Welsh language

Welsh (Cymraeg or y Gymraeg), not to be confused with Welsh English (the English language as spoken in Wales), is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in the western part of Britain known as Wales (Cymru), 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 England, the United States and Australia.

Status

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 high in the main cities and there are speakers along England's border with Wales.

Even among the Welsh-speakers, few 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 (known in linguistics as code-switching).

Although Welsh is a minority language, and thus threatened by the dominance of English, 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, although first-language and other fluent speakers can be found throughout Wales.

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.

Welsh also has a substantial presence on the Internet, but this is strongly biased towards public bodies: the ratio of search engine hit frequencies for Welsh words to their English equivalents tends to be about 0.1% for formal terms such as addysg/education, cymdeithas/society or llywodraeth/government, but only about 0.01% for everyday terms such as buwch/cow, eirlaw/sleet or cyllell/knife.

Bilingual road markings in Wales

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).

Bilingual road sign in Cardiff.

Given the British Government's current plans (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 and development

Like most languages, there are identifiable periods within the history of Welsh, although the boundaries between these are often indistinct.

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 to 11th centuries); this was the language of the laws of Hywel Dda, as well as some poetry from both Wales and Scotland. As Anglo-Saxon colonisation of Great Britain proceeded, the Celtic-speakers in Wales were split off from those in northern England, speaking Cumbrian, and those in the south-west, speaking what would become Cornish, and so the languages diverged.

Middle Welsh (or Cymraeg Canol) is the label attached to the Welsh of the 12th to 14th 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. Middle Welsh is reasonably intelligible, albeit with some work, to a modern-day Welsh speaker.

Modern Welsh can be divided into two periods. The first, Early Modern Welsh ran from the 14th century to roughly the end of the 16th century, and was the language used by Dafydd ap Gwilym. Late Modern Welsh began with the publication of William Morgan's translation of the Bible in 1588. Like its English counterpart, the King James Version, 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.

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

Grammar

Phonology

Consonants

Welsh has the following consonant phonemes:

/z/ occurs only in unassimilated loanwords; the voiceless nasals /m̥/, /n̥/, /ŋ̊/ occur only as a consequence of the 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.

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

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.:

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

(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.)

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) but more commonly as a 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

Welsh makes use of a number of diacritics.

The circumflex is used to mark long vowels (although not all long vowels are marked with a circumflex). Thus â, ê, î, ô, û, ŵ, ŷ are always long, but a, e, i, o, u, w, y are not necessarily short.

The grave accent is sometimes 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"; mwg /muːg/ "smoke", mẁg /mʊg/ 'a mug' [1].

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/.

Predicting vowel length from orthography

As mentioned above, vowels marked with the circumflex are always long, and those marked with the grave accent are always short. If a vowel is not marked with a diacritic, its length must be determined by its environment.

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"

An unmarked vowel is short:

• 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

Main article: Welsh morphology

Welsh morphology has much in common with that of the other modern Insular Celtic languages, such 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.

Other features of Welsh grammar

• Possessives as object pronouns. The Welsh for "I like Rhodri" is "Dw i'n hoffi Rhodri" ("I am liking Rhodri"), but "I like him" is "dw i'n ei hoffi fe" — literally, "I am his liking him"; "I like you" is "dw i'n dy hoffi di" ("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), Welsh inclines very strongly towards the latter use. In the present tense, all verbs are used with the auxiliary bod (to be), so dwi'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, but it is more common 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 â 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.
• Affirmative markers. Mi (mainly North) and Fe (mainly South) are often placed before inflected verbs to show that they are declarative. This is mainly a colloquial formation and is not often seen in Written Welsh or more formal language.

Dialects

Like any natural language, Welsh has a number of different dialects.

These are very evident 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 the differences are in fact relatively 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'n moyn dishgled?" would be more likely. An example of a pronunciation difference between Northern and Southern Welsh is the tendency of Southern dialects to "lisp" the letter "s", e.g. mis, a month, would tend to be pronounced mees in the north, and meesh in the south.

In fact, the difference 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). 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?".

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.

Breton and Cornish are quite closely-related languages.

Welsh in education

Welsh is widely used in education, and many Welsh universities are bilingual, most notably the University of Wales, Bangor.

Under the National Curriculum, school children in Wales must study Welsh up to the age of 16. According to the Welsh Language Board[2], over a quarter of children in Wales attend schools which teach predominantly through the medium of Welsh. 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 in warfare

Secure communications are often difficult to achieve in wartime. Cryptography can be used to protect messages, but this can be a time-consuming process and may not be feasible if the message is urgent. Instead, Navajo code talkers were used by the Americans during World War II. It has been rumoured that British forces used Welsh in a similar manner.

More recently, Welsh regiments serving in Bosnia used Welsh for emergency communications that needed to be secure.

See also

• Welsh Tract
• Welsh Bible
• List of Welsh principal areas by percentage Welsh language
• Languages in the United Kingdom
• Welsh Language Board
• Association of Welsh Translators and Interpreters
• Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

External links

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More spoken articles

Welsh language edition of Wikipedia

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Welsh language

• Clwb Malu Cachu, The Website for Welsh Learners
• http://users.comlab.ox.ac.uk/geraint.jones/about.welsh/
• The gwybodiadur (literally "informationary") — provides wide ranges of information on all aspects of the Welsh language
• Welsh–English Dictionary
• Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru (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)
• The University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies
• BBC LearnWelsh
• Welsh Grammar
• A Welsh Course
• Ethnologue report on Welsh
• The Story of Welsh (BBC)
• How to swear in Welsh!