Welsh ( Cymraeg )

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Welsh is a member of the Brythonic (or British) group of Celtic branch spoken by 575,102 people mostly in Wales (Cymru), the rest of England, U.S., Canada, Australia, and Patagonia. Ethnologue estimates that about 33,000 of speakers of Welsh are monolingual, and the rest are bilingual in English.

With the Germanic and Gaelic colonization of Great Britain, the Brythonic speakers in Wales were split off from those in other parts of England. As a result, the languages diverged and became Welsh, Cornish, and Cumbrian. The latter became extinct in the 11th century.

Middle Welsh ( 12th to 14th centuries) is well-documented, since it is the language of the Mabinogion, a collection of prose stories from medieval Welsh manuscripts. Early Modern Welsh (14th-16th centuries) was the language used by the great Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym. The publication of William Morgan's translation of the Bible in 1588 had a strong stabilizing effect on the language.

The U.K. government has ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in respect to Welsh. 20.5% of the Welsh population speak the language, and 33% are able to understand it. 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 a rise of nationalism. There is a growing population of 5-14 year-olds who speak Welsh. An increasing number of parents choose Welsh-medium education for their children, and an overwhelming majority of the population believe that Welsh should have equal status with English.

Welsh is compulsory in most Welsh schools up to age 16. According to 1999 data reported by Ethnologue, 525 Welsh primary and secondary schools provide Welsh-medium education to over 82,000 children. The language is widely used on the radio and TV. It is the language of daily communication in many parts of Wales.

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