Welsh language

Encyclopedia : W : WE : WEL : Welsh language

Welsh (Cymraeg or y Gymraeg, pronounced [kəmˈrɑːɨɡ], [ə ɡəmˈrɑːɨɡ]), is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in Wales (Cymru), England by some along the Welsh border, and in the Chubut Valley, a Welsh immigrant colony in the Patagonia region of Argentina.

There are also speakers of Welsh throughout the world, most notably in the rest of Great Britain, the United States and Australia.

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 is the most spoken Celtic language.

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

Status

Bilingual road markings in Wales

The 2001 census gives a figure of 20.5% of the population of Wales as Welsh speakers (up from 18.5% in 1991), out of a population of about 3 million; however, the same census shows that 25% of residents were born outside Wales. The number of Welsh speakers throughout the rest of Britain is uncertain, but numbers are higher in the main cities and there are speakers along England's border with Wales. In 1993, S4C, the Welsh-language TV channel published the results of a survey into the numbers of people speaking/understanding 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. [More Welsh Speakers than Previously Believed]

Even among the Welsh-speakers, few, if any, residents of Wales are monolingual in Welsh. 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 (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 nationalist political organisations such as the political party Plaid Cymru and Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (the Welsh Language Society).

Welsh as a first language is largely concentrated in the less urban north and west of Wales, principally Gwynedd, Denbighshire, Anglesey (Ynys Môn), Carmarthenshire, North Pembrokeshire, Ceredigion, and parts of western Glamorgan and south-western Powys, although first-language and other fluent speakers can be found throughout Wales.

Bilingual road sign in Cardiff.

Welsh is very much a living language. It is used in conversation every day by thousands and seen in Wales everywhere. The Welsh Language Act 1993 and the Government of Wales Act 1998 provide that the Welsh and English languages should be treated on a basis of equality. Public bodies are required to prepare and implement a Welsh Language Scheme. Thus 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 never use the language in daily life.

The UK government has ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in respect to 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 can be found [here] (Real Media).

Given the British Government's current plans (since December 2001) 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.

History

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bar:test from:500 till:800 shift:(10,0) text:Early Welsh

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bar:test from:800 till:1050 shift:(10,0) text:Old Welsh

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bar:test from:1050 till:1250 shift:(10,0) text:Middle Welsh

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bar:test from:1250 till:1588 shift:(10,0) text:Early Modern Welsh

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bar:test from:1588 till:2006 shift:(10,0) text:Late Modern Welsh

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:1993 shift:(10,0) text:1993 Welsh Language Act
bar:test at:2001 mark:(line,white)
at:2001 shift:(10,0) text:2001 Number of speakers increase in the national Census

Old Welsh

Middle Welsh

Modern Welsh

Late Modern Welsh

19th century

However, 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, and 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

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.

Grammar

Phonology

Consonants

/z/ occurs only in unassimilated loanwords. /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.

Vowels

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).

Diphthongs	Second component is front	Second component is central	Second component is back
First component is close		ʊɨ	ɪu, ɨu
First component is mid	əi, ɔi	əɨ, ɔɨ	ɛu, əu
First component is 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

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.:

• Ysgrif — /ˈəsgriv/ — an article or essay
• Ysgrifen — /əsˈgriven/ — writing
• Ysgrifennydd — /əsgriˈvenɨð/ — a secretary
• Ysgrifenyddes — /əsgriveˈnəðes/ — a female secretary

The connection between the Welsh word ysgrif and the Latin scribo "I write", from which it is derived, is fairly clear, taking diachronic sound shifts into account.

Orthography

Alphabet

• h indicates voicelessness in mh, nh, and ngh.
• ph occurs occasionally in words derived from Greek (e.g. phenol), although many words of Greek origin are spelt with ff (e.g. ffonem). More commonly the spelling marks the result of aspirate mutation (e.g. ei phen-ôl)
• y indicates /ə/ in unstressed monosyllabic words (e.g. y "the", fy "my") or non-final syllables, but /ɨ̞, ɨː/ (N) or /ɪ, iː/ (S) everywhere else.
• The digraphs (letters consisting of two characters) are treated as a single letter (with the collation order as listed above), although the same combinations of characters can sometimes also arise as a juxtaposition of two separate letters. For example, the digraph ng representing /ŋ/ is alphabetised between g and h (alphabetical order llegach, lleng, lleiaf), but when ng is two letters representing /ŋg/ it is alphabetised between nf and nh (alphabetical order danfon, dangos, danheddog).
• si indicates /ʃ/ when followed by a vowel
• di and ti sometimes indicate /dʒ/ and /tʃ/ respectively when followed by a vowel. Otherwise /dʒ/ and /tʃ/ are spelled j and ts, but only in loanwords like jẁg "jug" and wats "watch".

Spelling the diphthongs

Diacritics

The circumflex is used to mark long vowels. Thus â, ê, î, ô, û, ŵ, ŷ are always long, but a, e, i, o, u, w, y are not necessarily short. Not all long vowels are marked with a circumflex. A useful rule of thumb is that they are used particularly in monosyllabic words where the vowel is followed by -l, -n or -r. There are many exceptions to this, however.

The grave accent is sometimes used to mark vowels that should be short, when a long vowel would normally be expected, e.g. pas /paːs/ (a cough), pàs /pas/ (a pass/permit or a lift in a car); mwg /muːg/ (smoke), mẁg /mʊg/ (a mug).

The acute accent is sometimes used to mark a stressed final syllable in a polysyllabic word. Thus the words gwacáu (to empty) and dicléin (decline) have final stress. However, not all polysyllabic words with final stress are marked with the acute accent.

The diaeresis indicates that a vowel letter is to be pronounced fully, not as a semivowel, e.g. copïo (to copy) — pronounced /kɔˈpiːɔ/, not */ˈkɔpjɔ/.

The grave and acute accents in particular are very often omitted in casual writing, and the same is true to a lesser extent of the diaeresis. The circumflex, however, is usually included.

Predicting vowel length from orthography

An unmarked vowel is long:

• in a stressed monosyllabic word when no consonant follows, e.g. da /dɑː/ (good)
• before b, ch, d, dd, g, f, ff, s, th, e.g. mab /mɑːb/ (son), hoff /hoːf/ (favourite), peth /peːθ/ (thing)
• before l, n, r (in the case of i, u), e.g. sgil /sgiːl/ ("behind), llun /ɬɨːn/ (picture), hir /hiːr/ (long)
• in Northern dialects, before clusters of two consonants when the first one is ll or s, e.g. gwallt /gwɑːɬt/ (hair), tyst /tɨːst/ (witness)

• in an unstressed (proclitic) word, e.g. a /a/ (and)
• before p, t, c, m, ng, e.g. cam /kam/ (step), llong /ɬɔŋ/ (ship)
• before l, n, r (in the case of a, e, o, w, y), e.g. tal /tal/ (tall), llen /ɬɛn/ (curtain), ffwr /fʊr/ (fur)
• in Southern dialects, before clusters of two consonants, e.g. sant /sant/ (saint), gwallt /gwaɬt/ (hair), tyst /tɪst/ (witness)
• in Northern dialects, before clusters of two consonants when the first one is n or r, e.g. sant /sant/ (saint), perth /pɛrθ/ (hedge)
• in Northern dialects, in any syllable that is not both stressed and word-final
• in Southern dialects, in any unstressed syllable

Morphology

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.

Counting system

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 tri deg pump (three ten five) while in vigesimal it is pymtheg ar ugain (fifteen (itself "five-ten") on twenty).

A further complication is that while there is only one word for "one" (un) there are 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.

Number	Vigesimal system	Decimal system
1	un
2	dau (m), dwy (f)
3	tri (m), tair (f)
4	pedwar (m), pedair (f)
5	pump
6	chwech
7	saith
8	wyth
9	naw
10	deg
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
etc.
40
41
50
51
60
61
70		saith deg
71
80
81
90
91
100	cant
200	dau gant
300	tri chant
400	pedwar cant
500	pum cant
600	chwe chant
1000	mil
2000	dwy fil
1,000,000	miliwn
1,000,000,000	biliwn

''

Notes:

• The words deg (ten), deuddeg (twelve) and pymtheg (fifteen) often become deng, deuddeng and pymtheng respectively when before a word beginning with 'm', e.g. deng munud (ten minutes), deuddeng milltir (twelve miles), pymtheng mlynedd (fifteen years).

• The numbers pump (five), chwech (six) and cant (hundred) drop the final consonant when they stand immediately in front of a noun, e.g. pum potel (five bottles), chwe llwy (six spoons), can punt (a hundred pounds).

• Larger numbers tend to use the decimal system, e.g. 1,965 mil, naw cant chwe deg pump. An exception to this rule is when referring to years, where after the number of thousands, the individual digits are spoken, e.g. 1965 mil naw chwe(ch) pump. This system appears to have broken down for years after 2000, e.g. 2005 is dwy fil a phump.

• The number miliwn is feminine, and biliwn is masculine. It is necessary for the gender of these to be different as, for instance, they can both mutate to 2 filiwn. Two million is therefore dwy filiwn, and two billion is dau filiwn.

Other features of Welsh grammar

Possessives as object pronouns

The Welsh for "I like Rhodri" is "

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 "

Affirmative markers