Welsh
From mother tongue to meal ticket
Cardiff and Faenol
Why the Welsh language is making a comeback
SCARCELY a word of English was uttered last week in Faenol, a grand estate
that hosted the Eisteddfod, a sort of nationalistic arts festival for Wales. Nor
is English the local language of choice. In this region, Welsh takes precedence
on road signs—and the English words are often illegible, thanks to the patriotic
application of spray paint. In the county of Gwynedd as a whole, 70% of people
can speak Welsh. Walk into a shop here, and the conversation is likely to begin:
“Ga i helpu?”
Given the nearness of England, an infamous linguistic coloniser, the mere
survival of such an ancient language is remarkable. Odder still, Welsh is
holding steady. Between 1991 and 2001, the share of the population who claimed
to be able to speak the language actually went up from 19% to 21%—the first
increase in over a century. And the proportion of Welsh-speakers is likely to
increase further, since teenagers are much more likely to be able to speak the
language than their parents.
That ought to be a source of pride in a country where identity is closely tied
to the ancestral tongue. While Scottish nationalists demand political
independence, the Welsh just want everyone to speak the lingo. Since 1993,
public agencies have been obliged to provide a bilingual service, even in areas
where few people understand Welsh. Court cases can be heard entirely in the
language, if the plaintiff or the defendant chooses. Midwives even encourage new
parents to speak the tongue to their babies.
The Welsh Language Board has information on the
Welsh Language Act and on the
2001 census.
Cymuned is opposed to what it calls English colonisation. The
Welsh Language Society
is a pressure group. A report by
Andrew
Henley and another for the
Welsh Assembly
showed that Welsh speakers earn more.
Yet Welsh-language campaigners are in a dismal mood. Aran Jones of Cymuned
(Community) believes the language is in a much worse state than national
statistics suggest. In the hilly north and west of Wales, where the native
language is strongest, the Welsh-speaking population is being diluted by
migration (which Mr Jones calls “colonisation”) from England. Children may be
familiar with Welsh, but only in the sense that English schoolchildren are
familiar with French—as an academic discipline, not as a natural tongue.
Welsh is, indeed, slowly dying in the heartlands. Between 1991 and 2001, Welsh
speakers declined in number in the five mostly rural counties where they had
been most common. As a rule of thumb, say linguists, a minority language will
die out if it is spoken by fewer than 70% of the population. Ominously, the
number of wards where that density was achieved fell from 87 to 58 during the
1990s.
Nationalists are divided over what to do. The extreme 1960s and 1970s response,
which consisted of blowing up pipelines and burning holiday cottages owned by
Anglophones, is out of style. The Welsh Language Society, a pressure group that
has seen many of its demands incorporated into law, wants restrictions on
house-building in Welsh-speaking areas and a language act that would require
businesses to deal with customers in their preferred language. One of its
members went on hunger strike during the Eisteddfod, just to show it was
serious. Cymuned believes still more drastic measures are needed. It wants
independence for the Welsh-speaking heartlands.
The battle for the heartlands is bound to end in defeat. But Welsh is growing in
places where it was virtually unknown a few decades ago. In Cardiff, where the
signs are bilingual (but, significantly, English takes precedence over Welsh),
the proportion of people who can speak the language has increased from 5.8% to
10.9% in the past two decades. More than a tenth of the population of Wales
lives in the city. Welsh is also growing rapidly in the former industrial and
coalmining area of south Wales known as the Valleys.
That may partly be because these are the ugliest bits of Wales, so English
settlers tend to steer clear of them. But the main reason is probably the growth
of Welsh schooling since the 1960s. There are now 448 primary schools and 54
secondary schools that teach mostly or entirely in Welsh, many of them in the
south-east. They tend to be good schools, so many middle-class parents who do
not speak Welsh patronise them.
As a result, says Colin Williams, a Cardiff University linguist, the schoolroom
is replacing the home as the main pillar of the language. And pupils pick up
more than Welsh. Because the demanding parents who send their children to
Welsh-language schools tend to have demanding children, the schools are
nurturing a new generation of articulate nationalists.
Another reason for the growth of Welsh has to do with the job market. Many of
the best paid, most stable and most interesting jobs in Wales demand knowledge
of the language—or are thought to demand it, which is just as important. Thanks
to the language laws, the country's swollen public sector is hungry for
bilinguals; so are the burgeoning government-supported Welsh media. According to
the 2001 census, 20% of people employed by culture, media or sporting outfits
could speak, read and write Welsh, compared with just over 13% of all people
aged 16-74. That, in turn, encourages politicians and other public figures to
learn the language. Lisa Francis, a Conservative member of the Welsh Assembly,
says she has given more interviews in Welsh than in her native tongue. All but
two of her ten colleagues speak Welsh or are learning it.
Welsh-speakers tend to be middle managers or small-business owners (see chart).
They are less likely to be found in the highest ranks of business and the
professions, but they are also much less likely to be unemployed than monoglot
English speakers. High demand means that they earn more, too. A recent study by
Andrew Henley of Swansea University found that, after controlling for residence
and education, Welsh speakers earned 6-8% more than the competition. Another
study, for the Welsh Assembly, estimated the earnings premium at more than 10%.
There is a message here for other linguistic nationalists, from the Québécois to
the Basques. Forget bombings and hunger strikes: to ensure the survival of a
language, create a closed shop.
