Welsh speakers how many

The use of the Welsh language is promoted by the Welsh Language Board. The Board was set up by the Welsh Language Act which states that Welsh and English should be treated equally in the administration of justice and in public business.

Public bodies in Wales must submit schemes to the Board which describe the provision they make for the language. The aims of the Welsh Language Board seem to have general support. One particular area where emigrants from Wales continue to speak Welsh is Patagonia in the Chubut province of Argentina. The first settlers arrived in , hoping to found a 'New Wales'.

Many of their descendants are bilingual in Welsh and Spanish. Welsh has two main regional dialects: northern and southern. People sometimes claim that they can't understand speakers from the opposite end of the country but in reality there are very few problems. Emily, Llanelli I am encouraged and worried by many of these comments. It is nice to see that there are people who appreciate our culture. I can't understand why some native Welsh people have no interest in learning Welsh.

It is so easy these days thanks to many who have fought before us, to learn Welsh through S4C and through education. We should be grateful, and proud that we have a different language. I don't think it should be imposed on those who are not Welsh, but if I was not Welsh and came to live in Wales, I would try to learn through curiosity's sake!

I also think it's rude to speak Welsh in the presence of people who cannot. Let's not leave the people down who kept this language alive. There are a number of possible explanations for why Census results would be lower than survey results. For example, the Census is a statutory self-completion questionnaire, the APS is voluntary survey, which uses face-to-face and telephone interviews.

The APS results should not be compared against Census results, nor used to measure progress towards the Welsh Government target of a million Welsh speakers by The Welsh language strategy Cymraeg , clearly states that this target was based on census data and that progress towards this target will be monitored using future census data. A blog published by the Chief Statistician last year, gave a brief discussion on how to interpret the Welsh language data in the APS.

More information about the differences between the APS and the Census can be found in a bulletin presenting more detailed results on the Welsh language from the APS from to Details about how the survey is developed and carried out can be found on the Office for National Statistics website. From mid-March , the APS survey has been carried out by telephone only. A change in how a survey is administered can affect survey results.

This set of results cover the period from July to June From July to mid-March , around half of the interviews were carried out face-to-face and half by telephone. However, as a percentage of the population, Welsh speakers have fallen. The census does not record Welsh speakers outside of Wales. With the rise of the internet, and much more international travel, speaking Welsh while not living in Wales is easier than ever. It was estimated in that there were over , Welsh speakers living in England, and there are between 1, and 5, in the Welsh communities founded in Patagonia too.

The word penguin was originally applied to the great auk, which does have a white brow. The Welsh language is now the fastest growing language in the UK on the language learning app, Duolingo, according to the company. There is a tendency to think that Welsh speakers are older but that is not in fact the case. Thanks mainly to the growth of Welsh language education, the ability to speak Welsh is concentrated in the younger age groups.

The battle for the future of the Welsh language will be in ensuring that young people are given the opportunity to continue speaking it after they leave school. An earlier form of Welsh was used all over England to count sheep until the early 20th century. Until the 20th century, sheep-counting systems used all over England derived from Brythonic, an earlier form of Welsh which was spoken all over the present British Isles.

Counting sheep was regular work for shepherds who grazed them on open, common land. The counting numbers remained very similar to modern Welsh, for instance, peddera for four, pip for five and dix for ten.

For instance, one Welsh word for sweets is fferins which comes from the English fairing — a present bought at a fair. It will strike us who are used to having separate names for blue and green as odd, but the names for colours differ a lot between cultures and many languages have a single name for them.

Some languages group green and yellow together, and other languages group blue and grey together as a single colour. Other cultures have words for different shades of blue and green, as English does with red and pink, and consider them different colours.

Welsh used to consider blue and green a single colour — glas — and this tradition continues in many words such as glaswellt grass and tir glas green land. Later on, perhaps under the influence of other languages, Welsh borrowed the Latin word viridis to describe gwyrdd , or green, as blue and green went their separate ways!

Makes sense to me. Is it true? The Welsh counting system was still in use in the Yorkshire dales in my lifetime and Welsh was used in Cumbria and Yorkshire in the kingdoms of Rheged and Elmet as recently as AD, probably more recently than that. Near where I was brought up in Yorkshire there are many hills with Welsh in their names: Pendle Hill, which apparently means Hill, hill, hill in three different languages: Pen-y-ghent, and Pen Hill; in addition another Pen Hill in the Mendips.

As someone once said: War makes for strange bedfellows. No one will address this issue. Certainly not Plaid Cymru, who will bang on about climate change, trans rights , Islamophobia etc. Worthy issues, but nothing we can address without a Welsh state. Wales is being subsumed, by population movement. It is not too late, even now, but it needs someone to stand up for our communities: communities that identify themselves as Welsh.

This applies not only in Welsh speaking areas, but right across the country. Has anyone been to the north east, Ceredigion, Powys. We Welsh identifiers are becoming a minority. Local people in the eastern valleys are now being out priced by Bristolian commuters.

But none have courage to when only a few even whisper it in the back shadows of pubs under alcohol, quickly hushing such talk. Oh it was just the drink talking, ha ha ha, Mr. Im not one of those, Sir. The demand by parents … Read more ». There wil be no youngsters here soon or Welsh language communties as they are being subsumed by English migrants looking for the good life, white flighters, retirees, well off bespoke artisans, big landowners buying up estates..