Talk:Welsh language/Archive 2

Census

We seem to have a lot of information from the 2001 census, compared with the other censuses. Do we need everything from "The 2001 census also recorded that 20% could read Welsh, 18% could write Welsh, and an impressive 24% could understand Welsh. Furthermore..." onwards? (Particularly the "impressive".) I'm not really sure what it adds except that more people understand it than speak it and that not all of those who speak it can write it. We don't have anything to compare those with. --Telsa 13:13, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, the earlier censuses did not ask so many questions as later ones, so there is more information to be had from the latest one and comparisons are not possible. Also, what is meant by "Welsh speaking" is imprecise (an imprecision which earlier censuses cannot resolve, because they ask no other questions): does it mean knowing a few words, does it mean fluency, does it mean used every day? The additional statistics show that one in four people in Wales can still understand the language, which was surprising and interesting to me, at least. I find it hard to think of information more relevant to the article than this, nor more scientifically based.Chelseaboy 13:05, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh, fair enough. I agree that the disparity between speaking and understanding is interesting. But we have that currently in the history section, following on from the sequence of decline and upturn. Since it is a current figure, would it not make more sense to put understanding up in the status section? The trouble is wording it so that it is clear that it is not 24% on top of 21%, but instead (counts on fingers) 24% in total, or 3% on top.

Oh dear, and I have just noticed that the status section says it's 21% and the history section says it's 20.5% and they both say this figure came from the same census. Digging around the Welsh Language Board and Office of National Statistics websites, I am now hopelessly confused. It looks to me as though the census releases preliminary results and then refines them? I have also found the figure 20.8% ("which can be rounded up to 21%") from the same census now. Just to throw everything into complete disarray, other surveys have found wildly different figures: the Welsh Local Labour Force Survey has over 30% reporting that they understand it. The disparity was so great that the ONS produced a report trying to work out why: this google link should find it.

I think at this stage, I shall leave the numbers to someone else! But once they are sorted out, how about moving those figures around?

--Telsa ((t)(c)) 11:39, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I'd say, simplify, simplify. The numbers are all close; why not just say "according to the 2001 census, approximately 20% of the population know Welsh" (keeping the definition of "know" deliberately vague), and provide a link to the census figures to allow the interested reader to find all the gory details there? Angr/talk 11:46, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I think we should prefer precision to imprecision, particularly when it is based on such a good source. It is a pity to lose relevant and well sourced information. And linking to a source is not as good as improving the Wiki, especially, since source weblinks don't last for ever. Chelseaboy 17:04, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

More figures: Bwrdd yr Iaith recently published the 2004 Language Use Survey (link to survey). It says "21.7% (611,000) of all those ages 3 and over could speak Welsh. This compares with 20.8% in the 2001 Census. 57% (315,000) of Welsh speakers considered themselves fluent in Welsh. (In 1992, the corresponding figure, according to the Welsh Office's Welsh Social Survey was 61% (363,000))." There's lots more about fluency and "language of last conversation outside the family" and so on in it, and at the end there's a short discussion of the different numbers from different surveys. I shall update the article. I suspect something about fluency should probably go in the section which talks about monolingualism, code-switching, etc, but I wasn't sure how to word it. Telsa (talk) 08:40, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I have made a change to a statement in the Status section. It said "Even among the Welsh-speakers, few, if any, residents of Wales are monolingual in Welsh." In recent censuses (1991 and 2001), this category was not counted, so it can't be claimed that monoglots have ceased to exist. In fact, it was clear in previous censuses that many of the monoglots (and most of them in 1981) were children under school age brought up in Welsh speaking households. There are probably around 5000-10000 of these in Wales today, and because of the recent availability of Welsh-only primary schools, there may be a fair number aged 5-6 as well. This may seem a niggling point, but these children are uniquely important for the future of the language, and it's characteristic of the superficialty of Language Policy that the census doesn't even bother to count them.LinguisticDemographer 14:15, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Peer review

There's quite a list of suggestions on the peer review page now. I have gone ahead and implemented some of the more minor ones: a couple of links, organising the external links, and adding some references for the dialect stuff. I don't know whether they're the best references, but they are at least references. Also, I was trying to be concise, but I don't think what I put was very clear. Please do improve it if you can!

There's lots of different styles of references in use on Wikipedia. If anyone has strong preferences, now is a good time to voice them, whilst there aren't too many to do. (I am a fan of Harvard refs myself, but I know how to do Wikipedia footnotes, so that's what I did for now.)

I have left the more substantial suggestions for now, largely in the hope that someone more knowledgeable will do them. :)

--Telsa 13:13, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

S4C survey

. In 1993 S4C (The Welsh TV channel) published the results of a survey into the numbers of people speaking/understanding Welsh, and this estimated that there were some 133,000 Welsh-speakers living in England, about 50,000 of them in the Greater London area.

More than a quarter of all Welsh speakers live in England? Nearly one in ten lives in London? It would be great to see some detail on this survey. For a start, what is meant by "speaking/understanding Welsh"? Flapdragon 01:20, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Reply by User : Hogyn Lleol

This 133,000 is on top of the 1/4 million or so in Wales. The figure has to be estimated because the English census (nor any other outside Wales) does not ask the question, as does the census in wales.

As to fluency in speaking/understanding, the census in Wales only asks "Can you - read / speak / understand Welsh?" Not "Do you ...?"

Many people in fact fail to tick the box because they don't feel that they are fluent enough. There are no degrees of fluency available in the question! Unavoidably this question is a little too subjective for accuracy.

see http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/archives/welsh-l/welsh-l/1993/Mar/More-Welsh-Speakers for more.

Diolch Hogyn Lleol for that reference, which I've added to the article, though I still wish we had a first-hand one from S4C explaining how the obtained those "estimated" results. Of course you're quite right to stress the distinction between how many can speak Welsh and how many do speak Welsh, and I agree that the census question is unavoidably vague (if only because it depends totally on people's subjective assessment of themselves), but I can't see why people would say they can't speak Welsh but do. If the oft-quoted figure of 750,000 is anything more than casual speculation, I'd love to see the evidence. It may well have been true in the past that many people weren't proud or confident enough of their Welsh to answer "yes" but I doubt they're very numerous today (a quarter of a million?!), and on the face of it there seems no reason to believe that the census is so wildly inaccurate. Flapdragon 14:38, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Reply by User : Hogyn lleol Actually, let's not also forget that many Welsh people (numbering thousands, possibly tens of) actually refused to return their census forms due to the absence of a "Welsh" nationality box (unlike in Scotland). A coffin travelled round Wales, and census forms were put in these. It is likely that many of these were Welsh speakers. Almost certainly the next census WILL have a Welsh box and, who knows, there might even be a Welsh question in the census forms in England. By the way, no-one was jailed or fined for non-return of forms, despite this being the official punishment.

Requested merge

As far as I can see British language (Celtic) is just a different name for the early Welsh language. The new, rather mischievious, "British language" article should be merged into the proper article.--Mais oui! 10:08, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree. An Siarach

I don't, exactly. I think, and said at the outset at Talk:British language (Celtic), that British language (Celtic) should be renamed Proto-Brythonic language and focus on that: the reconstruction of the common ancestor of Welsh, Breton, and Cornish. If it is to be merged to an existing article, then surely Old Welsh language is the more appropriate target than Welsh language, which is about the modern language. Angr/talk 12:15, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

At the moment there are separate articles for Old Welsh language and Middle Welsh language. As I understand it, what is referred to here is the language which later developed into Old Welsh but is usually considered to be a separate language. I think the article should be kept separate as the Welsh language article is already quite long and there is still a lot of modern material which needs to be added. I don't much like the name "British" for it though. In Welsh it is known as "Brythoneg", but I'm not sure what the accepted name for it is in English. Rhion 12:41, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Angr and Rhion. The British language was not the same thing as Welsh, though it evolved into it. -- Arwel (talk) 12:48, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely! I do not know how much evidence we have for British, but Proto-Brythonic would be a far more accurate title if it was about the reconstructed ancestor of the Brythonic languages. --Gareth Hughes 13:02, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Byrthoneg -> Brythonic. Skimming Primitive Irish language and Old Irish language, British language (Celtic) appears to deal with the same era as a Primitive Welsh language article would. However, where Old Irish links to Primitive Irish, Old Welsh links to Brythonic. As for Proto-Brythonic, that doesn't seem to be a very popular term. Pretanic is as (un)common, and less ugly. Angus McLellan 13:10, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I hadn't realised that there was already an Old Welsh language article, or I would have recommended a merge with that, but you guys are clearly on the case now, and are far better informed than I, so I wish you well in your consultations. Bearing in mind the discussion up til now, my tuppence worth is that it probably should remain as a separate article but be renamed to Brythoneg. But we should keep up the merge tabs until a consensus is reached not to merge, then, if necessary, Move the article or if contentious initiate a Requested rename.--Mais oui! 14:28, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

It should not be renamed to "Brythoneg", because that's not an English name for anything. The current article British language (Celtic) seems to be about a scantily attested very early stage of Welsh, not about a reconstructed proto-language, and so I'm in favor of a merge with Old Welsh language. I don't think enough is known about pre-8th century Welsh to warrant a separate article. (I would like there also someday to be an article Proto-Brythonic language about the reconstructed ancestor of Welsh, Cornish, and Breton, but it needn't have any content currently at British language (Celtic). Will you change the Merge templates to reflect that the suggested merger is from British language (Celtic) to Old Welsh language? Angr/talk 15:33, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm a little perturbed by the dab on British language; no educated person uses the full term "British language" to refer to anything other than the older language of pre-Saxon southern and middle Britain (or maybe my medievalist studies have distorted my mind). Old "Welsh" language kinda implies there was more division than there was, but is at least in common use by scholars, even by pieces of literature that were produced in the north (curiously, wiki has an article called "Cumbric language"). It's one of those historical distortions that occur because of later history, much like the terms Old and Middle "Irish". - Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) File:UW Logo-secondary.gif 15:43, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

*sighs* Why merge? If you're going to merge it, you'll have to do it with Old Welsh language, Welsh language, Cornish language, etc. etc. It's not a stub, and is informative enough on its own. And please don't call it Proto-anything - it was a real language, not a hypothetical one. - The Great Gavini ^{be sociable} 09:21, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Why merge? Because both British language (Celtic) and Old Welsh language are short articles covering very nearly the same topic. One article covering more is more interesting than two articles covering less. The only reason British language (Celtic) isn't a stub is that someone has added a very dubious-looking "glossary of some known British words", which looks more to me like a mixture of Middle or Modern Welsh words (rhyd, penn), Irish words (cnoc), Gaulish word stems (uxello, vindo), and reconstructed Proto-Celtic stems (keito, leito). Angr/talk 10:51, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Dubious? I'm sure they can be proven, given the amount of original texts in and books about the language. I'll check it out. - The Great Gavini ^talk 17:33, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Really? In the article itself it says "Very little is known about British, as there are no written texts in Britain about the language. One of the few sources of information about the language in Britain is the names of British chieftains on coins. Continental European knowledge of the tongue is found in Latin or Ancient Greek texts; even then, it is limited to a few names of people and places." So there are a few names on coins and a few isolated words written down by people who didn't speak British. Angr/talk 18:12, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, maybe not original texts, but there are plenty of books on the language that I know of. And it does not matter that it was written down by non-British speakers - these are the only bits of the language we know about. What about Vandalic? What we know of Vandalic is just, to quote what you said, "a few isolated words", written by non-speakers (Romans). I don't see why British should be different. - The Great Gavini ^talk 10:39, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

The difference to me is that there's nowhere really convenient to merge Vandalic language to. Angr/talk 11:52, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

...and that there are too many possible articles for British (language) to be merged into. Unless, of course, it's going to merged into all these articles. Best just to give separate languages separate articles, methinks. - The Great Gavini ^talk 17:14, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

What else could it possibly be merged into besides Old Welsh language? Middle Welsh language is a later stage still, and Welsh language, Cornish language, and Breton language are all about modern languages. Angr/talk 18:44, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Just to make things more interesting, an anon is now adding even more "known British words" to the list, including some that are actually Old English or Old Norse, so now not only is the list not restricted to British, it's not not even restricted to Celtic. Angr/talk 16:08, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

In a Welsh context, couldn't Brythonic be called 'Ancient Welsh'? Stefanik 15:43, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Transformation of British to Early Welsh/Early Cornish

The British language began its disintegration and transformation to successor languages during the Roman occupation, a process which continued in the centuries following the Roman occupation. Early Welsh is guessed (only roughly due to lack of documentary evidence) to have separated from its predecessor, the British language, in the 6th or 7th century. At the same time as British was developing into what scholars term Early Welsh and Early Cornish the British/successor language was being gradually replaced in some areas by Old English and Goidelic through the influence of invaders (or population replacement by invaders or a mixture of the two). Early Welsh was not confined to the territory of Wales and the Welsh marches (history is never neat and tidy) but was spoken in those parts of North Western England and the Scottish borderlands and lowlands held by British chiefs. It survived for many centuries in the territories that became England and Scotland – in some places till the 11th century (see Cumbric). Ref: A History of Wales, John Davies, 1993; Datblygiad yr Iaith Gymraeg, Henry Lewis, 1931 (in Welsh). A Bibliography of the Welsh language also includes the following references which are probably relevant (but I haven't had the chance to refer to them):

Williams, Ifor: When did British become Welsh? – The beginnings of Welsh poetry…; ed. Rachel Bromwich. Cardiff: Unversity of Wales Press, 1972, 1-15

Foster, Idris Ll: The emergence of Wales – Prehistoric and early Wales; ed. I. Ll. Foster and Glyn Daniel. London: Routledge and Degan Paul, 1965, 213 – 35

Jackson, Kenneth: The British language during the period of the English settlements. – Studies in early British history; ed. Nora K Chadwick. Cambridge: University Press, 1954

Jackson, Kenneth: Language and history in early Britain: a chronological survey of the Brittonic languages, 1st to 12th c. A.D. Edinburgh: University Press, 1953, 288-92

Separate article? For the reasons given above I do not think that this article should be amalgamated with Welsh or Old Welsh. I think this parent language should stay as an independent article, although it does cover a lot of the same ground as the article on the Brythonic languages in general. Lloffiwr 13:16, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Hail, hail. I see this dispute over the "problem article" isn't over yet. I'm yet to be convinced that this article is to be merged anywhere. Remember: Cornish also came from British. If you're going to merge it into Old Welsh language or Welsh language, it would have to merged into Cornish too. It's probably best to keep it separate.- The Great Gavini ^{suss it out, Zen it up (again, non-standard English. But I digress...)} 20:25, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

List of contemporary speakers

The list of contemporary speakers is getting out of hand. I recommend we delete this section (no other language page I've seen on WP has anything like it) before there are 610,000 names on the list. Angr/talk 06:57, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Many of these people's articles don't mention that they speak Welsh, incidentally: is it generally something notable enough to include? I have never been sure whether to include it or not. --Telsa ((t)(c)) 08:37, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm in two minds about this. In a way it's an excellent publicity exercise - many people have no idea that some of the British media's well known characters speak Welsh. However, you either have to have a list or not - you can't say, for instance, "we'll limit it to 20". Hogyn Lleol 08:52, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I'd say that's more of an argument to include the information in the article on the person in question, provided, of course, that it's verifiable. Angr/talk 09:00, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Deletion supported. Being bilingual is not usually of itself notable. As for noting this in the relevant article for particular people then again we are talking of a personal biographical detail which, although of great importance to the individual concerned (subconsciously if not consciously), is not of itself necessarily a noteworthy part of that person's public achievements. However, for persons whose achievements are accomplished wholly or partly through the medium of Welsh it is obviously a relevant biographical point, e.g. actors who perform in both Welsh and English, authors who write in both languages. Lloffiwr 13:04, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Agree to deletion. While I can see some point to it (one does sometimes meet people from the other side of the border who seem to think all Welsh speakers live in caves on the slopes of Snowdon) the article is already large and this list could grow and grow. It hasn't even got me on it yet ;) Rhion 08:47, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and deleted it. It's totally unnecessary and in almost all cases unverified information. Angr/talk 08:05, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Welsh English

Just how likely is it that anyone would confuse the Welsh language with Welsh English? Its only slightly more likely than someone confusing French with French English imo. The "not to be confused" sentence in the intro seems completely unnecessary to me. An Siarach

Yes, this does seem a little strange. No-one would call Welsh English simply Welsh; and if one knew enough to know that there was a Welsh English, one would definitely know there was a Welsh. - 10:36, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

There isn't a dialect of English called French English. I can easily imagine someone unaware that anything other than English is spoken in Wales assuming that "Welsh language" must refer to the dialect of English spoken in Wales. Angr/talk 10:36, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

No, come one, no one is going to think that. People who don't know anything are much more likely to assume that Welsh is the only language in Wales, rather than there being no Welsh. There's no similar sentence on Irish language, nor is there mention of Kazakh Russian on the Kazakh language page (etc). - Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 10:44, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Irish language does say "For Irish English, see Hiberno-English", and I know from personal experience that educated Continental Europeans are often surprised to find out that "Irish" refers to something other than the dialect of English spoken in Ireland. I suspect many of the same people would be equally suprised to find out what "Welsh" refers to. Angr/talk 11:25, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Whether or not there really is a dialect of English called French English obviously wasnt the point - the fact that next to nobody would think "Welsh" or "Welsh language" would refer to anything other than the Welsh language is. While a level of ambiguity or confusion is understandable with regard to Scottish/Scottish Gaelic/Lowland Scots/Scots/Scottish English etc i have NEVER, under ANY circumstances come across ANY confusion or misunderstanding regarding Welsh. TBH when i first read the newly inserted statement regarding Welsh English i laughed because it seemed so daft. An Siarach

Ive shifted the sentence referring to Welsh English to the same sort of position as that held by the referrence to Hiberno-English in the Irish language article. This maintaints the sentence for any who might be confused between the two without giving it the undue prominence of its previous position. An Siarach

Question to Welsh speakers!

| 8. Unknown origin:

• Welsh: Iseldireg
• Cornish: Iseldiryek

A section on the Dutch language cuurrently lists the origin of the Welsh word for Dutch as unknown. Could speakers and/or native speakers clarify the origin? Thanks. Sander 17:52, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

It's a straight translation of Netherlands/Nederland. Isel means "low", tir means "country", -eg is a suffix used to form language names. The switch from tir to dir is due to soft mutation. Angr (talk • contribs) 18:02, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Downside of teaching Welsh?

I have removed this sentence to here for comments. "A downside of the mandatory teaching of Welsh is that it displaces the learning of other second languages, and a significantly lower proportion of Welsh children study French, German, Spanish etc. to GSCE (age 16) than in England." This is an argument made by people on one side of a particular debate; and there are plenty of arguments that could be made in return. But should that happen in this article? Would it not be more appropriate over in Education in Wales or one of its sub-articles? (If it's to stay in any article, it probably wants a source: it is a point of view and we should say who holds it.) Thoughts? Should we keep it? Telsa (talk) 07:55, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

If there's a source for the statistic, that can be included at Education in Wales (not here), and it can speak for itself without commentary. Without a source for the statistic, it smacks of being written by a disgruntled schoolchild who resents having to take Welsh. Angr (talk • contribs) 08:22, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Ditto the comments above. Hogyn Lleol 11:56, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, what I thought too. Ta. Telsa (talk) 13:55, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Cite tags

I get that it needs citations... But next time, put that on the entire article. Not the entire article LINE BY LINE. 17 {{Fact}} tags rather dramatically degraded the readability of the article. Nentuaby 19:27, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

NPOV Query

It occurs to me that this entire article has a nationalistic tone, the inherent assumption that increasing amounts of welsh speaking is by definition a good thing. I query that and think this article should be heavily edited to reduce POV. I look at the rise of Croatian as a language as opposed to Serbo-Croat as a similar phenomena. The Welsh In Education and Welsh in the Economy sections have a propoganda like tone that could be considered distasteful. -- Non Registered User.

I'm not seeing that it's non-NPOV myself, but if there is an implication that increasing numbers of speakers is a good thing, it's probably not a nationalistic bias so much as a scientific one. For linguists, linguistic diversity is as important as biodiversity is to biologists, and they mourn the death of a language as much as biologists mourn the extinction of a species. I imagine if you read an article about an endangered species that's making a comeback you'll find the same positive tone. Angr (t • c) 15:58, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

The bit I am most concerned about is the Welsh In The Economy section. It has absolutely no references to support itself and is basically a bullet point list of "why welsh is a good thing and going to become more important", it has no grounding at all. This is pure propaganda with no encyclopedia value. I suggest chopping the whole section out, but as a non-wiki user I'm not going to jump in myself. I understand your scientific argument, but I still consider POV, POV - and language is extremely political. In this case the rise in welsh has accompanied the rise in welsh nationalism and I honestly think this should be tempered in the Wiki article on the topic. Teaching it as a necessity in the national curriculum is a political act. -- Non registered user

I guess I see your point about that section. I've tagged it in accordance with your concerns, but I'm not in a position to improve it myself. Angr (t • c) 21:47, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

May I suggest that opposing the teaching of Welsh in Wales is also a political act. I agree, cut the section - it has no place in an article on the language itself. *is bold* Vashti 07:45, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with almost all of the non-registered user's points, but I do agree with Vashti that cutting it was a good idea: it was lifted from the website of the Welsh Language Board. (The Welsh in the Economy page.) Telsa (talk) 13:02, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, well then. :) I didn't think it read like a WP article, in retrospect. Vashti 19:14, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Welsh language Written Yes/No

I know that lots of historians agree that Welsh was not a written language and as such does not have its own alphbetic letters just the Roman ones. But I was wondering if this is just because it has not been found yet or it does not exist. I know that it was against the Druidic religion to write anything reliogious down but what about other domestic non-religious things. The Ogham alphabet existed in Scotland at the time so is it impossible that there was in fact a written Welsh language before the Roman invasion. History is written by the victors.--Rhydd Meddwl 15:49, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

How would we today know the difference between "it hasn't been found yet" and "it doesn't exist"? When scholars say Welsh wasn't written down until the 9th century, and then in Roman letters, it's because that's all that's been found. Of course it's conceivable that some form of Proto-Brittonic was written down in Ogham or some other writing system earlier, but until evidence of that is found, we stick to known facts. Angr (talk) 17:55, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

open back vowel

When I was looking at the phonology section of the article, I noticed that the symbol for the open back (unrounded) vowel was in the vowel table, but it was in the location for the open central vowel. As I'm not familiar with Welsh, should the vowel be changed to represent a open central vowel or the vowel moved to the spot for the open back vowel? As far as I know, open central vowels are not known to contrast in any language with open front vowels, which according to the table, the open front vowel occurs in Welsh, so the latter is probably most likely. --Redtitan 00:55, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

It's clearly wrong -- like so much of the phonetics on Wikipedia :-( -- and the ɑː belongs in the back column. The problem is that it's can of worms -- when you start to look at it closely the whole thing tends to unravel. For example what's this alleged [o:] vowel? and what's the basis for the claimed ɑ/a difference in "Spelling the diphthongs"? In fact orthographic <ae ~ au> (allegedly /ɑːɨ ~ aɨ/) are pronounced the same. Flapdragon 01:16, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

The [o:] vowel is the Welsh long o, the one that's often spelled ô. The chart indicates that <ae ~ au> are the same in South Wales dialects, but distinct in North Wales dialects. I can find a source for this later today. User:Angr 07:52, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I certainly don't know of any Welsh accent that pronounces ô as [o:] and would be equally surprised to see a reliable source for the other idea! Flapdragon 13:06, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

How do you pronounce ô? User:Angr 13:10, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

It's pretty much long cardinal 6 (symbol doesn't seem to work in my browser but it's a turned c), perhaps a fraction lower in the North. Pronouncing it [o:] introduces a strange Scottish flavour. Flapdragon 14:25, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Is it the same height as short o? User:Angr 14:44, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I think the short answer would be more or less. Speaking off the top of my head here, I'd say that in the South it's much the same but in the North there will be more difference of quality between the long and short o, with the short one being a little more open. There may be issues of lip-rounding too. Sorry no time to read up and think about this properly, hope this is better than nothing! Flapdragon 17:11, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Take a look at Welsh Phonology (1984), ed. Martin J. Ball and Glyn E. Jones, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, ISBN 0708308619, especially the first three chapters: "Phonetics for phonology" by Martin J. Bell, "The distinctive vowels and consonants of Welsh" by Glyn E. Jones, and "Phonotactic constraints in Welsh" by Gwenllian M. Awbery. These chapters confirm that long ô is higher than short o in both North Wales and South Wales. That being the case, it makes sense to transcribe them either as [oː] and [ɔ] respectively or as [ɔː] and [ɒ] respectively. Since the first option is the one chosen by all three authors, it's probably best if we stick to it here. The second and third chapters also confirm that /ɑːɨ/ and /aɨ/ are distinct in North Wales dialects (the first chapter doesn't address diphthongs at all). As for the quality of /ɑː/, the second chapter is the only one to address it all; the author says that /ɑː/ is a low front vowel (!) very similar in quality to /a/, but slightly less fronted, in South Wales dialects, while for many speakers of North Welsh it's almost of the same quality as /a/. So there's no confirmation for /ɑː/ being a back vowel at all. User:Angr 18:25, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, will take a look as soon as I get a moment. Flapdragon 08:48, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

what was the original script for welsh?

I guess it wasn't the latin(?) script used in english?

As far as anyone knows, it was the Latin alphabet. User:Angr 14:41, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Unvoiced nasals

Why are the voiceless nasals, [m̥] etc in parenthesis in the table of consonants. The article says they only occur as a result of nasal mutation but surely this means that they occur regularly, if not very often. Also, am I correct in understanding that nasal mutation takes [b] to [m] and [p] to [m̥] etc. but the nasal mutation section in the morphology article says that the voiceless plosives become aspirated nasal. Is that different from the voiceless nasals, in Icelandic, say? Stefán Ingi 13:31, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I suppose they're in parentheses because the fact that they only occur as a result of nasal mutation puts their status as phonemes in doubt. I don't think there's a significant difference between "voiceless" and "aspirated" nasals in any language (Welsh, Icelandic, Burmese) that has them. Phonetically, they're voiceless, and any aspiration is usually preaspiration rather than postaspiration as with aspirated oral stops. Phonologically, they tend pattern with aspirated stops are usually analyzed as being [+aspirated] (or [+spread glottis] or whatever feature for aspiration you like) rather than [−voice]. User:Angr 14:14, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Even if there was no difference between the two in terms of Welsh phonology, there is a significant acoustic difference between aspirated and voiceless and the article should make it clear which sound(s) are meant. Additionally, some of these sounds appear to be using the IPA diacritic for dental. 149.159.113.205 00:58, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

census information for numbers speaking welsh through the twentieth century?

any info on this. I doing a project and would like to draw a graph of welsh speaking against time (twentieth century). I know it would be a simplification but it would be useful in the context of my project.

Welsh on the internet

Welsh has a substantial presence on the Internet, but this is strongly biased towards public bodies:  
the ratio of search engine hit frequencies for Welsh words to their English equivalents tends to 
be about 0.1% for formal terms such as addysg (education), 
cymdeithas (society) or llywodraeth 
(government), but only about 0.01% for everyday terms such as 
buwch (cow), eirlaw (sleet) or 
cyllell (knife).

This worries me slightly. First, it looks like original research; second, and more importantly, the choice of apparently 'everyday terms' is just peculiar. I can't remember the last time I used the words cow, sleet, or knife in any language on the internet. On the other hand, the main point seems reasonable. Does anyone know where this comes from and if any other words were checked? garik 13:13, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

This has been in the article for months and months and has bothered me too. I have just tried to reproduce the results. It has taken a lot longer than I expected, because of course you have to search on all the mutated forms too (this makes an amazing difference to cyllell and especially cymdeithas), and remember to exclude results on Wikipedia, and so on. I am starting to lose count of zeros so I am giving up now. But I can't reproduce the same figures. I am not sure how good these pairs of words are anyway. "Cow" in English is a noun, a verb, and a term of abuse. Buwch.. isn't. "Sleet" is one of the terms in the METAR tables, and these weather reports are propagated, duplicated and syndicated (in English) all across the web, including news and tourist sites (they got in my way once, so I remember this :)) so there is some extra representation there. I can't find out where it came from originally. Telsa (talk) 22:31, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

So I never did find where these comparisons came from. As User:Garik says, it's looking very like original research at the moment. Has anyone any objection to removing it? Telsa (talk) 15:09, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Comparing the number of speakers against Irish

User:88.111.63.120 made an edit which claimed that Welsh is the second most popular Celtic language, on the grounds that this article says that Welsh has 700,000 speakers and Irish language says that Irish has 1,600,000 speakers. This change was reverted by User:Ptcamn, who said it was untrue. Is it in fact untrue? If so, should we modify one of the two articles? Or are the figures measuring different things? The Wednesday Island 17:44, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I think they're measuring very different things. As I understand it, Welsh has 700,000 people who use the language as their everyday language, while Irish has 1.6 million people who can--if required--carry on a conversation at some level. Welsh definitely has far more native speakers than Irish. —The preceding signed comment was added by Angr (talk • contribs). 18:25, 30 August 2006 (UTC)