw)

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

2004

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...

An Analysis of the Vitality of the Welsh Language

Undergraduate Research Journal, 2020

This paper discusses the vitality of the Welsh language. English is one major causation for the reduction of Welsh speakers in Wales over the past two centuries. Welsh phonetic mutation, which is a cross-linguistic irregularity, has become undesirable, and is thus becoming a linguistic feature of the past. Metatypy between English and Welsh has begun to influence the morphosyntactic and phonemic features of Welsh. In an effort to revitalize Welsh, the Welsh government implemented a new language policy and plan (LPP) titled "Cymraeg 2050. " A proposed differential equation model could be used to forecast the success of Cymraeg 2050 by assuming different social-status values for English and Welsh. Finally, the nine factors developed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the four factors of the Language Endangerment Index (LEI) are calculated to determine that Welsh is classified somewhere between vulnerable and endangered.

Towards the light – tua’r goleuni: Welsh medium education for the non-Welsh speaking in south Wales: A parent's choice

Eesti ja soome-ugri keeleteaduse ajakiri. Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, 2011

The Welsh-medium education system has long been seen as an effective tool of Welsh language production in Wales. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of Welsh medium education in one south Wales Valley, ‘Cwm Rhymni / RhymniValley’. The main reasoning behind the primary research is to focus on the reasons why non-Welsh speaking parents chose Welsh medium education for their children. The research focuses on education but recognises the over lapping nature of the main language transmission spheres within Welsh language planning, i.e. family, community and workplace. This study adopts a mainly qualitative research strategy by administering 60 unstructured interviews to parents who chose Welsh medium nursery, primary and secondary schools for their children. However, as a secondary methodological tool, a semi-structured questionnaire was given out prior to the interviews and the interview sample was then drawn from these. Moreover, Welsh language resurgence within Anglicized ...

Linguistic variation amongst Welsh speakers in Treorchy at the end of the seventies

2011

This paper is a condensed version of a longer study of linguistic variation within the Welsh-speaking community of a post-industrial South Wales valleys community at the end of the seventies. The field-work for the study was carried out under the auspices of the Celtic Board of Studies of the University of Wales. The overall aim of the broader study is to discover whether the observed linguistic variation could be accounted for in terms of the influence of independent, extra-linguistic factors such as age, sex and educational background. The methods used in order to test this hypothesis include: a) recording a sample of speech from each individual informant. b) dividing the informants into sub-groups according to non-linguistic criteria. c) statistical analysis of the data.

THE CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENTS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF WELSH LANGUAGE POLICY IN THE 1980s AND 1990s

The Historical Journal, 2011

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on the advances made to safeguard the future of the Welsh language under the Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s. These advancements included the establishment of a Welsh language television channel, advancements in the field of Welsh language education, the formation of a Welsh Language Board, and, finally, the implementation of a new Welsh Language Act in 1993. Challenging popular assumptions regarding the nature of Conservative governance during this period, the article examines the background and context of these developments by highlighting the limitations of ‘Thatcherite’ dogma not only in ‘second order’ areas of policy, but also in a nation where Tory roots were not deeply embedded.