The Birth of the Welsh Language & the Many Attempts to Squash It
The Welsh language has both a beautiful and rocky history. The language was born out of displacement of the root language by the Romans, solidified by the prevalence of the competing Old English, stood the test of time amongst adversity in the form of war with the Normans, annexation by the English, suppression by the Acts of Union, corporal punishment of Welsh speaking children through use of the Welsh Not. All attempts failed, and with the ratification of the Welsh Language Act in 1967 & 1993, and the Welsh Language Measure 2011, the language is now on 'equal footing' with English, and is an official de-jure language of the Welsh Government. The government hopes to have over 1 million Welsh speakers by 2050, and Welsh is one of the fastest growing languages on global language learning app - Duolingo. Strength through adversity. Here's the story of how it all happened.
The 'British' language was a Celtic language spoken by Britons during the Bronze age. Slowly the language began to fragment into different dialects, and then slowly into different individual languages; Welsh, Cornish and Cumbric. These languages are referred to as Brythonic languages; one or two subsets of Insular Celtic, the other being Goidelic languages; Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic.
Despite being from descended from the Insular Celtic root languages, there's very little commonalities in syntax between the modern Brythonic languages and Goidelic languages, such as when you compare Welsh with Irish.
In short, the different languages evolved on separate branches of a similar tree; and there are significant differences between the languages that it's difficult to even identify the tree. Each of the surviving languages; Cornish, Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh are all distinct enough to qualify quite comfortably as separate languages and not mere dialects (though there is still recognisable similarity amongst the Goidelic languages and amongst the Brythonic languages).
Out of these languages, Irish stands firm as one of the most widely spoken, with an estimated 39% of the population of Ireland being either first or second language speakers. Welsh comes in behind at 29% of the population as first or second language speakers. The other Celtic languages have unfortunately either become extinct, or have current speakers low enough to not rely on the ability for a distinctive portion of the population.
See the below map [source]; the green represents areas that developed a Goidelic languages - Irish, Manx & Scots Gaelic; the red represents areas that developed Brythonic languages; and the blue represents areas that developed Pictish languages - there's still some debate about whether Pictish language should be separated from, or combined with Brythonic languages.
At the time of the Roman invasion of Britain, Old Brittonic was the main language spoken on the Islands; having already split from its root language Insular Celtic. The various Brythonic languages had not yet evolved beyond Old Brittonic, and so this was near universally spoken, with many and significant regional dialects.
This bore a stumbling block for the Romans who took up rule in Britain following a bloody campaign of war. Due to the significant displacement of people in a war period, many of these dialects became obsolete, and the languages began to cluster. Latin was widely adopted it towns and cities, with some sources treating it as a legal and 'urban' language; meaning Brittonic survived in the countrysides. This displacement, or pushing aside of the people who spoke this language standardised the dialects to the regions in which they were pushed to, and allowed them to become distinct from one another.
The Roman's didn't appear to make a concerted effort to 'force' eradication of regional languages, but they did very much make Latin, and in some cases Greek the 'prime' language of the empire. This means that none of the Brittonic languages are completely free of influence from the Roman overlords; some 800 Latin loan-words, or Latin-descended words are purported to still be in use in Modern Welsh today.
The Romans at this point in history had conquered nearly all of Europe, Africa and through to the Middle East, so they had a 'system' of dealing with language barriers. The Latin language became the official language in many cases, and the Romans ensured that only legal and official business happened in Latin.
At the fall of the Roman empire, and at the point in which they pulled out of Britain, all the separated and displaced Brittonic languages began to form fully separate languages. Those that represented the smallest groups of speakers were eventually fully converted to Old English by the 5th century. However, this conversion was largely restricted to urban areas, and the majority of the territory we now regard as England; the more 'regional' areas, which included areas of Scotland (speaking Pictish), Cornwall, and Wales remained speaking the Celtic language.
The Saxons and the Rise of Old English
Anyone who has ever tried to learn Dutch or German will note the many similarities between English and those Germanic languages. This is because the Anglo-Saxons who arrived in England came from the Germanic areas of Europe; modern-day Germany, The Netherlands and to a lesser extent Denmark. The term Anglo-Saxon, or just Saxon in reference to these people is actually a term that combines some very distinct groups of people, the Frisians, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes.
Their arrival in Britain was to assist the people following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire from the incursions of the Picts, the Gaels and many other interested groups of people. Britain is a fertile land, and was left somewhat undefended following the Roman exodus, so deals were struck to grant Anglo-Saxon settlers the chance to remain in Britain in exchange for them working as mercenaries.
Across generations, the land granted to the Saxons grew, and over the course of a hundred years or so, they became the de-facto 'English' culture. The primary spoken language by these settlers was a smorgasbord of dialects from Frisian, Low Saxon, along with influences from Old Norse and many others of the area at the time. This smorgasbord eventually evolved into different dialects of Old English, and became the common language spoken by the settlers.
It was at this point that Common Brittonic began to dissipate in the main body of Britain, taking with it the remnants of Latin and other Celtic Languages. This effort was further solidified by King Alfred of Wessex' domination and unification of England where most was still under occupation by the Danes during the Viking expansion, displacing many Saxons and introducing far more of the North Germanic/Norse linguistic forms into English.
King Alfred's victory over the Danes, and later in his reign, the education reforms gave West Saxon dialect of Old English priority over others. This re-education into Old English affected most the mainland of England, and that which then became known as England during King Alfred's reign. This left regions such as Wales, Cornwall, Cumbria, Scotland and Ireland mostly still autonomous, and speaking their own dialects of Common Brittonic.
During the time of King Alfred's reign, Britain was split into three major territories, those run under Brittonic rule, which included Wales, Cumbria and Scotland; those run under King Alfred's rule, which covered Cornwall, Wessex, Mercia, the entire West and South of England, and the Danelaw lands, under King Guthrum. Eventually, as part of a political upheaval, and a battle known as the Battle of Edington, Guthrum was finally removed as leader, and the Danelaw lands became part of King Alfred's territory in a matter of speaking. All of this meant that Old English became the 'single' spoken language of all of England.
It only took another two to three hundred years before Cumbric would become extinct.
Norman Invasions, and Resisting Occupation
During the time of the Norman conquest of England, beginning in 1066, Wales and the Welsh language was well-defined. It's now referred to as 'Middle Welsh', since it still differs significantly from that which is spoken today.
The Normans did occupy Wales after a bloody campaign for a brief time, before uprisings and rebellions pushed the Normans back to England. What happened in the next one hundred years is a vicious to-and-fro of attack and occupation, with the Normans never managing to solidify their occupation of Wales. The Norman conquest ended in 1165 with the Battle of Crogen, where they were defeated and humiliated.
Looking at the effects of the Norman conquest of England, its effects on the language aren't insignificant. Old English became extinct, and the main language spoken by the new occupants of England became known as Anglo-Norman. William the Conqueror, the leader of the Norman conquest never developed more than a basic understanding of English, and English itself was not fully understood for centuries afterwards.
Anglo-Norman became a rough merge of the Norman language and the Old English language and existed that way for nearly four hundred years.
If the Normans had succeeded in occupying Wales, we most certainly would have seen a homogenisation of languages of the Norman empire, which would have all but forced Welsh out of circulation. The Cornish language was pushed ever westward, forcing a decline of use that slowly continued over the coming centuries. If we look at Cornish as an example of what could have happened to Welsh, it would have certainly done significant damage.
Laws in Wales Acts or Acts of the Union
Between the Norman invasion and the introduction of the Laws in Wales Acts, Wales was conquered by Edward I, then stolen back briefly by Owain Glyndwr, the last true Prince of Wales, then stolen back to the English Monarchy once more. This time of extreme upheaval in governance seemed not to affect the language, and thus will be a story for another time. The English Monarchy seemed to approach Wales as an outlying territory and as a result it was never completely integrated into English society - this meant that the language remained.
The Marcher Lords appointed initially by the Normans after their failed conquest guarded the border between Wales and England eventually, after Edward I's successful conquest became self-governing leaders of much of Wales. This meant that the Monarchy was able to comfortably 'forget' about Wales, trusting the Marcher Lords to handle all management of state responsibilities.
Whilst there was always significant hostility between the Welsh people and the Marcher Lords overseeing them, across generations, the Marcher Lords bloodlines became ever-more Welsh oriented with intermarriage between Welsh nobility and the Marcher Lords being commonplace.
The power of the Marcher Lords grew over time, until the Monarchy began to perceive them as a threat to the crown. At the time Henry VIII was in power, and he dissolved the Marcher Lords and created the Laws in Wales Act 1535 and 1542.
These acts removed the ability for Wales to be self-governing, brought it fully into the fold of English rule and forced all 'official and legal business' to be in English only under threat of forfeiting the offices one holds.
It's difficult to comprehend the notion of your primary language being taken from you, but that's what the Welsh people were forced to deal with at the time. Already they were forced to engage in religious practice in English (due to the unavailability of Welsh Bible Translations), and now anything that would encompass law or formal business would be forced into English too.
Given that all official legal business was now required to be in English, this formed the basis for landed gentry, English nobles, being introduced into the territory. English nobles would finally be able to purchase estates, and rental properties throughout Wales without having to learn another language.
The Welsh people previously had no real cause for learning English, they spoke Welsh almost exclusively. Now, within a very short time, the Welsh were forced to become bilingual, else they be able to be exploited by lawmakers for their lack of knowledge.
Crown-ordered Welsh Translations of the Bible in 1567 and 1588 helped many communities stay in touch with their mother tongue, and this is one of the primary reasons for Welsh's resilience in the face of the Laws of Wales Acts. The Crown ordered this for two-reasons, firstly the Tudor dynasty originated in Wales, so whilst the Monarchy wanted to force everyone to speak English, they still bore some degree of sympathy for the Welsh Language speakers, and secondly, a Brecon man published a book of hymns in Middle-Welsh entitled "Yny lhyvyr hwnn", and the Pope vehemently disagreed with it - given Henry VIII's opposition to Catholicism in general, this gave him the impetus to get the entire Bible translated.
The Welsh Not & The Treachery of the Blue Books
Wales slowly, and forcefully became bilingual, but use of Welsh in day-to-day life was still strong in the country. This spread a generous degree of animosity to the English language in general, as Welsh speakers hated being forced to learn a language they had no care for.
Education centres in Wales wanted to encourage the use of English in lessons, because they recognised the need to prepare the people to engage in the English-centred business and law environments, but due to the time's difficult relationship with corporal punishment and child abuse, a particularly devious system was devised. This system quickly became widespread across the country, and it worked like this:
- The Welsh Not was an object (commonly a piece of wood) that was given to a child who spoke Welsh in class.
- The next time Welsh was heard in class, the previous recipient would pass the Welsh Not over to the child who was caught
- The Welsh Not would be passed from person to person until the lesson ended.
- The child holding the Welsh Not at the end of the lesson would be punished, and this punishment was commonly a caning - though detention or 'writing out lines' was also known to happen.
This system, born to encourage use of English in lessons, ultimately created a deep tension between Welsh speakers and the English language. The effects of this, whilst being altruistic in intention, was oppression of a culture. This spread the dissent within Wales that the English language was aggressively being forced upon them, and they were being actively punished for speaking their own language. This inadvertent oppression damaged the Welsh Language irreparably.
All of this was compounded during an event known as the Treachery of the Blue Books. The Blue Books in question were a three-part report by the British Government on the state of Education in Wales, which a business academic Simon Brooks, in 2017 described as "the most important ideological intervention by the British state in Wales in the 19th century."
The Blue Books are reviled for disparaging the Welsh people, the Welsh Language, and Welsh morals. The three commissioners who authored the report were English monolingual and had no experience teaching working-class children, and so were woefully unprepared to evaluate the quality of education in Wales. This resulted in a report that vastly exaggerated the weaknesses of the Welsh education system. The education system was deeply in need of reform, as it was across the UK, but this report made the country out to be something it wasn't. Schools attended to by the higher or middle-classes weren't subject to the report, so this was a targeted report decrying a very specific type of education in Wales, and implying it's a problem widespread across the nation. Simon Brooks also described the way the reports characterise the Welsh students as thus: "dirty, ignorant, lazy, and immoral."
This report did lead to educational reform, but due to the significant outrage it also spawned political reform, and challenges from every-angle as to it's voracity.
It's this report that is said to bring us to the widespread bilingualism across Wales now.
By 1911, Welsh had officially declined enough to be a minority language in Wales.
The Welsh language continued to decline throughout the early 20th century, but towards the latter half began to increase once more.
Political organisations such as Plaid Cymru (1925) began to fight for the language, but their fight wasn't an easy one. At the time, due to mass migration, and the industrial revolution, the Welsh Language had ceased to exist in many parts of Wales, most notably around Cardiff and South Wales. Almost everyone spoke English, but only a minority also spoke Welsh.
By the 60's the Welsh Language Society was formed as a direct action pressure group designed to campaign for and encourage more Welsh speaking.
In 1967, the Welsh Language Act was introduced to repeal the parts of the Laws in Wales Acts around use of Welsh in the legal setting - finally acknowledging the disadvantage a Welsh speaker has in an entirely English legal setting. This gave equal standing to Welsh and English in the law domain.
Then, just under thirty years later, the Welsh Language Act 1993 was published where the final Laws in Wales Acts from the 1500's would finally be repealed. Welsh could finally, once more be used in a public office setting. It too established the Welsh Language Board whose sole purpose it was to promote the Welsh Language throughout the country.
The Government of Wales Act in 1998 officially allowed Wales to become somewhat self-governing, with the creation of the Welsh Assembly, and making the Welsh Language Board directly answerable to it.
Since 2000, Welsh as a Second Language has been compulsory in schools up to the age of 16, and proponents report that this has begun to reverse the decline of the language throughout the country.
Welsh Language has continued to grow, with the Welsh Government offering more resources and more education to anyone who wants to learn, as well as espousing the benefits of bilingual education. They have a target of 2050 to reach 40% Welsh-medium educated students across the country - a number that is currently on-course.
Even global applications like language-learning app Duolingo have started offering a Welsh course to avid learners across the globe, with a report in March of this year saying that Welsh is the fastest growing language in all of the UK - which given the UK's multiculturalism is quite an achievement.
We are now in a position, for the first time since William the Conqueror where our use of Welsh, and the promotion of the Welsh language is a completely safe, legal endeavour. This can only be a good thing.
Goroesi'r Rhufeiniaid
Goroesi'r Sacsoniaid
Goroesi'r Normaniaid
Goroesi'r Ddeddfau Uno
Goroesi'r Welsh Not
Dal i gael ei siarad heddiw.
Yr Iaith Gymraeg Apparel Range
https://www.cofiwch.cymru/listing/yr-iaith-gymraeg?product=373
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_languages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittonic_languages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_settlement_of_Britain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wales
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Welsh_language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Conquest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_invasion_of_Wales
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquest_of_Wales_by_Edward_I
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_in_Wales_Acts_1535_and_1542
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcher_Lord
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Language_Act_1993
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Language_Board
https://www.itv.com/news/wales/2021-03-10/welsh-becomes-fastest-growing-language-in-uk-after-rise-in-number-of-learners-during-pandemic
Consolidation of conflicting facts, my own.
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