Language and Nation-Building

(with particular reference to the revival of Welsh, bilingualism and the establishment of parity of esteem with English)
Delivered at the Ivan Franko National University of L'viv, September 2011

Bore da / prynhawn da / noswaith dda as you might be greated in Wales (or good morning/ good afternoon/ good evening - as we would say in English) for English is not the only native language spoken in the United Kingdom. There are actually several linguistic minorities. Welsh, although having only about half a million speakers, is the largest of those.

When I was invited to give this talk the parallels between the survival of the Welsh language and the survival of Ukrainian struck me. I noticed how both languages had suffered from being dominated by the culture and language of more powerful neighbours; I noticed in particular the part that religious affiliations had played in their survival; I noticed how they both suffered from not having sufficient political power based within their linguistic communities; and I noticed the part that the language is playing in helping to build a sense of nationhood. I think these are points to keep in mind as I tell the tale of the survival and revival of the Welsh language.

As you travel west across the English Midlands you will in time come to a line of high hills, or little mountains, if you will, a place where the plough cannot so easily be sunk into the ground but where, upon those grassy hills, graze flocks of sheep, millions of sheep; and amongst whose valleys live a people whose ancient tongue, or at least something not too dissimilar to that tongue, was spoken at the time of the Roman Empire some two-thousand years ago. Perhaps – and here you may have to forgive a little bit of Celtic fantasy – something that is so rich within the traditions of that culture, a taste for extending reality somewhat, as it were – perhaps, as is a belief held by some, that even a certain Jesus of Nazareth, along with his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, visited the islands of Britain and who would therefore have heard that tongue spoken. But romantic Celtic Christian mythology apart, there is no doubt that Welsh, or at least its precursor, Brythonic, was the major language of the island of Britain from before the time of the Romans to the time of the coming of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. It was those Anglo-Saxon speakers who brought with them a language that would, in time, develop into English. A people who the Welsh speak of as the “Sais” and who they still regard as new-comers, whose speech is “plain” when compared to their own “poetic” tongue, for Welsh is seen as, above all, a poetic language.

“Welsh” is not their own term for their language, but the English name for them and for their language, derived from “Walha“, Anglo-Saxon for “foreign speech". The Welsh for their own language is Cymraeg, and Cymru, “The place of the people”, is the name given to their country, which in English is know as “Wales”.

Welsh, or what is known as Old-Welsh, was in existence by the time of Taliesin the first poet of that language. He lived between 534CE and 599CE. Since his time there has been a literary tradition in the language. Modern Welsh speakers can indeed read and understand his poetry without too much difficulty. This makes Welsh one of the oldest living written languages in Europe.

So, there we have “Welsh” a language confined to the mountainous fringe of the far west side of the island of Britain. An area not unlike that of the Crimea in size, nor, given the mountains, not unlike it in terrain, but wet. If you can imagine a land where, in the hilliest parts, it can rain on 250 days of the year, where grey billowing clouds often shroud the land, where mists can envelop and wrap everything in greyness for days on end. A land where gales blow out of the Atlantic Ocean and tear and rattle at every standing thing until one wonders if anything can survive. That is the land of the Cymry – the Welsh.

It was a land in which the incoming Anglo-Saxon settlers were not interested. It did not suit their farming methods nor their ways of life. They were happy to leave those lands to the original inhabitants, save one or two well chosen areas that suited them better, which became English speaking enclaves within the lands of Wales.

Enter the French, or, as they are often referred to in English history, the Normans. In 1066 their invasion under their leader “William the Bastard”, or “William, Duke of Normandy” - “William the Conqueror” as he is more often known - first spread their rule over England and soon over the lower two-thirds of Wales. They formed a French speaking elite that ruled the lands of both England and Wales from their castles for the next 400 years. By 1282 all of Wales was under their dominion.

Thus, by the High Middle Ages, [1100CE – 1500CE approx] the Welsh were increasingly ruled by a French speaking elite, who made great use of English speakers as their agents and servants, and who often planted English speaking communities amongst the Welsh to act as trustworthy bastions in what they saw as an otherwise barbarian and potentially rebellious country: with the added benefit that these urban colonies would act as catalysts to civilise and stabilise the land. The French speaking elite also saw to it that the churches rang to the sounds of masses chanted in Latin, and that Latin, not Welsh, was the primary language used in the church. Thus French, English and Latin dominated the power structures of this imposed world.

The old language, the language of the Welsh, lived on in the valleys and in the daily lives of the Cymry (the Welsh), but, beyond the very few who were literate and who kept alive the poetic traditions, or who told and retold the heroic legends, myths and folk tales of the Mabinogion, the language had no real status. It was their tongue and it was what tied them together. Perhaps only the remoteness and difficulty of the terrain saved the language from vanishing. A fate suffered by Cymric, the related language of “Hen Ogledd” (the Old North), which may well have been the close in sound and form to Welsh, and to Cornish, both of which vanished. Cumric without much trace, except in some place names. Cornish, with the death of its last native monoglot speaker in 1676.

In 1485 the Welsh born prince, Henry Tudor, seized the throne of England, becoming thereby the first, and only, King of England to speak Welsh. This may well have been a time when Welsh might have risen in status and become accepted as one of the “de jure” languages of Britain, but it was not to be. In 1535, and further in 1542, Acts of the English Parliament, under the rule and direction of Henry VII's son, Henry VIII (perhaps best known for his having six wives, - but only one at a time, I might add, not six at once) were passed, uniting England and Wales. From then on, only English was to be the language of government, and of the law. This removed the last customary usage of Welsh as a language of governance and downgraded it by giving it no status. Only deeds and documents written in English would have any provenance. Only oaths given in English would have any value or reliance. This might well have led to Welsh suffering the same fate as that of Cumric, the language of “Hen Ogledd”, or Cornish: to its dwindling away and vanishing.

But Welsh did survive and did so because of two remarkable scholars, William Salesbury and William Morgan. In 1567 William Salesbury published his translation of the New Testament in Welsh. Also in 1567 a translation into Welsh of the Book of Common Prayer was made by the Bishop of St David's, Richard Davies (helped by William Salesbury). In 1588 William Morgan published his translation of the whole of the Bible in Welsh, both the Old and New Testaments. That translation served as the standard text in churches in Wales until very recent times, only beginning to be replaced by a modern versions in 1966. Because of those two scholars' work, from then on throughout all of Wales, the people heard the word of God in their own language and came to associate their language very strongly with godliness. English might well be the language you needed for trade, or for dealing with matters of government and the law, but Welsh was the language of the church and thus, in many Welsh minds, of God.

In addition to having the Bible in Welsh, and a very correct and proper Welsh at that, there was an English – Welsh dictionary, also written by William Salesbury and published in 1547. This gave the language a reference point with which it could standardise, at least its literary application.

This leads to an interesting distinction made in Welsh between literary Welsh and colloquial Welsh. Spoken Welsh may be of either the North Welsh or of the South Welsh, and each is indeed different, but Literary Welsh is standard. It is a language to aspire to when writing, or when reading poetry or the bible. It is both more formal and more elegant. How something is said is most important. It must above all sound right and there are very strict rules about how that is to be achieved.

This flowering of literary Welsh was made possible by the Reformation of the Church ordered by Henry VIII. His final split with the Roman Catholic Church in 1534 set the scene for the emergence of a Protestant dominated church in both England and Wales, which, following the inspiration of Martin Luther, laid much stress on the importance of the bible being available to the people in their own language and in the services of the church being held in their own language as well. This lead to the translations of the Bible into both into English (the Great Bible of 1539) and into Welsh (1588), and to the creation of the “Book of Common Prayer” (1549 in English & 1567 in Welsh).

The re-establishment of the Church of England, with the monarch as the head of that church, lead to the passing of The Act of Uniformity in 1559, upon the succession of Elizabeth I, who reinstated the reforms made by her Father, Henry VIII and her brother, Edward VI; thus overturning her sister's Mary's returning the church to the Catholic jurisdiction of Rome. Once more the Church in both England and Wales became Protestant and the Act of Uniformity was passed to ensure that all of her subjects conformed to the protestant practices of her church as laid down in the Book of Common Prayer. Any who did not conform to these practices became know as “nonconformists” and were liable to prosecution for not attending her reformed church.

At first most “nonconformists” were Catholics who wanted to adhere to the old faith and whose loyalty to the Crown was often suspect. There were indeed Catholic plots against the emergent protestant ascendancy, culminating in the Gun Powder Plot of 1605. But in time the term “nonconformist” came to be used more to denote those protestants who refused to attend the established church because of their beliefs, such as the Baptists, Congregationalists and Presbyterians (and later, Quakers, Unitarians and, most importantly for the Welsh, Methodists). The restatement of the Act of Uniformity in 1662 and the Test Acts of 1673 and 1678, which required that any office holder must take part in the sacrament of Holy Communion according to the rites of the Church of England, re-enforced the dominance of the Church of England and the privileged position afforded to its members.

Thus for the next two hundred years, Welsh remained as the language of the valleys and of the church. This association between Welsh and the church grew much stronger when the idea of circulating schools to teach children to read the bible first spread following the work of Griffith Jones. It is estimated that perhaps 200,000 people learned to read the Bible in Welsh because of these schools. This made a very receptive audience for the Methodist revival that started in the mid eighteenth century. Government, the law and authority might well all come in English, but the teachings of the church, its services, the bible and the sermons of the preachers were all in Welsh, and when these preachers became more and more influenced by the Methodist movement, so the foundations were laid for the creation of a very Welsh institution: the Calvinistic Methodist Presbyterian Church of Wales. That was founded in 1823 and soon every town and village had its Chapels where Welsh was the medium of worship, of literature and of life.

The adoption of Methodism by a majority of Welsh people meant that they embraced a nonconformist faith, one that separated them form the established church, setting them outside the establishment and, until the repeal of the Test Acts, debarred them from holding office or attending universities. This increased the marginalisation of the Welsh speaking communities.

It also had an interesting effect on the Welsh language in three ways. Firstly, it produced a substantial body of literature in the form of sermons and books of theology; secondly, it lead to the writing of many hymns in Welsh, re-enforcing the poetic use of that language; and thirdly, by making the language so closely associated with the Chapel and the self-discipline encouraged by the Methodism they preached, that it led to a purifying of the Welsh language by the removal of all swear words from it, and by making speakers feel disinclined ever to express blasphemies or profanities in it; an effect that still holds good even today. It is not uncommon to hear a Welsh speaker come out of speaking Welsh and to start to speak in English so that they may say something unpleasant, as if as to preserve the purity of their Welsh by not defiling it with foul words, but confining such speak to a language that they feel deserves to be polluted as it is a degraded and alien language, the tongue of the often despised Sais.

The Chapel was indeed the hub of life. It was where everything that might happen, did happen. They were as much a community centre as a church. It was the chapel that provided education for the children, so that they might read the Bible. It was the chapel that provided care and help for the vulnerable and elderly. It was the chapel that ran the local events; talks by itinerant speakers, poetry readings, plays, the choir, the brass band, and with the coming of the railways, even the annual day out at the seaside.

It was the chapels that even inspired and organised the collections of money for the founding of the University of Wales. Its first colleges, at Aberystwyth [1872] and then Bangor [1884], were largely paid for by collections made from the miners, quarrymen and working people of Wales. Much of the collecting was done by itinerant preachers who saw the importance of having higher education open to ordinary people. The university was also seen as a vehicle for preserving, advancing and sustaining the Welsh language: both colleges having departments for the study of the Welsh language and for the study of Welsh History.

Along with the establishment of Universities in Wales came the opportunity to further the cause of the Welsh language even more by establishing a National Library of Wales, which would contain as much Welsh language material as possible alongside materials in English that related to Wales. In 1873, just one year after the opening of the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth, came the founding of the collection at that University which grew to become the National Library of Wales. The library itself finally receiving its charter in 1907.

The nineteenth century also saw the publication of the first concise and complete dictionaries of Welsh, most often compiled by members of the clergy such as Daniel Silvan Evans, whose massive work became the foundation for the University of Wales Dictionary of the Welsh Language [GEIRIADUR PRIFYSGOL CYMRU].

But it was not just the clergy with their academic interests in preserving, recording and promoting the language who had an impact in the nineteenth century, a far more popular and inclusive force was the re-establishment of the ancient tradition of the eisteddfod. The word “eisteddfod” is derived from the Welsh word “eistedd”, meaning "to sit", and “bod” meaning "to be" and therefore means "to be sitting" or "to be sitting together" ("bod" is softly mutated¹ into "fod"). It was a coming together of people to celebrate the Welsh language by competing in literature, music and performance, all carried out through the medium of the Welsh language.

Part of the inspiration behind the establishment of the first national eisteddfod at Llangollen in 1858, had been a desire to show that Welsh was a cultured and worthy medium as a reaction to the anger aroused by the report on education in Wales published in 1847 that depicted the Welsh speakers as:

“..ignorant, lazy and immoral, and that among the causes of this were the use of the Welsh language and nonconformity”.

These books called “Reports of the commissioners of enquiry into the state of education in Wales” published in 1847 are know in Wales as “The Treachery of the Blue Books”. The equating of the Welsh speakers' overwhelming preference for the Welsh-speaking Methodist Chapels and their nonconformist belief and practices, with both laziness and immorality, wounded the pride those people felt in their language, their beliefs, their communities and their chapels. This was the fuel needed for a demonstration of the worthiness of the language and of the people who used that language.

The highest accolade given at that eisteddfod was then, as it still is, The Chair, awarded for the best poetry written in traditional form of very strict metre, and The Crown, awarded for the best free verse. Just two people have achieved the double award of both a chair and a crown, and both of them have achieved it twice.

Also as part of the eisteddfod movement came the creation of the Gorsedd, the community of Ovates, Bards and Druids, membership of which can only be achieved by passing an examination in the Welsh language. To be admitted to the Gorsedd is the highest honour that a member of the Welsh speaking community can aspire to. It places accomplishment in the Welsh language above all other possible achievements and reflects the pride felt in the language by the people and confirms the very special status given to the language as defining Welshness.

But just as there were advances in the status and position of Welsh in the second half of the nineteen century so there were setbacks, especially in education. In common with most of the emerging nation-states of the post Napoleonic period governments wished to weld their subject peoples into nations and the one instrument above all used to attempt to achieve this was language. As elementary education spread during the second half of the nineteenth century, fast becoming universal in most European counties, it brought with it teaching in the preferred language of the state, that language chosen to unite the peoples, French in France, German in Germany, Italian in Italy, Spanish in Spain and, of course, Russian throughout the Russian Empire. In the case of Britain it was English that was chosen as the medium for all elementary education, and a standardised form of English at that.

To see that pupils conformed to this new, more standardised, English, strict discipline was applied. Pupils who used either a dialect of English or used one of the minority languages² of Britain were routinely punished. In the case of the Welsh speaking communities the “Welsh Not” was sometimes used. Any pupil heard speaking Welsh would be made to wear a piece of wood with the letters WN for “Welsh Not” inscribed upon it. They were allowed to pass it on to any other pupil they heard using the language, which they had good reason to do, for the unfortunate who happened to be wearing it at the end of the day might be lashed as a punishment.

Interestingly, the report into education in Wales published in 1847, which gave so much impetuous to the founding of the National Eisteddfod, roundly condemned the practice as being “arbitrary and cruel”. When universal education finally came after 1888, when the School Boards were absorbed by the County Councils, most primary education in Welsh speaking districts was carried out in Welsh. This may be one of those cases where hurt nationalist pride about such things having happened to a few has become a belief that the practice was common.

But what was a massive limitation on the use of Welsh was the fact that no secondary education (11-18) was carried out via the medium of Welsh. All teaching using the language ceased at the end of the primary or elementary stage at 12 years old, or (after 1918) 14 years old. Access to secondary, further or higher education was only through the medium of English.

It is not to surprising to find that the estimated numbers of Welsh speakers declined through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as advantage was only given to those who were fluent in English. This marginalisation of the language was compounded by the fact that all law and governance were exercised in English, as had been the case since the acts of union with England in 1535 and 1542; and that increasingly business and commerce were also conducted in English as more goods and services were provided from England or by English businesses.

Thus, at the turn of the twentieth century, we find Welsh to be a declining and marginalised language. In the industrial districts the numbers of Welsh speakers had been diluted by the influx of English speakers as well as having been abandoned by the native population. The 1931 census records that in some areas of Wales less than 6% of the population were Welsh Speakers. It was only in the more rural and remote areas that Welsh was still widely spoken, by as much as 80% of the population or more.

The decline was compounded by the advent of radio broadcasting and the cinema in the 1920s and 1930s, and further compounded by the arrival of television in the 1950 and 1960s as these media were dominated by the English language output. Thus the major sources of information, and of entertainment in people's homes, came via the medium of English. The 1961 census recorded a decline in Welsh speaking from 36% of the total population in 1931 to 26% thirty years later. Some authorities even suggested that Welsh might become extinct in just one or two generations.

But the nineteenth century had laid some foundations for the survival of the language. There was the National Library of Wales, The University of Wales with its departments of Welsh and of Welsh History, there were the elementary schools in the Welsh speaking districts that taught through the medium of Welsh, and there were the eisteddfods, especially the National Eisteddfod.

But the problem for the survival of the language was the situation of Wales, with its tiny population of only about 2.5 millions, set against the much bigger population of England, some 14 times bigger, and a Wales where only about one third of the population still spoke Welsh; where government services and the law were carried on exclusively in English; where the majority of goods and services were supplied from England and with packaging and instructions only in English; where the major sources of information and entertainment were predominantly available only in English; where education above the age of 14 came only via the medium of English; where all that seemed to be fashionable, new, inventive, exciting or relevant to modern life came via the medium of English. It seemed that Welsh was disappearing under a tide of English with which it just could not compete. For it to survive it had to find a niche, or value, or relevance in people's lives where it contributed something that English did not; and it needed people who were prepared to campaign for its survival, to make its survival important.

In 1925 Plaid Cymru, the Welsh Nationalist party was founded and it made its first objective, not home rule for Wales or Welsh independence, but the survival of the language as a way of giving dignity and status to the people of Wales.

In the 1930s there was a campaign to get the British Broadcasting Corporation, the only radio broadcaster allowed by law in Britain, to increase the number of programmes it put out in Welsh. Many Welsh speakers refused to pay the annual licence fee required by any household that had a radio. Eventually the BBC did start transmitting some regular programmes in Welsh.

The Welsh programmes had to be broadcast through a transmitter located on the English coast in Somerset, which also transmitted programmes in English intended to be heard in the South-west of England. This led to competition for air-time between programmes made for English language listeners in both the South-west and Wales, and for those Welsh-language listeners who lived in those parts of Wales where the signal could be received. As most of the Welsh speaking districts were beyond the range of the transmitters there was only a very small potential audience for the programmes in Welsh. The result was that the program director for the West argued that when:

“His Majesty’s Government decided to form a corporation for the important function of broadcasting, it was natural that the official language (i.e. English) should be used throughout”

This was the context for the struggle waged from the late 1920s to the mid-1930s by the University of Wales, The National Union of Welsh Societies, the Welsh Parliamentary Party and Plaid Cymru (the Welsh Nationalist Party). The upshot was the establishment of a studio at Bangor in November 1935, the appointment of a Welsh Regional Director in September 1936, the erection of a transmitter at Penmon (Llangoed) to serve North Wales in February 1937 and the allocation of a separate wavelength to the Welsh Service in July 1937. The programmes of the Welsh Service were mainly in English, with only a few hours per week being in the Welsh language.

It was not until 1977, after many years of campaigning, and after a period of civil disobedience involving the climbing of radio masts and attacks on the premises of the broadcasting authorities, that Radio Cymru, a dedicated Welsh-language radio station, was created and began to broadcast.

Similarly, a campaign to have a Welsh-language television channel, again involving civil protests, such as a licence fee boycott, including direct action such as attacks on transmitters and even a threatened hunger strike, resulted in the creation of S4C, the Welsh language television channel, in 1982. The British government of the day was originally against the setting up of the station but changed its mind as a result of the protests, especially that of the threatened hunger strike of the then leader of Plaid Cymru, Gwynfor Evans.

In 1955 Wales was given a capital city when Cardiff, the biggest city was chosen. This was perhaps a significant step in recognising Wales as a separate entity.

However, there was still no education above the elementary level dispensed in the Welsh-language until the opening of Ysgol Glan Clwyd in 1956. This was the first secondary school (11-18 year olds) to teach pupils through the medium of Welsh. The school set an example of how Welsh could be successfully used in education, and demonstrated that pupils whose first language was Welsh were more likely to be successful if they were taught mainly through the medium of that language.

In 1962, Saunders Lewis, one of the founders of Plaid Cymru, gave a talk on the English language Radio Wales, entitled “The Fate of the language” in which he expressed his fears about its possible demise. His pessimism was in response to the fall in the number of Welsh speakers in the population from about one in three to about one in four. In reaction to it Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (The Welsh Language Society), or Cymdeithas as it is usually known, was founded,

During World War II – what I believe is referred to as “the great patriotic war” here in the Ukraine – because of the threat of invasion by Germany, road signs and place name signs were removed throughout Britain. When they were replaced after the war many of the place names were anglicised, mainly by giving the places English spellings, for instance, Caernarfon was turned into Carnarvon. Additionally, all road signs were in English only.

This provided the first target for members of the society. They started a campaign to have Welsh names correctly written on signs. By combining civil disobedience, direct action and protest they drew attention very effectively to the grievance that Welsh speakers felt about the misuses and exclusion of their language. Now all road signs in Wales are bilingual and most place names have reverted to their Welsh spellings.

In 1964 the British government created the post of “Secretary of State for Wales” and transferred to his office in Cardiff some of the functions of government that until then had been carried out in London.

As a result of an enquiry into the state of the Welsh language instigated by the new Secretary of State for Wales, the Welsh Language Act of 1967 was passed by the British parliament and for the first time gave people the right to use Welsh in legal proceedings and gave permission for Welsh to be used on official forms and documents.

Following the success of Ysgol Glan Clwyd, the first secondary school in Wales to teach through the medium of Welsh, and in response to the language campaigns, more Welsh medium schools were opened in the Welsh speaking districts. Today about 20% of secondary education in Wales is carried out in the Welsh-language. Additionally, all children in Wales are now required to study the Welsh language up till the age of 16.

The Welsh Language Act of 1993 put Welsh and English on an equal footing in law, government and in the provision of public services. It also set up the Welsh Language Board to promote the language and to ensure compliance with the regulations concerning the providing of services in Welsh.

As a result to the 1997 referendum the much of the functions of government were devolved to an elected Welsh Assembly that meets in Cardiff. That assembly has accepted a policy of parity between the two languages used in Wales and has pursued a policy of bilingualism.

The census of 1991 indicated that the use of Welsh had stabilised at about 18.5% of the population. The 2001 census showed that the decline had be reversed with about 20.5% of the population being Welsh speaking. Recent surveys suggest that the recovery has continued, with perhaps about 22% of the population now using Welsh in their daily lives.

Bilingualism does have its funny side, especially in those areas that are predominately English-speaking. Recently much fun was had about a road sign put up in Swansea, one of the larger towns in South Wales. The sign read in English “No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only” and, underneath, where it should have said the same in Welsh it read "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated"

Cyclists between Cardiff and Penarth in 2006 were left confused by a bilingual road sign telling them they had problems with an "inflamed bladder" instead of informing them that it was a “Cycle Path”.

In the same year, a sign for pedestrians in Cardiff reading 'Look Right' in English read 'Look Left' in Welsh.

Conclusions

• That minority languages can be sustained if there is the will to do so on part of their users.
• That parity of esteem is essential for the survival of a minority language.
• That educational provision plays a crucial role in the process of survival, especially in providing education in people's first language, but also by providing an opportunity for non-speakers to learn the language, particularly when they are young.
• That the creation of institutions such as libraries and university language departments for the study and preservation of a the language are essential.
• That legislation requiring bilingualism in the provision of services, in legal proceedings, and in government forms, documents and processes is essential.
• That the use of a language in creative activities such as drama, poetry and music strengthens respect for the language and encourages its continued use.
• That the media, especially radio and television, and the associated resources, such as recording studios and transmission time, are important in encouraging the survival of a minority languages, because to survive the language must be spoken not just written.
• That there is a respect for, and a pride in, the language and for the feelings of Welshness that it confers, even among the Anglophonic majority.
• That pride in the sound and colour of the language, in its words and forms, in its very artistry in the mouth, in its nuances and niceness of expression, are what will carry it into the hearts of its users and sustain its survival.
• That a language, even a minority language, can help build a sense of shared value across a country, a sense of place, a sense of identity, even amongst the non-speakers of that language, because it conveys something unique, something special about that land and about being in that land.
• That minority languages can be the victim of the nation-building desires and the political ambitions of the states within which they exist, sometimes as a consequence of policy, sometimes as a consequence of disregard, sometimes as a consequence of neglect.
• That there is a danger of creating ethnic divides unless bilingualism is encouraged.
• That, sometimes, by educating the young exclusively in a minority language, especially if that language does not have sufficient breadth of resources, particularly in sciences and technology, they can be disadvantaged in the wider society of which they are part. There may even, at worst, be a danger of ghettoisation.

David Lockyer,

Harwich

2011

1For those interested in mutation in the Welsh-language please see the text of my talk on Anglo-Welsh Literature.

2Welsh, Gaelic, Manx, Cornish, French Patois, Scots, Norn, Romany, Cant (Shelta), Cumbric