Amount of Welsh in Wales: Question for First Language Welsh Lurkers predominantly

A question for everyone living in Wales really - but more so aimed at those who are more First Language/Native speakers rather than learners, as you’ve probably been speaking it long enough to notice.

I know there is the Census taken every ten years, and we’re about half way through the period between census’s (what is the plural of census? censai? who knows!?!) but with the advent of things like SSiW, DuoLingo and S4C offering up a much better learning programme than it used to in previous years and the rise of the Welsh football team etc - has this had any affect on the number of speakers you’ve noticed around the country? Are you starting to see and hear more speakers of the language yourself? More learners?

Before moving away, I started hearing a lot more Welsh around Cardiff for example, than I ever did in the previous 30 odd years I was living in and around there and I’m convinced not all of that was because I was more ‘attuned’ to hearing it now I was learning.

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I’ve wondered this myself. It’ll be interesting to hear people’s comments.

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This isn’t an answer to your question (!), but it might help with some of the information you are seeking.

We don’t just have the Census to go on - there are other tools being used to track people’s ability to speak Welsh. (Remember, though, that you can’t measure one against another as the scales are a little different - so the Census can only be measured against the Census to discern a trend, the National Survey for Wales against itself, and so on.)

So there’s various sets of data from StatsWales, based (I think!) on the Annual Population Survey carried out by the Office for National Statistics. For example, here’s “Percentage of adults who speak Welsh daily and can speak more than just a few words by age and year”:

https://statswales.gov.wales/Catalogue/National-Survey-for-Wales/percentageofadultswhospeakwelshdailyandcanspeakmorethanjustafewwords-by-age-year

There are other sources of data on the main Welsh Language page here (many of them Census details, of course):
https://statswales.gov.wales/Catalogue/Welsh-Language

There’s lots more at the Welsh Governments Statistics & Research site here:
http://gov.wales/statistics-and-research/?topic=Welsh+language&lang=en

One documents I’ve found particularly helpful is the Welsh Language Use 2013-15 Survey:
http://gov.wales/statistics-and-research/Welsh-language-use-survey/?lang=en

Bear in mind, though, that this survey found that only 6% of Welsh speakers had learned the language as an adult (i.e. not at home as a child, or during schooling up to the age of 18). Frustratingly, the parallel information is not explicitly supplied in the previous survey 2004-06 (archived here: http://www.esds.ac.uk/doc/7477/mrdoc/pdf/7477_methodology_in_english.pdf, relevant graph on p.32) so direct comparison isn’t possible.

Anyway … hours of fun with statistics, if you’re interested!

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The general trends, though, seem to show that there are fewer Welsh-speakers in rural areas (which includes the ‘Bro Cymraeg’) and more in urban areas (including Cardiff). More people are now ‘new speakers’ of Welsh than ‘native speakers’ (mainly because of Welsh-medium education). Fewer people consider themselves to be fluent speakers. Fewer families are passing Welsh on to their children. There is a substantial drop in the percentage of Welsh ‘speakers’ between leaving school and around the age of 30 (possibly because of migration; possibly because of Welsh being a school-based skill that is not used in post-education life and so forgotten … a bit like me and quadratic equations).

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I do. It’s censuses. :slight_smile:

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Oh good! The language police haven’t managed to latinise it! :laughing:

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You learn something new every day and this is certainly my new thing today!

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How annoying :smile: It is a Latin word, and the plural is census - I blame my education for preferring the old-fashioned ways…

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In that case @louis we’d all better start doing the same for that other fourth declension noun prospectus, hadn’t we? But in God’s name, where will it end?? :smile:

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Most likely, with the end of civilization as we know it :wink:

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and @louis, I feel for you, but what about (omni)bus? Or isn’t that fourth declension? Maybe they’d only come one at a time if the plural was ‘bus’? :wink:

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That’s not even a nominative :slight_smile:

It’s the dative plural of omnis “all”, thus meaning something like “for all”.

I imagine it would give a proper Roman the shudders to even speculate how to decline it.

Similarly to “agenda”, which is a plural noun in Latin (“things to be done”); so speaking of “the agendas for the next three meanings” would be very odd.

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And it’s third declension anyway :slight_smile:

Oh isn’t this fun!?

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It reminds me of watching my mother and brother dangle off steep pieces of rock, claiming that they were enjoying themselves…:wink:

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At least Our Favourite Language hasn’t got declensions, eh? :slight_smile:

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Although most varieties of grammar can instill the same kind of horror in me…:wink:

I always rather enjoyed watching my mother and brother narrowly avoiding death, though, and I take quite a lot of pleasure out of witnessing discussions amongst grammarians…:slight_smile:

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You can even avoid conjugation a lot of the time! Wnes i fwyta - dw i’n bwyta - bydda i’n bwyta/wna i fwyta.

Little need to knock around with any of this “bwytais i” business if you don’t want to.

That said, I was a little disappointed that there’s not at least a case distinction in the pronouns (as English still does with he/him, I/me etc.).

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We will have to get you some therapy for this, @aran - you are missing out on a wide world of lovely fun. Honest.

And what are you going to do about the little grammar lessons I am thinking of putting on youtube soon? I’m not saying you need them, but surely you’re not going to avoid them? Are you? Surely?! :confused:

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Absolutely true - a dodge that is both neat and perfectly legitimate, so what’s not to like?

And the ddaru option is even simpler! :slight_smile:

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I will have to find which thread I was in when mentioning how bad I was at Latin, as this exchange and my ‘omnibus’ question, proves it! I thought it just meant ‘all’!

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