Being bilingual is a help in the job market:
Figure 3.2 Source: State of Welsh Language Research Report (2000:16)
Furthermore, the researchers of the report asked questions to employees in order to gauge the extent to which employers employ bilingual personnel for specific purposes:
Figure 3.3 Source: State of Welsh Language Research Report (2000:15)
It is conspicuous that in the sectors where employees are dealing with clients and customers, the numbers are slightly higher. However, surprisingly few employers seem to employ bilingual sales people. Although there is no evidence for it, this might be due to the regional distribution of the Welsh language, as it was shown in chapter one. Customer care-centres, on the other hand, are often centrally based and these employees are supposed to deal with clients from various regions in Wales. Furthermore, there is a huge difference between public bodies and private companies. The explanation here might again be the fact that the Welsh language act, which was agreed upon in 1993, places a duty on the public sector to treat Welsh and English on an equal basis, when providing services to the public in Wales. In other words, a citizen can ring up virtually any office of the public body and expect to be served in English or Welsh, according to his or her preference. This policy has been adopted by more and more private companies as well in the last years.
3.1 Language status (within / without)
According to Aitchison and Carter (2000:13), the status of a language can be defined as “[…] the evaluation of the language […].” Originally, one would have to make a distinction between the language status from within and without. However, it seems not sufficient to simply have a look at the status of the language as seen by the population of Wales and to compare it with the status as seen by the population outside of Wales. This approach might be useful in the case where a language is spoken in an ethnically and geographically restricted territory. As far as Wales is concerned, where we have a bilingual society in which the minority language is spoken by only 21.5 percent of the population, it seems far more useful to expand the original concept and to analyse the status of the language from the point of view of the Welsh-speakers and from the point of view of the English-monolingual-speakers in Wales. After all, it seems that one has to analyse here also the attitude of a linguistic group to their language and interpret the reasons which might have lead to this situation.
A good starting point to measure the attitude to the Welsh language seems to be an interpretation of what the Welsh Language Board () calls the “general goodwill towards the language […]”. As a matter of fact, in Wales, there seems to be a huge goodwill towards the Welsh language. Detailed all-Wales research conducted on behalf of the Welsh language board in 1995 showed that the overwhelming majority of those questioned felt that the language was something to be proud of and supported its use. In their State of Welsh Language Research Report (2000:8), which was set up five years later in order to measure the changes since the above mentioned all-Wales research in 1995, Beaufort on behalf of the Welsh language board could underline this strong support for the Welsh language.
As figure 3.4 makes quite clear, the general support (Welsh-speakers and non-Welsh-speakers) for the Welsh language across Wales was, at 67 percent, still very widespread in the year 2000. Even amongst the non-Welsh-speakers, as the researchers point out, there was a clear majority supporting the use of the language at 61 percent. After all, only 5 percent of all respondents clearly and directly opposed the use of Welsh. Not surprisingly, all respondents opposing the use of Welsh belonged to the group of non-Welsh-speakers. Thus, figure 3.4 also shows that the degree of support is not equally strong in all regions. However, if we link this figure to the demography of Wales in terms of the geographical distribution of the Welsh speakers such as shown in chapter one, it seems quite obvious that the support of the language is high in the north and west of Wales, where the majority of the Welsh speakers live. On the other hand, it is surprising that the support for the Welsh language in the south- and south-west of Wales shows the second but highest ratings.
I Support the Language: “strongly” and “mostly” (%)
Figure 3.4 Source: The State of Welsh Language Research Report (2000:9)
So far, we have dealt with the status of Welsh both from the point of view of those belonging to and those not belonging to the group of Welsh speakers. As was argued earlier in this paper, this analysis needs to be expanded. In other words, a more revealing picture of the language status can be gained by focusing on those people who use Welsh regularly. Aitchison and Carter (2000:127) basically support this idea. They point out that “of all the domains that are central to the maintenance and reproduction of language none is more critical than that of the family – the hearth around which discourse takes place and socialization is nurtured.” In other words, the encouraging of the use of a language inside the family is the foremost important part of keeping a language alive. Therefore, let us have a closer look at how the Welsh-speakers, the group-insiders, use language in everyday life. We will do this by focusing on how the language is used inside the family of Welsh-speakers first and will then evaluate the role of the Welsh language outside the home and at work.
The frequency of Welsh spoken at home, outside the home and at the workplace was a further focus point of the State of Welsh Language Research Report (2000:11-14). As figure 3.5 reveals, speaking Welsh during a meal is relatively common. These numbers contain the data of both the fluent Welsh-speakers and those who judge themselves to be less proficient. If we have a look at the numbers for the fluent Welsh-speakers separately, it seems that the amount of interaction might indeed be linked to the degree of proficiency in Welsh, since the fluent Welsh speakers use the Welsh language clearly more often as a medium for family interaction. Another interesting thing which can be revealed from this figure is though that regardless of the degree of proficiency, Welsh seems to be used mostly for interactions during meals and to a lesser extent for other family conversations.
Figure 3.5 Source: State of Welsh Language Research Report (2000:13)
When it comes to speaking Welsh on a number of different occasions outside the home, the State of Welsh Language Report reveals some interesting details, as figure 3.6 shows. The statistics make a distinction between the actual use in these situations (how often Welsh actually is spoken), the ideal use (how often Welsh would be spoken if the option was available) and the self confidence of the Welsh speakers in terms of the ability to speak Welsh. It seems that as an average throughout Wales, 54 percent of all respondents use Welsh at least some of the time in the indicated situations, whereas the percentage of those who use it all the time is with an average of 26 percent significantly smaller. The interesting thing is, however, that as an average 4 out of 5 respondents (80 percent) said they would use Welsh in these situations, if the option was available (this number consists of these respondents who reported that they actually did use Welsh in these situations, added to the number of those who said no, they did generally not use it in these situations but would if they had the opportunity), whereby as an average 53 percent would use it all the time. Not surprisingly, the percentage of those who would use Welsh sometimes is very similar to the percentage of those who feel very- or fairly confident in this language. However, apparently as an average almost 26 percent (these 80 percent who would use it sometimes minus these 54 percent who do use it sometimes) of all respondents would use the Welsh language in these situations at least some of the time but do not have the opportunity to do so!
Use of Welsh by Welsh speakers in different situations:
Percentage of actual - / ideal use
Figure 3.6 Source: State of Welsh Language Research Report (2000:13)
It would be interesting to have the 2001 proportions for the different local authority areas or counties (compare appendix 1) in Wales in order to see whether there are any differences. Based on the 1992 Welsh Social Survey, Colin Williams (in Morris Jones and Singh Ghuman 1995:57-61) did exactly that. According to his findings, the percentage of those who used Welsh mostly or all the time was at 79 percent and 71.1 percent respectively highest in Gwynedd and Dyfed. The proportions were significantly lower for Powys and Clwyd at 51 percent and 40.9 percent respectively. Thus, the percentage points for the south-western county West Glamorgan and the three south-eastern counties Gwent, Mid- and South Glamorgan together were even lower at 32.8 percent and 33.1 percent respectively. Interestingly, whereas in West Glamorgan, only 6.9 percent of all respondents rarely found any reason or occasion to speak Welsh, this proportion was significantly higher for Gwent, Mid- and South Glamorgan at 15.3 percent.
As was said earlier on, these findings are based on the 1992 Welsh social survey. Unfortunately, there are, to our knowledge, no available statistics for 2001. However, if we link Morris Jones’ results to the numbers of Welsh-speakers in the respective counties in 2001, as was shown in chapter one by the help of figure 2.1, we can assume that the number of people who use Welsh most of the time or sometimes in the respective counties has changed in the decade between 1991 and 2001. As was argued, the numbers of Welsh speakers in the southern counties South Glamorgan and West Glamorgan as well as in the south-eastern county of Gwent have increased, whereas it decreased in the western county of Dyfed. Therefore, we might cautiously assume that the number of these people in the southern counties who use Welsh at least some of the time has slightly increased as well in the last decade.
3.2 Social- and sociohistorical status.
In the original, ethnolinguistic approach underlying this paper, one has to make a distinction between the social status and the sociohistorical status of a group of language speakers. Aitchison and Carter (2000:13) define the social status as “[…] the degree of esteem a linguistic group affords to itself” and the sociohistorical status as “[…] the symbolic value of the language”. In the sociolinguistic adaptation of these concepts, it is not so easy to make this distinction because both concepts have much to do with the belief of a language group about their language. Therefore, the sociohistorical status and the social status of the Welsh language are treated in the same chapter.
In the nineteenth century, industrialization brought many non-Welsh speakers to the industrial areas, mainly to be found in the south and the south-east of Wales, which certainly weakened the position of the Welsh language. This trend, however, was not quite the same for most of the other Welsh regions, as Barbour (in Barbour and Carmichael 2000:41) explains: “[…] in many areas where the majority remained Welsh-speaking, […] incomers actually learned the language in order to integrate.” Nevertheless, the increasing popularity of the English language remained a threat to the Welsh language. The presence of a monoglot elite in Great Britain, which commonly erroneously viewed bilingualism as a problem, made many Welsh speakers have second thoughts about the future status and value of their language. As Barbour outlines, “[many] bilinguals […] would then bring up their children to be monoglot English-speakers, in the belief that they were thereby enhancing their prospects.” Furthermore, the authors of the “Reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales”, published in 1847, caused great resentments in Wales: This official commission depicted a population trapped in barbarism by the barrier of its language. As Barbour notes, “not only did many English speakers associate the minority language with poverty and ignorance, but this belief was also internalised by Welsh-speakers.” It is not surprising, therefore, that as a consequence of this report, Welsh was prohibited in school because of a confused and damaging view of the best interest of the pupils.
Barbour (2000:40-43) came to the conclusion that the presence of religion, in particular the role of the church, has been very important for the recent history of the Welsh-speaking population in Wales. He (2000:41) points out that “in order to popularize Protestantism, the English authorities agreed to the publication of the Bible in Welsh, which appeared in 1588. Since then, Welsh-speaking Protestantism has been of enormous cultural significance.” Catholicism had become pretty insignificant in Wales and the shared belief about the rightness of Protestantism could be expressed through the common language Welsh. As Barbour (2000:41) goes on, “[…] the Welsh language became central to popular religious observance with Bible-reading, preaching, and prolific hymn writing and singing in the language.” Figure 3.1 shows the amount of divine services held in Welsh only, sometimes in Welsh and sometimes in English and in English only throughout Wales in 1981.
Figure 3.1 Source: (census of the churches 1982 )
Unfortunately, newer numbers than these from 1981 are not available. However, for the spread of Protestantism in 1982, it can be said that the Welsh language was clearly not an important means anymore. Whereas 49 percent of all Protestant divine services were held exclusively in English, 51 percent of the services where at least some of the time held in Welsh (whereby 35 percent exclusively in Welsh). Thus on an average 51.7 percent of all church services in Wales were held in English only, some 14 percent at least some of the time in Welsh and 34.1 percent in Welsh only. The most important churches in terms of holding services at least some of the time in Welsh were the Presbyterian Church of Wales and the Union of Welsh Independents at 88 percent and 92 percent respectively.
Around the beginning of the century and before, when about 50 percent of the population of Wales were able to speak Welsh (and presumably some more people able to understand spoken Welsh) and people would go to divine services regularly, the role of the church for the maintenance of the Welsh language was enormously important. However nowadays, most people, especially young people, do probably not go to church so often anymore. Therefore, the church can not be seen as the crucial institution where the Welsh language is living anymore. The most important factor in terms of keeping the Welsh language alive is young people and in order to reach them, other means than the medium of religion must be found. In chapter four (institutional support / mass media), we will have a closer look at Welsh-spoken institutions which are attractive for young people.
Another, very important sociohistorical factor is the realisation of the language through literature. In modern day ethnology, a society is often defined as consisting of three basic components: People do not allow incest, they maintain death-rituals and they tell themselves histories about their past. As far as the last point is concerned, it is known that the Celtic tribes had had a very strong oral tradition to transmit beliefs and knowledge to the next generation. However, as the “An Introduction to Welsh literature” ()
explains, “[we can recognize] that from evidence of surviving works by sixth century poets Taliesin and Aneirin, Welsh can claim to be the oldest attested vernacular literature in Europe.” They go on by making the point that in fact, both Taliesin and Aneirin were inheritors of an old and sophisticated bardic tradition common to the Celtic people throughout Europe. Altogether, Wales possesses a rich and impressive literature written in Welsh, including many poems, religious literature and above all, as was said earlier, since 1588 the bible. Moreover, Wales also was the place of origin for numerous writers who were writing in Welsh, such, as for example, the poet Dylan Thomas. Thus, the famous author of the epos “The Lord of the Rings”, JRR Tolkien, is known to have studied Welsh language. Very recent research at Cardiff University suggested that the artificial language of the inhabitants of his “Kingdom of the Elves”, which figures in his epos, has a great deal of similarities with the Welsh language.
3.3 Young people and their language use
So far, we have dealt with people’s attitudes to the Welsh language on the one side and with the actual use of the language on the other side. Although representative, this has happened in a fairly general manner. An important point which has not been dealt with so far is one particular sub-group of language users, namely young people. As will be shown later in chapter four (education), an enormous effort is being made in order to guarantee the transmission of the language through the medium of teaching in primary- and secondary schools as well as evening classes. As was shown in chapter one (demography), the number of Welsh-speakers has increased in the last decade. However, as far as the young people, who are the main carriers of the language into the future, are concerned, making sure that they learn the language at school is not enough. In order to guarantee that young people do not only acquire Welsh-language-skills but also speak Welsh in daily life, it must be guaranteed at all costs that this very sensible sub-group of language users has enough possibilities to use the language in their social settings and everyday life.
First of all, the point has to be made that for whatever activity the Welsh language is used, if the user lacks proficiency, he or she is very unlikely to use it in less formal circumstances as in a pub, for watching TV or listening to the radio. Therefore, the teaching of Welsh at schools throughout Wales must definitely be a basic component of all efforts to make young people use the Welsh language. Concerning the attitude to the language, Colin Baker (1992:74-75), who researched young people’s attitudes to Welsh, concludes his findings with the result that in general, the attitude to Welsh amongst the studied 11 to 14 year olds was favourable. In order to demonstrate the use of the language by this group, Baker split up these general comments into a group whose comments on the language were more favourable and into a group whose comments were less favourable. Those who showed a more positive attitude were young people who were mainly involved in traditional Welsh culture and books. On the other side, the more negative comments stated that the use of Welsh was rather unimportant for playing sports and watching TV and videos. Baker (1992:74) sees in the latter group a reason for concern by making the point that “both contexts, sport and mass media, tend to be major items in many teenagers’ lives.”
Heini Gruffud (in Williams 2000:173) shares Baker’s point of view that education is absolutely crucial for the maintenance of a language. According to him, “education must be at the heart of language planning in the context of reversing language shift, as acquisition of the endangered language is essential before any long-term progress can be made in furthering the use of that language in the various aspects of community life.” Gruffud’s results concerning the use of Welsh of young people in preferred leisure time activities are very discouraging. In 1996, he (2000:188) conducted a research project amongst 60 percent of the sixteen-to eighteen-year-old bilingual people within a 20 mile radius of Swansea, including the former county of West Glamorgan as well as eastern Carmarthenshire. An interesting part of this huge project was the amount these young people weekly and daily watched TV and listened to radio and CDs. Generally, the results can be summarised as follows: The overwhelming majority of all respondents watched English TV, read English magazines and books and listened to English radio. Concerning the TV-consumption, Gruffud revealed that 89 percent of all respondents said they would watch at least one hour’s Welsh television per week, whereas only 8 percent would view more than ten hours. These proportions can be compared with these 88 percent of the respondents who stated to regularly watch more than 10 hours English television a week. The results for those listening to Welsh radio are even more discouraging. 80 percent of all respondents did not listen to Welsh radio at all, as compared with only 8 percent who never listened to English radio. About 7 percent would listen more than one hour weekly to Welsh radio whereas 82 percent listened to this amount of English programmes. Concerning the listening habits when it comes to CDs, Gruffud reported that 87 percent listened daily to English music, while only 3.4 percent would daily listen to Welsh music. Furthermore, 98 percent said they would weekly listen to English music as compared with 13 percent who listened to Welsh music every week.
These numbers are a reason for concern. The point must be made, however, that at least the Welsh music station Radio Cymru has in the last few years changed its programmes in order to attract more young listeners. Also, the Welsh television station S4C has made an effort to make its broadcasts more attractive for young people. These measures and further suggestions regarding the promotion of the Welsh language through the medium of mass-media will be dealt with in greater detail in chapter four (mass-media).
4. Institutional support
4.1 Mass Media
Once more, when it comes to institutional support, the original theoretical approach of language vitality makes a difference between a formal support, including the roles of the mass media, the education and the government services, and an informal support, including the roles of the culture, the religion and the industry. The two latter domains, religion and industry, were dealt with earlier in this paper. Therefore, they will not be taken up again here. In the following, let us firstly have a look at the role of the mass media.
As was said earlier in this paper, there is a Welsh-spoken radio station, Radio Cymru (), which reaches 8 percent of the population or 185.000 people weekly, whereby each listener on an average tunes in for 14 hours a week. There also is a television station, which partly offers Welsh programmes in Wales. Thus, there are numerous local, volunteer run newspapers. Unfortunately, there is no printed daily newspaper in Welsh. However, following an initiative by the BBC, a daily newspaper was recently launched in the Internet. According to the BBC Wales (), “new technology has made it possible to realise what has been a dream for Welsh-language journalists and supporters of the language for more than a century.” The newspaper is produced by a group of BBC journalists and does not only contain pictures but also articles by numerous famous Welsh personalities. Especially for exile-Welsh, this service is a great chance as it features live-stream video sequences and news which can be watched, with the adequate software, from all over the world. Although one can remain doubtful whether for Wales, an online newspaper can be seen as equal to a printed daily newspaper, BBC Wales controller Menna Richards () calls this achievement “the biggest development in the history of communication in the Welsh language for decades.”
The most important media in terms of spread and maintenance of the Welsh language is doubtlessly the television in Wales. As was said in chapter three, the church can nowadays not be seen anymore as the unbeaten central place where people would come together regularly to worship and to socialise. Whereas at the time when this was so, the church played a crucial role in maintaining the language by reading the bible in Welsh, people must be attracted by other ways nowadays. Since, as was shown in chapter 3.4, the Welsh youth spends several hours in front of the TV every week, this is the second but most crucial point, after education, where the efforts to maintain the language must begin. Let us therefore in the following have a look at the history and the role of the Welsh Television Channel S4C.
The Welsh Fourth Television Channel S4C was established in 1981 as the result of continuing complaints by English monolingual inhabitants of Wales who did not understand the Welsh programmes, which were broadcasted daily on the main BBC channel, BBC Wales, and on the ITV Channel HTV Wales. These two channels could be seen all over Great Britain and for the Welsh broadcasts, the English programmes were simply displayed. After all, as the statistics in chapter one showed, the English monolingual speaking population was in 1981 at 81.5 percent in the waste majority. Therefore, a solution needed to be found, as the then director of S4C, Owend Edwards (1994:15), put it: “Welsh-speakers, non-Welsh speakers and broadcasters had become heartily fed-up with a compromise which pleased no-one and irritated everyone. [Especially] the non-Welsh-speaker […] was heartily fed-up with having his evening’s viewing interrupted by programmes in a language he or she did not understand […].”
According to their own judgment, the makers of S4C () are confident that their station “makes a dynamic contribution to the linguistic, cultural, social, economic and public life of Wales.” In order to guarantee this, the people responsible for the programme promise to broadcast the following amount of different programme-genres a year (taken from ):
- at least 30 minutes of news programming daily in peak times during the week, with 15 minute bulletins on Saturdays and Sundays
- at least 100 hours of original drama during the year
- on average, at least an hour a week of factual programmes in peak time
- at least 110 hours of original programming for children during the year
- at least one documentary series annually, as part of its religious programming.
Complying with its obligations under the 1990 broadcasting act, ten hours of programme are broadcasted from the license fee by the BBC. The other twenty-four hours of Welsh-language output is commissioned from independent producers. Altogether, the Welsh-speaking population in Wales can weekly choose from 34 hours of Welsh-speaking TV programmes. Moreover, S4C has a statutory obligation to broadcast a majority of Welsh language output during peak viewing hours, which are from 6 pm to 10 pm. During the rest of the time, S4C broadcasts the English-speaking programmes of the nationwide television chain Channel 4.
As was said above, S4C receives its different outputs in Welsh from two main sources: The independent sector and the BBC. The fact that most of S4C’s Welsh programmes are produced by independent companies is important. Every other year, the channel’s programme needs for the following two years are being published and the independent companies are asked to propose programme ideas. By doing so, S4C makes sure that to a large extent, the programmes are in every respect independent from England on the one hand and on the other hand that local production companies have the chance to realise their ideas, which after all also creates interesting job opportunities for the Welsh speaking population.
In order to get people to watch TV in Welsh, it is very important that the programme is attractive, especially when it comes to young viewers. According to Heini Gruffudd (in Williams 2000:182), “a detailed study of viewing habits revealed that soap operas, comedies, films and popular music were the favourite programmes.” The part of the BBC in the weekly output on S4C does indeed include a soap opera in Welsh, which is set in Wales and which seems to be quite popular amongst young people. Furthermore, for the very young viewers, channel 4 regularly broadcasts programmes aimed at this particular group, including cartoons.
Heini Gruffudd (in Williams 2000: 179) is not satisfied with the range of media available for the youth in Welsh. He argues that regarding the younger generation, Welsh still lacks for example a youth magazine and the kind of popular fiction available in English. He appreciates that the Welsh language board has several times commissioned books aimed specifically at teenagers and young people but criticises that the bulk of these activities have catered for the general reader and children. Gruffud sees the problem with this situation in the fact that the Welsh language board has a relatively small amount of money at its disposable, which can be spent in this domain.
4.2 Culture
In our opinion, the role of the culture for a language is a very important one. As was said earlier in this paper, one factor to define a society in the ethnological sense is the fact that people tell each other histories about their common past. In other words, they have a common belief about where they come from and who their ancestors were. The maintenance of culture also includes the maintenance of traditional festivals, such as, in the case of Wales, the annually held folk festival Eisteddfod. According to the National Eisteddfod Association (), this tradition can be traced back to the year 1176, when the first Eisteddfod is said to have taken place. The Lord Dynefor held a grand gathering at his castle in Cardigan to which poets and musicians and craftsmen from all over the country were invited. The best musician and poet would be awarded with a chair at the Lord’s table – a tradition that prevails in the modern day National Eisteddfod. Another annual celebration of Welsh culture is the Urdd (), a Welsh language cultural movement and event aimed at young people. As in the case of the national Eisteddfod, the venue changes every year. Although these festivals attract thousands of tourists every year, they can still be seen as major events where the Welsh-speaking population would come together and, most important, where the participants are held together through the common language Welsh.
Apart from the more traditional festivals, which to a large extent feature traditional Celtic music, there is also a more modern native rock-music culture in Wales. According to Heini Gruffudd (in Williams 2000:179) regular events in this direction are being held in Glamorgan and Dyfed. They are aimed at young people in an attempt to popularize the native rock-music culture. The success of this kind of activities, which are in other parts of Wales organised by local voluntary groups, are an indicator for hope. Gruffudd points out that in the last twenty-five years, an enormous effort with the specific aim of furthering the endangered language has been made in both Welsh- and largely anglicised areas in this field. Most of these events have specifically been aimed at young people.
As was shown in chapter 3.3, alarmingly few young people regularly listen to Welsh radio and CDs. Gruffudd (in Williams 2000:189) says that the very fact that some people actually do listen to Welsh music “[…] does certainly show that the efforts made in this field have given young people committed to Welsh culture an alternative to the English scene, and that there are many who could be attracted to it if marketing of the Welsh scene were to be given a significant impetus.” He sees one of the main reasons for this unsatisfactorily situation in Wales in the fact that, as elsewhere, the music scene has always been in private hands and despite secondary support, it has received comparatively little state aid. Conclusively, he (in Williams 2000:189) underlines that “a language plan [for Wales] would need to address means of supporting the youth music scene as a matter of priority.”
4.3 Education
As has been said several times in this paper, education is the most important factor in terms of revitalisation and maintenance of the Welsh language. Welsh as a medium of education was not always natural in Wales. According to Baker and Prys Jones (in Williams 2000:117), there was a very limited amount of bilingual education in Wales in the first half of the twentieth century. They explain this mainly with the status of the English language in this time, which was seen as the language of economical potential and increased chances of employment and affluence, status and security. In a time where Welsh was seen as having very low prestige, parents were keen to have their children educated exclusively in English in order to help them escape from areas, where the only professional future lay in the field of coalmining. Accordingly, before the middle of the twentieth century, schools in Wales tended to foster the English language and culture only. In most schools, Welsh found its place in the education again only very recently, starting from about the nineteen sixties of the last century.
As Baker and Prys Jones (in Williams 2000:120) outline, both integrative and instrumental factors have influenced the creation of more and more bilingual and Welsh-medium schools in the last few decades. Many parents, mostly Welsh-mother-tongue-speakers but also English-monolingual speakers, wanted their children to find again the identity of their ancestors and to identify with a Welsh culture. In the case of English monolingual parents, the wish to have their children identify with the Welsh culture was especially big amongst those who were living in largely Welsh-speaking areas. Additionally, in the last decades, there has also been an instrumental motivation for many parents to have their children educated at least partly in Welsh. Many parents have in the last decades come to the conclusion that now, knowledge in Welsh would provide their children with better job-perspectives in a society, where skills in both languages have become increasingly important. Since the new National Curriculum, which was established in the nineteen nineties, all pupils between the age of six and sixteen are required to learn Welsh at least as a second language. Let us in the following have a look at the school-situation in 2002, including the fluency of the pupils. As examples, we will use the primary- and the secondary schools.
The census of the schools can be summarised as follows (taken from (): In 2002, 16.8 percent of all Welsh primary school children were fluent in Welsh. This proportion consists of 6.2 percent who speak Welsh at home and 10.6 percent who do not speak the language with their parents. In other words, these children must have learnt Welsh somewhere else than at home. If we compare the number of all fluent Welsh-speaking pupils with the corresponding number of 1988, we can see that the proportion has risen 3.6 percent, from 13.2 percent to 16.8 percent. In the same period, also the proportion of those fluent Welsh-speakers who do not speak Welsh at home rose from 6 percent to 10.6 percent. Furthermore, the statistics reveal that one in five primary school pupils are taught in classes where Welsh is used either as the main medium of teaching or for teaching as part of the curriculum.
In Welsh secondary schools, the picture is not much different. Just over 1 per cent of all fluent speakers did not continue to learn Welsh as a first language when they transferred from primary to secondary school. Not quite as many secondary school pupils as primary school pupils were therefore taught Welsh as a first language at secondary school level. However, the number is at 15.3 percent still considerable in 2002. Nevertheless, the statistics make it quite clear that the number of pupils taught Welsh as a first language at secondary level has increased every year since 1978, where the comparable number was 9.8 percent. Also the number of those who are taught Welsh as a second language can be seen as considerable. Whereas in 1987, only 42 percent of all secondary school pupils were taught Welsh as a second language, this number doubled to 84.5 percent in 2002. However, as was said before, the National Curriculum has made the teaching of Welsh at least as a second language compulsory for all schools since the nineteen nineties.
If we have a look at figure 4.1, we can see that in 2002, there are still five local education areas where no Welsh-speaking secondary school exists. Moreover, it is conspicuous that these schools with the most pupils are situated in areas where the language has traditionally been spoken, such as for example Gwynedd (North-East) and Carmarthenshire (Mid / West). In the eastern and south-eastern areas, on the other hand, very few pupils only go to Welsh-speaking schools, such as the Vale of Glamorgan (South) or Flintshire (North-East). Surprisingly, in the formerly largely anglicised area of Cardiff (South), the stake-holders of the relatively high number of 1800 pupils decided for a Welsh-speaking secondary school. Two conclusions may be drawn from this figure. On the one hand, the fact that the Welsh-speaking schools with the most pupils are situated in areas with high numbers of Welsh-speakers indicates that these schools are still largely used by children who already do have a link to Welsh, either parentally or socially. On the other hand, as the example of Cardiff (and also that of Welsh-medium schools which were recently opened in the area of the former county of Mid Glamorgan) shows, Welsh as a means of an immersion-language is becoming increasingly popular amongst children from English monolingual backgrounds.
Much more could be said of the education in Wales, but since this is not the main objective of the paper, it will be left at that. It is clear that acquiring a language and regularly speaking it at school is one thing. The biggest challenge, however, is regularly using this language outside the classroom, in the social settings. Somehow, teaching a language has its limitations. In other words, as was argued several times in this paper, as good as the intentions to set up a bilingual education system are, they will fail if no adequate accompanying measures, occasions to use the language, are set up. Morris Jones (in Morris Jones and Singh Ghuman 1995:103 - 105), agrees that teaching as a way of promoting interpersonal relationships does have its limits. He brings up the point that the extra-curricular activities such as field-trips, sports, music or drama are indeed situations which place the teachers and pupils in different discourse roles, as opposed to the classroom discourse roles, and introduce more personal functions. However, he also sees two limitations here. Firstly, rather than involving equals from the same peer-group, the adult-child hierarchy remains. Secondly, following the teachers’ strike in 1985-86 in England and Wales, anecdotal evidence suggests that teachers may have curtailed their extra-curricular contributions.
Welsh-speaking secondary schools 2001 and 2002 by local education areas (LEA)
figure 4.1 Source: National Census of Schools ()
Morris Jones (in Morris Jones and Singh Ghuman 1995:103-105) details two other ways in which experiences away from teaching and the classroom can be in Welsh. One is through the Youth Movement Urdd (Urdd Gobaith Cymru – the League of the Hope of Wales), which was already mentioned in chapter 4.2. The origins of the Urdd are religious and cultural, but nowadays, they offer a wide range of different intellectual activities such as poetry, prose, drama and music on the one hand, and also cater for sports and a number of outdoor activities on the other hand. For its outdoor activities, the Urdd maintains two large centres in North- and South-Wales each. The central point of these activities is that firstly, all activities are taking place in Welsh and secondly, these centres are a good occasion to speak Welsh with peers outside the more formal context of the classroom. Morris Jones (in Morris Jones and Singh Ghuman 1995: 103) points out that “where these activities are supervised by adults, a superior / subordinate relationship may exist, but the context of the language is generally more spontaneous and relaxed than that found in classroom teaching.” Morris Jones sees the second way of experiencing Welsh outside the classroom with the so-called enterprises, as for example the “Menter Taf Elái”, which is based on an area in the north of Cardiff. The whole purpose of this project is to provide experiences in Welsh outside school. This enterprise is not specifically aimed at young people, it also offers opportunities for adults to use Welsh. The general aim of the Taf Elái project is to encourage the use of Welsh in a variety of contexts in society by promoting, for example, activities such as walking, playing snooker and golf, gigs for young people and play sessions during the school-holidays.
The point which Bob Morris Jones is making here is that on a number of occasions, apart from school, the Welsh language can be used nowadays. However, most of these occasions are of a very formal nature such as negotiations with public bodies, getting cash at a cash-desk or at the post-office counter. Furthermore, most of these activities are limited to the regions in the West and the North of Wales, where the language is traditionally spoken. Although the public body throughout Wales has to stick to a bilingual policy, a policy is one thing, actually being able to respond (for example at the post-office) in Welsh is another. In contrast, Morris Jones is convinced that the area where the efforts to promote the language must be intensified is the less formal use of Welsh away from school. Therefore, the work by the Urdd and the diverse enterprises must not be underestimated and should be supported. However, Morris Jones (in Morris Jones and Singh Ghuman 1995:105) asks for a differential view by pointing out what follows:
“The weaknesses of bilingual education as outlined above are not specifically the weaknesses of Welsh bilingual education. These weaknesses arise because of the general limitations which schools have in influencing behaviour away form the curriculum. […] If the progress in setting up a bilingual education system can be matched by setting up bilingual domains of use in the community, then the two together produce complementary vehicles for the promotion of Welsh.”
He goes on to explain that language maintenance and restoration can not rely on education alone. The realisation of such goals must be a network including the school, the families and the wider society. Indeed, as was pointed out several times before, the use of Welsh in the family is the foremost crucial part of maintaining the Welsh language. In this respect, learning or acquiring the Welsh language at school makes much more sense if this language can also be used for family interactions at home. Therefore, another important factor is the education of adults in Welsh. One organisation which has done much to promote the acquisition and use of Welsh by adults is the “CYD”. The CYD () is a movement which tries to bring Welsh learners and speakers together to enjoy themselves in a social setting through the medium of Welsh. Other possibilities to acquire the Welsh language are the numerous schools, amongst others run by the “Menter Taf Elái”, where the language is more or less formally taught. Conclusively, Morris Jones (in Morris Jones and Singh Ghuman 1995: 105 – 106) brings to the point that the efforts to get adults to learn the Welsh language are of enormous significance. If the enthusiasm in this field does not cease, they can contribute enormously to extra-curricular Welsh, which will do much to support the work of the schools.
4.4 The role of the government: policy and planning
Many believe that governmental support for the Welsh-language is nowadays absolutely vital. The maintenance of the language and its promotion are very expensive actions and would not work without a government which is willing to spend the adequate amount of money to support these efforts. Let us therefore in the following firstly have a brief look at the history of the Welsh language from 1967, when the first Welsh Language Act passed, to 1999, when the Welsh National Assembly was created.
According to the Welsh Language Board (), the Welsh Language Act 1967 guaranteed the right to use Welsh in court, and also provided for its use in public administration. The most significant achievement to date in respect of the language, however, was the Welsh Language Act of 1993. This act put Welsh and English on an equal basis in Wales and represents a milestone in the modern history of the language. In particular, it places an obligation on the public sector to treat the Welsh and the English languages on the basis of equality in the provision of services to the public in Wales. Although the Welsh Language Act of 1993 does not place a direct legal obligation on private businesses or voluntary run organisations to offer services in Welsh, many of them have developed bilingual policies voluntarily. The next huge step forwards in terms of maintaining the Welsh language was the positive outcome of the referendum whether there should be a National Assembly of Wales or not. A referendum, which would have created a National Assembly with administrative power only, had already been held in 1979. Unfortunately, the issue was voted down with only 9 percent positive votes. Eighteen years of Conservative government in the Westminster followed, which opposed devolution to Wales. However, the ongoing pressure from many organisations in Wales continued and after the 1997 election, devolution came back on the political agenda. On the eighteenth of November of the same year, another referendum on whether there should be a National Assembly of Wales was held and agreed upon with a tiny majority of 50.1 percent! The first elections for the Assembly took place in 1999 and Cardiff has since been promoted as Europe’s youngest capital. The Assembly’s power includes the control of many of Wales’ internal policy areas such as education, economic development and Welsh language, to name but a few. Unlike the Scottish parliament, for example, the National Assembly has no tax-varying powers. It can decide, for instance, whether a hospital will close or whether a school will get more teachers, as long as they spend within their set budget.
One of the key priorities of the Welsh National Assembly is the maintenance and promotion of the Welsh language. Although the teaching of Welsh to all pupils in Wales at key stages 1, 2 and 3 was made compulsory in 1990, the NA has made a huge effort and suggestions in order to maintain the Welsh language. The NA’s statutory body in terms of Welsh language affairs is the Welsh Language Board. It is funded by public money and its main objective is the facilitating and the promotion of the Welsh language on behalf of the government. The Board was created as a reaction of the Welsh language act in 1993 and has since been responsible to the National Assembly. The Board is mainly occupied with the process of preparing statutory Welsh language schemes for their approval by the Assembly Members and for monitoring their implementations. The Board’s budget is around £ 6 million. In the decade from 1990 – 2000, it received £5.9 million and distributed £4.3 million of this money to other organisations in the form of grants to promote and facilitate the use of Welsh and to support the teaching of Welsh in the curriculum.
In its document “Bilingual Future: A Policy Statement by the Welsh Assembly Government” (2002:4) in which the government’s vision about the bilingual future of Wales, such as cited in the Introduction of this paper, was published, the government refers to the “National Action Plan for a bilingual Wales”, which will be published soon and in which the measures which will be taken in order for their dream to come true are listed. Meanwhile, this plan has been published. Therefore, we will in the following analyse the key measures the government is announcing to take in order to guarantee the bilingual future of Wales.
In the “National Action Plan for a bilingual Wales” (2002:9 – 53), the Assembly Government outlines its strategy, which pursues three strands. The first point is a national policy framework, whereby the Assembly Government sets the policy and provides strategic leadership to sustain and encourage the growth of the Welsh language. The second point focuses on policies and actions which promote economically and socially sustainable communities throughout Wales including those where Welsh is widely spoken within the community at large. The third point focuses on the Language and Rights of the individual. This point does not only include rights but also responsibilities of the language user. It is based on the policy by the Assembly Government which will continue to encourage the acquisition of the Welsh language by the individual on the one hand and make sure that the Welsh language can be used in all aspects of social life throughout Wales on the other hand. In the following, we will have a look at the basic ideas and strategies underlying each of these strands in turn. All following references in brackets are referring to the mentioned Action Plan.
By taking the strategic leadership, the government (2002:12-13) has very clear aims to achieve by the next National Census in 2011: The percentage of people speaking Welsh should increase by 5 percent from now 20.52 percent (2001) to 25.52 percent (2011), the decline of communities in which Welsh is spoken by more than seventy percent of the inhabitants must stop, the percentage of children receiving Welsh medium pre-school education must increase as well as the percentage of families where Welsh is the principal language of conversation / communication and more private, public and voluntary bodies must be able to deliver services in Welsh. Basically, the government is due to work on this visions via the Welsh Language Board. As a measure of importance, the Board receives an additional amount of £ 16 million and will thus be able to spend £ 37 million within the next three years. The additional amount of money will primarily be spent on a campaign which aims to encourage parents to speak Welsh with their children and to chose Welsh-medium education (£ 1 million), on community based projects and initiatives (£ 3 million) and on initiatives aimed to encourage the use of Welsh particularly in the private sector (£ 3 million), to name but a few. So much for the strategy the government will employ to reach its targets. The next two paragraphs will deal more specifically with the particular actions the government is promising to take.
In promoting economically and socially sustainable communities, the government (2000:22 – 24) is proposing a range of programmes and initiatives targeting at strengthening disadvantaged communities throughout Wales. These are in particular aimed to ensure economic development, community regeneration (encouraging communities to take ownership of their destinies and providing them with appropriate support), to guarantee that the Welsh language is a part of the community fabric and that the balance is maintained in the social and linguistic composition of a community (population movement). The government hopes to achieve this aim by launching a range of programmes which, for example, will show the local entrepreneurs how to work with under-represented groups in particular. However, the government recognises that the packages of economical development measures are just part of the regeneration process in these areas.
Much needs to be done in other domains as well. Especially in these areas where many people are farmers, the government sees a special need to start action. Since the links between the Welsh language and farming have traditionally been very strong, the government will especially take care of those communities where a huge part of the inhabitants are employed in farming. Furthermore, the Assembly will decide on measures to encourage young people, who moved away from communities where Welsh is traditionally spoken for better job-opportunities elsewhere to return home.
On the social side, the government (2002: 31, 36) strongly supports the community initiatives, which aim to extend and expand the use of Welsh as a medium of social, business and institutional interaction in Wales. In the same way the government also aims to support measures to encourage people, who move into a largely Welsh-speaking area, to learn the language, so that they can fully participate in all aspects of community life.
The third strand of this plan focuses on the language and rights of the individual. The measures suggested in this chapter are primarily aimed at children and young people. When it comes to education, the government (2002: 42) is basically satisfied with what has been achieved so far. However, it remains concerned about the relatively few entry points into Welsh-medium education. Parents have to choose their children’s way of education at the age of three, when entering the nursery and at the age of 5, when entering primary school. In practise, once the way has been found into English-medium education, there is, in most Local Education Areas, almost no possibility to change into Welsh-medium education. Here, the government wants to improve the situation by promoting a pilot-project with a Welsh intensive-course at the upper end of primary-education, which could encourage more pupils to choose a way of education which is at least partly through the medium of Welsh.
The government also recognised that promoting the use of a language makes no sense if the community lacks opportunities to use this language. Therefore, the Assembly Government (2002:47-48) will work to ensure that there are opportunities to use the language in all aspects of life. Especially when it comes to the most important group of language speakers, young people, the government (2002:48) will work on measures to ensure that the society maximises the opportunities for young people and teenagers to use the language in everyday leisure and social situations. The media through which this objective will be achieved are a number of local action plans, which, for example, aim to draw together local people and organisations such as the “Urdd” or “the young farmers”, to name but a few. In order to make this measure as effective as possible, the government has indeed increased the funding of sports and youth projects by these groups.
The government (2002:50) also realises that measures must be taken to promote the Welsh language through Welsh culture. They are convinced that cultural activities strengthen and promote the use of the language and help embed it in everyday life. Therefore, the government will continue to support cultural events of all sorts, in particular the “Urdd Gobaith Cymru” and the “National Eisteddfod”. A lot of money will also be spent in entertainment in Welsh. The government has realised that the Welsh radio station “Radio Cymru” and the TV channel S4C are very important institutions in order to promote and encourage the use of the language. Therefore, the government is keen to make an even greater contribution in this field in future. Lastly, on the more traditional cultural side, the Arts Council of Wales has very recently spent £ 250,000 to found a Welsh-speaking (Welsh) National Theatre.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, it was shown that until recently, the number of Welsh-speakers had decreased in areas where the language is traditionally spoken. In certain regions, the decrease has not stopped yet. However, it was also shown that these traditional regions still have the highest numbers of Welsh-speakers. Thanks to effective measures, not only due to the agreement on the Welsh Language Act in 1993, hope for the Welsh language has been revived. In 2001, the proportion of people able to speak the language has for the first time since years increased again. Nevertheless, the work is not yet done. As was shown, the age range of the population is a reason for concern. A now largely monolingual English-speaking group who were born after World War II until about the beginning of the eighties is becoming older and older and not replaced by quite as many young speakers. Therefore, the government has quite rightly realised that the intergenerational use of the language must at all costs be encouraged. The best thing which could happen in terms of revitalisation is if this generation could be convinced to acquire the Welsh language in order to communicate with their children, who now learn it at school. In that respective, the suggested measures by the government regarding the education of adults are very promising. However, I belief that in order for these measures to be effective, evening- and Saturday classes for adults should be offered for free.
It was also shown that the demand of Welsh language skills is increasing in the Welsh economy. If there is one factor which raises the people’s intrinsic motivation to learn the Welsh language, then it is money. And if more and more people realise that bilingual skills are an advantage in the job-market in order to earn better money, more and more people will actually do it. Therefore, the government’s idea to get more and more companies and organisations to employ a bilingual policy is surely a step in the right direction. Regarding the disadvantaged regions, the government has made the right decision to release programmes which aim to support the traditional farming communities and the economy in these regions. As was said, in these traditional Welsh-speaking regions, the numbers of Welsh speakers have decreased continually. This is to a large extent due to the fact that the job-perspectives in these areas are not very promising. If the aim to recreate a flourishing economy in these regions can be achieved, more and more young people may move back to these regions or not even move away in the first place. However, despite these intentions, the companies in the south and the east of Wales must not be neglected either. As the BBC news () reports, 847 firms in Wales folded in the first half of the year 2002 alone. This is a 15.1 percent increase compared with early 2001. On the other hand, the number of businesses starting up in Wales was lagging 30 percent behind the average of the United Kingdom. These numbers are worrying. Explanations can be found in the fact that many firms in Wales are firstly not interested in selling their products outside the national border and that secondly, many companies would effectively lack the skills to do so. This situation may interfere with the government’s promise to create 135,000 new jobs by the year 2012. However, the government has decided to spend an additional amount of £ 4 million to encourage international trade. It can only be hoped that the strategic leadership of the Assembly Government will not fail here. Many Welsh-speakers may have moved into these regions in order to find a job. If they lose their job now, they are more likely to look for a job elsewhere in the United Kingdom than actually move home to their region of origin.
Furthermore, it was shown in this paper that the most important group in terms of keeping the Welsh-language alive are the young people. It was argued that education in Welsh does not make much sense if the accompanying measures, namely opportunities to use the language for leisure time activities and in informal circumstances in general, are unavailable. The Action Plan does take into account this significance by showing a willingness to increase the amount of money spent on leisure centres, cultural activities and outdoor activities for children. It remains to hope that these leisure centres will also include platforms which enable native Welsh-language rock music bands to promote their music, as Heini Gruffudd argued. Moreover, the range of programmes offered by the Welsh television channel S4C is very satisfying. The makers have recognised that a large extent of their programme must be aimed at the younger generation and indeed managed to increase the range of broadcastings in these domains.
As was said in the introduction of this paper, the original approach of “vitality” is based on fairly subjective factors. For this paper, it was important to take into account also more objective factors, such as for example statistical evidence about the economy, based on facts. Nonetheless, Giles (in Giles and Coupland 1991:136) argues that “groups that have institutional support for their culture and language, a reasonable social standing in terms of their historical past and economic situation, and a strong demography such as large numbers and an increasing birthrate, may be considered to have ‘high vitality’.” Due to the revelations in this paper that the birthrate in Wales is not really increasing and that the economy is still struggling, the Welsh language is not highly vital. However, the case of Welsh is somewhat special. Since its creation in 1999, the Assembly Government has made an enormous effort to take measures in order to increase the vitality of the language such as measured by these factors. Therefore, if the government manages to sort out the struggling economy and if the measures promised in the Action Plan are carried out, we can say that the Welsh language has a good chance of becoming highly vital in the nearer future. In that respect and considering the measures which have been taken so far, and which were pretty effective, the vision of the Assembly Government such as cited in the Introduction of this paper has a good chance of becoming reality as well.
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7. Appendix 1
Source: http://www.data-wales.co.uk/unimap.htm
Figure 1.1a shows the proportions of Welsh-speakers in the respective counties of Wales. Unfortunately, these eight counties were reshaped in 1996 and since then, Wales has been subdivided into twenty-one local authority areas. Whereas for the years from 1951 to 1991, the proportions used to be given for each county, the proportions for 2001 were for the first time given for the local authority areas. When the counties were reshaped in 1996, in most cases whole counties were subdivided into smaller local authority areas. However, some of the new local authority areas were created by putting together parts of the territory of two different counties. This fact makes a comparison with the previous years extremely difficult. In order to get the 2001 proportions for the original counties, we have therefore simply taken the average of these local authority areas of which the formal county consisted. The proportions of these local authority areas which consist of parts of two different formal counties were thereby given half weight only. For the calculations, the proportions of the counties were counted as follows (in brackets: (1) = fully weighted, (0.5) = given half weight):
- Clwyd: Conwy (1), Denbighshire (1), Flintshire (1), Powys (0.5), Wrexham (1)
- Dyfed: Ceredigion (1), Carmarthenshire (1), Pembrokeshire (1)
- Gwent: Blaenau Gwent (1), Caerphilly (0.5), Monmouthshire (1), Newport (1), Torfaen (1)
- Gwynedd: Conwy (0.5), Anglesey (1), Gwynedd (1)
- Mid Glamorgan: Bridgend (1), Caerphilly (0.5), Cardiff (0.5), Merthyr Tydfil (1), Rhonda/Cynon/Taff (1) Vale of Glamorgan (0.5)
- Powys: Powys (1)
- South Glamorgan: Cardiff (0.5), Vale of Glamorgan (0.5)
- West Glamorgan: Neath and Port Talbot (1), Swansea (1)
For this reason, the proportions 2001 are only approximate values and should not be taken as absolutely decisive. For a map of the present local authority areas, see appendix 1.
As in figure 1.1a, the numbers for the former counties needed to be put together by calculating up the values for the respective local authority areas. To do this, the same key as for figure 1.1a was used. Again, for this reason, these numbers are approximate values only and to be seen as absolutely decisive.
To get the proportions for the former county of Dyfed, the same calculation key as for the statistics 1.1a and 1.1 be was used here.
The primary sampling units of this study were sub districts of local authority areas and a total of 80 interviewing locations throughout Wales were selected. All interviewees were 16 years old and older. The sample was deliberately structured to provide statistically reliable data. The data were gathered by doing face to face interviews, whereby all interviews were conducted in the preferred language or mix of languages of the respondent. Spread over a period of three weeks, at total of 1192 interviews was completed. The data we are using here is a summary of the most important findings of this report. Unfortunately, the accompanying separate volumes of computer tabulations were not made accessible for this study.
All respondents were either part- or full-time employed. Self-employed people, part- and full-time retired persons and students are excluded.
Welsh-speakers were asked to describe one statement which best represented their current use of Welsh. Possible answers were “rarely speak Welsh”, “occasionally”, “half & half” and “most or all the time”.
Although in 1996, Swansea was a largely anglicized area, the sample can be seen as representative because the region of eastern Carmarthenshire, on the other side, has a relatively high percentage of Welsh-speakers.
S4C stands for “Sianel 4 Cymru”, which in English means “Channel 4 Wales”
Welsh-speaking secondary schools are defined in section 354(b) of the Education Act 1996. A Welsh-speaking secondary school is one where more than half of the following subjects, namely religious education and the subjects other than English or Welsh which are foundation subjects are taught wholly or partly in Welsh.
