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The existence of the Welsh-language can come as a surprise to those who assume that English is the foundation language of Britain. However, J. R. R. Tolkien described Welsh as the 'senior language of the men of Britain'. Visitors from outside Wales may be intrigued by the existence of Welsh and will want to find out how a language which has, for at least fifteen hundred years, been the closest neighbour of English, enjoys such vibrancy, bearing in mind that English has obliterated languages thousands of miles from the coasts of England. This book offers a broad historical survey of Welsh-language culture from sixth-century heroic poetry to television and pop culture in the early twenty-first century. The public status of the language is considered and the role of Welsh is compared with the roles of other of the non-state languages of Europe. This new edition of The Welsh Language offers a full assessment of the implications of the linguistic statistics produced by the 2011 Census. The volume contains maps and plans showing the demographic and geographic spread of Welsh over the ages, charts examining the links between words in Welsh and those in other Indo-European languages, and illustrations of key publications and figures in the history of the language. It concludes with brief guides to the pronunciation, the dialects and the grammar of Welsh.
The Welsh Language: a Personal Perspective 1. The Origins of Welsh 2. Welsh in the Early British Kingdoms 3. Welsh in the Middle Ages 4. From the Act of Union to the Industrial Revolution 5. The Welsh Language in the Era of Industrialization 6. Welsh in the Later Nineteenth Century 7. Welsh in the First Half of the Twentieth Century 8. The Second World War and After 9. The Welsh Language Today 10. Welsh and the Other Non-state Languages of Europe 11. The Characteristics of Welsh

Sujets

Disciplines

Language Arts

Lettres et linguistique

Idioma galés

Welsh

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Publié par	University of Wales Press
Date de parution	15 janvier 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781783160204
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	18 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0650€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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THE WELSH LANGUAGEThe Welsh Language
A History
Janet Davies
UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS
CARDIFF
2014© Janet Davies, 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium
by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally
to some other use of this publication) without the written permission
of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Applications for the
copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this
publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press,
10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff, CF10 4UP.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library CiP Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78316-019-8
e-ISBN 978-1-78316-020-4
The right of Janet Davies to be identiﬁed as author of this work has
been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Typeset by Eira Fenn, Pentyrch, Cardiff
Printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, WiltshireContents
List of Illustrations vii
List of Maps viii
Acknowledgements ix
The Welsh Language: A Personal Perspective xi
1 The Origins of Welsh 1
2 Welsh in the Early British Kingdoms 15
3 Welsh in the Middle Ages 23
4 From the Act of ‘Union’ to the Industrial Revolution 33
5 The Welsh Language in the Era of Industrialization 55
6 Welsh in the Later Nineteenth Century 69
7 Welsh in the First Half of the Twentieth Century 87
8 The Second World War and After 101
9 The Welsh Language Today 159
10 Welsh and the Other Non-State Languages
of Europe 171
11 The Characteristics of Welsh 179
Postscript 189
Further Reading 191
Index 193List of Illustrations
Inscribed stone at Tywyn, Merionnydd 15
A page from the Book of Aneirin 18
Title page of Yn y lhyvyr hwnn, the earliest printed
book in Welsh 38
Title page of the New Testament, 1567 40
The National Eisteddfod, Chester, 1866 61
Y Cylchgrawn Cymraeg 63
Pupils and teacher at Chubut, Patagonia, 1908 73
Saunders Lewis reading his radio lecture
Tynged yr Iaith in 1962 119
The Nant Gwrtheyrn language centre 134
Montage of some recent Welsh-language publications 138List of Maps
The present extent of Indo-European languages in
Europe and Asia 3
Map showing British and Saxon kingdoms during
the period AD 500–700 11
Map showing Pura Wallia and Marchia Wallie 24
Principal language zones c.1750 51
Percentage of population able to speak Welsh, 1971 105elsh, 1991 107
Percentage of population with a knowledge of
Welsh, 2011 164
Number of Welsh speakers, 2011 165
Dialect variations for ‘young girl’ 187
Dialect variations for ‘milk’ 188Acknowledgements
As always, I am greatly indebted to John Davies for his advice
and assistance.
Illustrations and maps in this book are included by kind
permission of the following. Every effort has been made to
trace and contact copyright holders:
Inscribed stone at Tywyn, Merionnydd: © Crown copyright:
Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments
of Wales
A page from the Book of Aneirin: Cardiff MS 2.81. Courtesy
of Cardiff Libraries
Title page of Yn y lhyvyr hwnn, the earliest printed book in
Welsh: by permission of the National Library of Wales
Title page of the New Testament, 1567: by permission of the
National Library of Wales
Principal language zones c.1750 from Geraint H. Jenkins (ed.),
The Welsh Language before the Industrial Revolution (University of
Wales Press, 1997): Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies
The National Eisteddfod, Chester, 1866: by permission of the
National Library of Wales Acknowledgements
Y Cylchgrawn Cymraeg: by permission of the National Library
of Wales
Pupils and teacher at Chubut, Patagonia, 1908: by permission
of the National Library of Wales
‘Percentage of population able to speak Welsh, 1971’ and elsh, 1991’ from
J. W. Aitchison and H. Carter, A Geography of the Welsh Language
1961–1991 (University of Wales Press, 1993)
Saunders Lewis reading his radio lecture Tynged yr Iaith in
1962: by permission of the National Library of Wales
The Nant Gwrtheyrn language centre: by permission of the
National Library of Wales
Dialect variations for ‘young girl’ and for ‘milk’ from Alan R.
Thomas, The Linguistic Geography of Wales (University of Wales
Press, 1997)
Montage of some recent Welsh-language publications: Tebyg at
ei Debyg, by permission of Gomer; Nefar in Ewrop, by permission
of Y Lolfa; Llwyth, by permission of Sherman Cymru; Cryfder
ar y Cyd, by permission of Gwasg Carreg Gwalch; Cymru: Y
100 Lle i’w Gweld cyn Marw, by permission of Y Lolfa
xThe Welsh Language: A Personal Perspective
For many people in Wales, the Welsh language is the essence
of Welsh identity. Yet, for the majority of the people of Wales,
the language has only a marginal impact upon their lives. That
was my experience as a child. I was brought up on the borders
of Breconshire and Monmouthshire, a district where a
considerable number of the inhabitants had a knowledge of Welsh
a hundred years ago. By the 1950s, however, none of the native
inhabitants could put together a sentence in the language.
A few incomers were Welsh speakers, a fact that sometimes
impinged upon us. Our parish church was Llanelly,
magniﬁcently sited above the Usk valley. Its vicar was Daniel
ParryJones, a native of Carmarthenshire, and the ﬁrst Welsh I ever
heard came from his lips as he proffered the communion cup
to the distinguished Irishwoman, Dr Noëlle French. Welsh, I
came to the conclusion, was a liturgical language, rather like
Latin among Roman Catholics. There were Welsh lessons at
school, but it was difﬁcult to imagine that anyone of my age
could weave together the words we learned and turn them
into intelligible and effortless speech. That some of my
contemporaries could do so was something I discovered when
pupils from Brynmawr met pupils from Ystradgynlais, at that
time in the same county. Thus I became dimly aware that
somewhere over the hills, in the upper Swansea valley, in
Carmarthenshire, and also, according to some, in Anglesey, The Welsh Language: A Personal Perspective
there were people who not only spoke Welsh effortlessly, but
did so all the time. It seemed very odd indeed.
Yet although Welsh was rarely heard in our community, it
existed all around us. There was hardly an English place-name
within miles. Indeed, Welsh names continued well over the
border with England; on the train journey to Hereford, it was
noticeable that the ﬁrst station after passing the border was
Pontrilas. Living in a land of llan and aber, dol and cwm, pant
and maes – the building blocks of place-names throughout
Wales – it was impossible to escape the fact that a language
unspoken by my community was legible throughout that
community. And although purists might think that some of the
place-names were pronounced in a rather cavalier fashion (we
did dreadful things to Maesgwarthaf), on the whole we
managed them well enough. We did so because an instinct for the
correct pronunciation of Welsh was built into the way we
spoke English. When I eventually came to learn Welsh, I found
that the pronunciation presented no problems at all. Neither
did many aspects of word-order, for the syntax of our ordinary
speech – the much-derided Wenglish – preserved patterns it
had inherited from Welsh.
In no sense did the lack of knowledge of the language make
us feel less Welsh. The traditions of the community included
Brychan and his saintly progeny, the hidden city under
Llangors Lake, and De Breos, the wicked marcher lord. We played
on the banks of the canal and around the foundries and the
tramroads of the early industrial age; we visited Crawshay
Bailey’s round houses and the caves of the Chartists; we knew
of Lady Llanover; we learned of Brynmawr’s unhappy
reputation as the blackest of the black spots of the depression years;
we eagerly read the serialized versions of Cordell’s novels.
All these things made us fully aware that we were in the
mainstream of the traditions and the history of Wales. Many years
xiiThe Welsh Language: A Personal Perspective
later, when giving birth at Llandovery Cottage Hospital, I was
totally bafﬂed when I heard the woman in the next bed to me
referring to me as ‘y Saesnes sy’n dysgu Cymraeg’ (the
Englishwoman who’s learning Welsh). The Welsh-speaking Welsh, I
came to the conclusion, use words in a different way. That
seemed even odder.
The oddities of the Welsh situation intrigued me. Over the
years, through meeting Basques and Catalans and Bretons
and Frisians, I came to realize that these oddities are by no
means unique. I should have been glad, when I ﬁrst began to
think about them, if there had been a brief guide to the origins
and nature of Welsh, to the use that had been made of the
language over the centuries, its present condition, and the
parallels that can be drawn between its history and the history
of others among the languages of Europe. Wanting to read a
book is the best possible reason for writing one. This book
was written primarily for those people in Wales whose
childhood experiences were similar to mine. I should also like to
think that it will be of interest to those visitors to Wales who
begin to ask questions when they ﬁrst encounter llan and aber
and dol and cwm.
xiii1
The Origins of Welsh
The Indo-European family of languages
The Welsh language, like most of the languages of Europe,
and many of those of Asia, has evolved from what linguists
term Indo-European. Indo-European was spoken at least 6,000
years ago (4,000 BC) by a semi-nomadic people who lived perhaps
in the steppe region of southern Russia, or perhaps in Anatolia.
(Anatolian personal names with Indo-European associations
have been found in Assyrian texts of the twentieth century BC.)
COGNATE I