The map comes from Welsh government 2021 census, number of people over age 3 who can speak Welsh (I assume fluent or at least comfortable).
You can really see the language is thriving in the North and the west wide of the country but less so in the urbanised south and Powys along the England border.
Let's say 100 years from now, so a couple generations ahead. Personally I think the map will continue to look similar, probably tourist and second home locations in the western and northern part being less Welsh spoken and maybe a small increase in the valleys, broadly.
Where I live in Gwynedd speaking Welsh is the norm and automatic. The Welsh spoken along the north coast decreases as you go East (as you would expect) but holds strong inland in places like Ruthin, Bala and Corwen. I lived in Aberystwyth and the Welsh language does well there too, I know further south, Tregargon, Llandovery and Ammanford have a strong Welsh language presence too.
What's the future? It's lovely seeing so many people taking an interest learning the language.
by Honk_Konk
28 comments
Divided by west and east.
There’s another map floating around that compares speakers living in Wales vs those born in Wales … the difference is striking: some of those areas that are darker on this map reveal that 100% of people born in those areas speak Welsh.
Welsh as the language of education is certainly a game changer.
With the GCSE curriculum changing.
Perhaps the GCSE will get better,
Which will boost the language
Currently the GCSE system is SHIT
OK, well it depends. The 1992 EU charter to protect minority languages no longer really applies to Wales – since you left the EU and all. So i suppose unless there are legal protections around the language there are really only two relevant options over time.
* Assimilation (some Welsh words will survive in a larger dialect)
* Generational Expiration (where each generation speaks less Welsh than before)
You could perhaps embrace bilingualism, but in the current climate you face being confused with “Foriners stealin ur jobs”. If reform wins the next election – in a day where; and i never thought i would say this, St Georges crosses are getting hung, painted and daubed in Wales, i don’t think they will prioritize the Welsh language.
TLDR: it looks bleak.
Are there places in Wales where people don’t speak English as a second language? I feel like a language can really only thrive if there are places where another language isn’t necessary.
Yma o Hyd Cont
This is the source of the map.
Despite all the fanfare about the Welsh language, the overall long and short term trends are that fewer people can use the language.
https://www.gov.wales/welsh-language-wales-census-2021-html
Welsh in schools is, of course, an important factor …. but I have several friends who were educated in Wales, did GCSE Welsh, and still can’t string a sentence together in the language because they’ve never really used it since leaving school.
WG prediction of population increase is to approximately 3.46 million by mid-2047. This is with record low birth rates in Wales for the last few years and likely continuing. eg driven by net migration to Wales. Without getting all reformy, wales probably needs to develop some policies that address support for the Welsh language in this predicted future.
Other comments the census is lower than the APS which shows more Welsh speaking, but census trend is down APS is up. The areas in dark blue have much lower spread out populations. The population of Aberystwyth that the OP mentions is 15,000 people, the areas of high usage are small communities compared to the larger urban centres of Wales. Wales’ main cities just seem to get ignored when people talk about the health of the language.
I think over next ten years we will see a public backlash on the funds being allocated to welsh language preservation, plus “welsh essential” in jobs, which perhaps could be welsh desirable instead.
…all in the face of rising living costs, inequality, and poverty.
I’m purposefully casting no judgement on this either way, but I am seeing the shoots of such sentiments, especially with reform on the rise here.
Well I hope that Welsh continues to thrive, it seemed to be growing strongly in the 90s and early 2000s but that seems to have slowed or even declined in more recent years.
I think a key element is that the Welsh economy needs to be strong and diverse to support a growing Welsh-speaking community. At the moment almost all the Welsh speakers I know have left Wales for work, where they are diluted into a non-Welsh-speaking population and don’t pass Welsh on to their children (if they have them). This means that the efforts in increasing Welsh learning and use through the education system don’t ‘snowball’ even when they are successful in increasing the use of Welsh among pupils.
Numbers of speakers will decrease for a few more decades until the older generations who were educated before Welsh medium education have died out. In a hundred years the percentage of the population speaking it will have stabilised and numbers will rise and fall depending on the overall population of Wales.
I think it will survive and we’ll probably see a growing number of people able to speak basic level Welsh (or at least have qualifications to that level) if centre left government persists and pursues promotion of the Welsh language, particularly through emersion.
However, I think its future as a community language is far more dependent on whether we’re willing to promote communities geographically spread across Wales which may be bilingual rather than truly Welsh medium. If we double down on protecting the language among current speakers in it’s heartlands I think it will slowly dwindle and fade as a practical language in community use.
I’m sure this will be a hard pill to swallow for some but I think that’s the tough choice ahead of us. Y Fro Gymraeg in the traditional sense just isn’t sustainable with increasing mobility and decreasing fertility, especially with it’s weak infrastructure. I’d far rather we put resources in to getting as many people as possible up to a conversational level so we can see increased use across Wales.
One positive sign is that, when looking into the data of which age categories speak Welsh, younger adults are more likely to speak it than those who are middle-aged. There’s definitely been a decline as older people have passed away, but that does indicate that the number of speakers likely won’t fall into a terminal decline of some kind among those who remain here, especially with strong government support.
Thanks to technology we now have, there are so many more translation, communication and educational resources available today than ever before. Hence, learning an additional language is far easier than ever before.
I can understand why so many Welsh people felt it was imperative to raise their children to speak English as a first language in the past, but that’s not the case anymore.
I not only believe the number of Welsh speakers/learners will rise, but many indigenous languages around the world will regain speakers too (for example, Manx in the Isle of Man, Irish in Ireland, ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi in Hawaii, Māori in New Zealand, and many Native American languages in USA).
The percentages for under 40s are far higher than over 40s. The baby boomer generation is the least Welsh speaking generation in Welsh history, so the fall in percentage is largely due to that generation becoming the dominant demographic. As time passes and more of that generation pass away the percentage should begin to rebound.
I see opportunities and limitations for Welsh. On the one hand Welsh is far more commonly spoken in our large urban areas now than in recent decades, especially Cardiff, which is very good for the long term prospects of the language. However it is increasingly likely that Welsh may lose its dominant status in the North West as older people move there from outside of the area to retire and younger locals leave for better job and education prospects and due to unaffordable housing costs.
It is amazing that Welsh still exists, the origins of Britain.
Er gwaetha, pawb a phopeth…
The world is heading for a US English monoculture.
Be a shame to lose it now.
Defnyddiwch fe
Unlike most on here I am quite pessimistic. If many of us who can speak Welsh choose not to, then no amount of WG policy can change the long term outcome, regardless of who is in power. We’ve not really adjusted to the changes in the media: S4C was a triumph at the time but things have moved on. I’d rather see Welsh embedded in mainstream media too so that it is seen as normal. E.g. Interviewing someone for BBC Wales? – let them speak Welsh and put English subtitles on the screen. We need to move Welsh out of it’s silo
im in the south & Cymraeg is definitely growing. i can have a complete conversation with my 5yr old nephew, which to me is incredible. Only when i was 13 or 14 was i really getting the grasp. Gower way have really picked it up too ime
Doesn’t £50+ million a year of tax money get spent on promoting the welsh language to keep it alive? Seems like it should be getting more people speaking welsh than this.
If it’s not a stupid question, can I ask what the situation was like a couple of generations ago? I understand (and please correct me if I’m wrong) that there were worries the language was in decline in the nineteen and early twentieth centuries, but there were efforts to reverse this decline, leading to the passing of the Welsh Language Act 1967 and subsequent legislation.
I’m getting on a bit now and have visited Wales many times over the years (my dad was from the Wrexham area so I had family there) and I can’t remember hearing Welsh spoken very often, if at all. Contrast that with my most recent visit in July when I overheard the young lad behind the bar chatting in Welsh to his friend. When I asked him if this is a Welsh speaking area (Dinas Mawddwy) he said he thought about 70% of the people spoke Welsh as a first language and that he only spoke English when necessary at the pub where he worked. I was really pleased to hear that a language native to these islands is apparently thriving – as it should be – less than two hours from my home. It also made me realise that I really should learn more about Welsh, as I have a better understanding of German and Italian than I do of a language from “home”. So much so that I’ve decided to try to learn Welsh and to see if you really can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
Anyway, sorry for the waffle but I’d be really interested to hear if people here are aware of any increase in the number of Welsh speakers in their, or their parents’, lifetime.
I hope the percentages rise but perhaps they will stay around the same. There are a lot more people interested in learning Welsh now, but there are also more and more people from other countries (mostly England) living in Wales who are not interested in learning the language. Of course not all of them though, like my husband who is American and speaks Welsh very well. It isn’t widely spoken where I am (Colwyn Bay) and I wasn’t raised speaking it unfortunately, I’ve learnt a lot more as an adult. My mum was raised not too far away in Dolgarrog and her family were first language Welsh. I’d love to live in Gwynedd
I think it will improve.
I grew up in Cardiff and didnt have a huge expsoure/need for Welsh, so i dont speak it. I can vaguely understand bits of written text, but that’s it.
Ill be sending my son to a welsh school in south wales in the next year or so and im genuinely excited to go on the language journey with him.
I remember seeing statistics that indicated that Welsh was growing as a language more quickly than most others in the UK – not just in Wales itself but along the borders too. Additionally it’s thr most succesful of the “celtic” languages at L6 (first language) level as well, simply by dint of it being a growing language as opposed to a dying one like the Gaelics and Breton, or dead and revived like Cornish.
I think that’s probably an encouraging thought, specifically with regards to Welsh itself at least.
OP: “…can speak Welsh (I assume fluent or at least comfortable)” – that sounds a way optimistic assumption
In the distant future ? It will be another language (the best one) you can download to your brain nano-chip.
Welsh is on the rise, easily. The demographics of it doesnt do it justice, especially with that map of native born people compared to general population
I’m a passionate adult Welsh learner. Not fluent yet, but I can express most ideas in Welsh.
But I’m worried about the children in non-Welsh-medium schools. Many of them complain about the teaching of Welsh there, and many of them don’t like learning it. It reminds me of how unpopular Irish is in Ireland or French in Anglophone Canada. Unfortunately, I have to admit their complaints are reasonable sometimes. I know some teachers are not very qualified. I hope it could be changed.
I think current WG policy is going to ruin it.
There is a strong incentive for anyone who can speak Welsh to move to higher-paying areas in South Wales, thanks to government policies on language in government and teaching jobs. This will inevitably drain the Welsh-speaking cultural heartlands, and have minimal impact here in South Wales.
The language has also been turned from something that many people (including me) broadly support and wish to see flourish to a political and ideological wedge issue and a source of cultural one-upmanship.
It’s all great until you see just how much taxpayers money is being spent, and how much it is skewing the job market and school quality.
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