#brittonic

Nobody’s particularly too sure when Welsh began, or how. Unfortunately, old and scarcely documented history is pretty difficult to pin down like that. It is, however, widely proposed that Welsh has been around for at least roughly 4000 years. I don’t know if you’d agree, but that’s a hell of a long time! However, we do know that Welsh developed alongside closely related languages like Cornish and Breton, as well as the more distantly related Gaelic languages, across the British isles and parts of mainland Europe.

For a long time, Welsh was free to grow and develop from Old Welsh into Middle Welsh. Lots of Welsh prose was created during this time, and it is within the lifespan of Middle Welsh that the Mabinogion (a famous collection of Welsh mythologies) was compiled. Many great bards* also passed on tales in Welsh during this period. Welsh continued to thrive and grow freely for a period of time *Bards in Welsh culture are storytellers through the medium of music and poetry. They were considered to be fairly powerful in courts of nobles and are an important historical and tradtional position to have been appointed

However, trouble struck when Henry VIII was on the English throne. Wales had previously been conquered by the English and, during Henry VIIIs rule of England and Wales, the Act of Union was passed. As part of this act, the use of Welsh for administrative purposes (e.g. in laws, in the workplace) was completely banned, with the Welsh language no longer being recognised as an official language under the crown. This act meant that all students in Wales were no longer allowed to be taught in their native language and, for most people, the only language they knew at all. Children were forced to attend schools in a completely foreign language, which began the supression of Welsh. Additionally, within schools a tool of supression was used to stifle all communications in Welsh. Any child caught speaking Welsh during the school day would be made to wear the Welsh Not, which was typically a wooden board with the words “Welsh Not” painted on. The child that was wearing the Welsh Not at the end of the day would be subject to corporal punishment, which typically was a beating with a cane.

It was not until the Welsh Language Act of 1967 that the Welsh language gained any form of legal protection against the supression and brutalities faced previously. This act allowed the use of Welsh in legal proceedings within the government. However, Welsh still had a long ways to go. In 1980, members of the political party Plaid Cymru pledged that they would go to prison rather than pay for TV licenses in order to advocate for the need for a Welsh language television channel. Their efforts were successful and they were rewarded with the Welsh Fourth Channel, commonly known as S4C. Finally, in 1993, the Welsh Language Act of 1993 was passed. This act meant that, for the first time in hundreds of years, the Welsh language was now considered legally equal to that of the English language. Alongside the passing of this act came the benefits for the Welsh language that Welsh could not legally be discriminated against and must be available easily from all public bodies. This meant that all road signs in Wales could now be bilingual and that all government work must be published bilingually, to name a few examples.

I greatly hope that I have managed to teach you something interesting, and if not that you enjoyed the read on the history of the Welsh language. As a Welsh person and Welsh speaker, this topic is very important to me and fills me to the brim with a fiery Celtic passion. I hope those of you from elsewhere can empathise with our fight to preserve our language and I hope it might encourage interest in Welsh as a whole.