Survival of the Welsh Language
Министерство образования и науки Украины
Таврический национальный университет
Им. В.И. Вернадского
Факультет иностранной филологии
Кафедра английской филологии
Гура Егор Николаевич
Реферат на тему: «The Survival of the Welsh Language»
Дисциплина «Лингвострановедение»
Специальность 7.030502
«английский и немецкий языки и литература»
курс 4, группа 42
Симферополь 2001
Contents :
1. Introduction
3
2. Part I
3
3. Part II
5
4. Part III
7
5. Part IV
8
6. Part V
9
7. Part VI
10
8. Part VII
12
9. Part VIII
14
10. Part IX
15
11. Welsh language guide
18
12. List of used sources
21
Introduction
It is the eighth wonder of Wales that is the most wondrous of them all, the
survival of the Welsh language in the face of almost impossible odds.
Sometime in the seventh century, a Welsh Bishop heard an Englishman's voice
on the bank of the River Severn and was filled with foreboding at the
sound.. He recorded his unsettling experience thus: "For the kinsman of
yonder strange-tongued man whose voice I heard across the river. . . will
obtain possession of this place, and it will be theirs, and they will hold
it in ownership."
The bishop was wrong. More than twelve centuries have passed since the
strange tongue of the Saxon was heard on the borders of Wales, centuries
during which the ancient tongue of the Bishop and his fellow Britons had
every opportunity to become extinct and yet which has stubbornly refused to
die. The survival of the native language is truly one of the great wonders
of Wales, to be appreciated and marvelled at far more than any physical
feature or man-made object, and far more than the so-called seven wonders
of Wales.
It is a something of a shock when visitors travel from England west into
Wales, for, almost without warning, he may find himself in areas where not
only the dialects become incomprehensible, but where even the language
itself has changed. The roadside signs "Croeso i Gymru" (accompanied by the
red dragon, the ancient badge of Wales) let it be known that one is now
entering a new territory, inhabited by a different people, for the
translation is "Welcome to Wales" written in one of the oldest surviving
vernaculars in Europe. For amusement with the language, after getting used
to names such as Pontcysyllte, Pen y Mynydd , or Glynceiriog, one can take
a little detour off the main route through Anglesey to Ireland and visit
the village with its much-photographed sign announcing the now-closed
railway station:
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwrndrobwyllllantisiliogogogoch
To account for the abrupt linguistic change from English into Welsh, one
must journey far, far back into history.
Part I
It was about 1000 BC that the Celtic languages arrived in Britain, probably
introduced by small groups of migrants who became culturally dominant in
their new homelands, and whose culture formed part of a great unified
Celtic "empire" encompassing many different peoples all over Northern
Europe. The Greeks called these people, with their organized culture and
developed social structure Keltoi, the Romans called them Celtai.
In spite of the fact that they were perhaps the most powerful people in
much of Europe in 300 BC, with lands stretching from Anatolia in the East
to Ireland in the West, the Celts were unable to prevent inter tribal
warfare; their total lack of political unity, despite their fierceness in
battle, ultimately led to their defeat and subjugation by the much-better
disciplined armies of Rome. The Celtic languages on Continental Europe
eventually gave way to those stemming from Latin.
The Celts had been in Britain a long time before the first Roman invasion
of the British Isles under Julius Caesar in 55 BC which did not lead to any
significant occupation. The Roman commander, and later Emperor, had some
interesting, if biased comments concerning the native inhabitants. "All the
Britons," he wrote, “paint themselves with woad, which gives their skin a
bluish color and makes them look very dreadful in battle" (De Bello
Gallico). It was not until a hundred years later, following an expedition
ordered by the Emperor Claudius, that a permanent Roman settlement of the
grain-rich eastern territories of Britain begun in earnest.
From their bases in what is now Kent, the Roman armies began a long,
arduous and perilous series of battles with the native Celtic tribes, first
victorious, next vanquished, but as on the Continent, superior military
discipline and leadership, along with a carefully organized system of forts
connected by straight roads, led to the triumph of Roman arms. In the
western peninsular, in what is now Wales, the Romans were awestruck by
their first sight of the druids (the religious leaders and teachers of the
British). The historian Tacitus described them as being "ranged in order,
with their hands uplifted, invoking the gods and pouring forth horrible
imprecations" (Annales)
The terror was only short-lived; Roman arms easily defeated the native
tribesmen, and it was not long before a great number of large, prosperous
villas were established all over Britain, but especially in the Southeast
and Southwest. Despite defeats in pitched battles, the people of
mountainous Wales and Scotland were not as easily settled; their scattered
settlements remained "the frontier" -- lands where military garrisons were
strategically placed to guard the Northern and Western extremities of the
Empire. The fierce resistance of the tribes in Cambria meant that two out
of the three Roman legions in Britain were stationed on the Welsh borders.
Two impressive Roman fortifications remain to be seen in Wales: Isca
Silurium (Caerleon) with its fine amphitheatre, in Monmouthshire; and
Segontium, (Caernarfon), in Gwynedd.
In Britain, at least for a few hundred years after the Roman victories on
mainland Europe, the Celts held on to much of their customs and especially
to their distinctive language, which has miraculously survived until today
as Welsh. The language of most of Britain was derived from a branch of
Celtic known as Brythonic: it later gave rise to Welsh, Cornish and Breton
(these differ from the Celtic languages derived from Goidelic; namely,
Irish, Scots, and Manx Gaelic). Accompanying these languages were the
Celtic religions, particularly that of the Druids, the guardians of
traditions and learning.
Though the Celtic tongue survived as the medium of everyday speech, Latin
being used mainly administrative purposes, many loan words entered the
native vocabulary, and these are still found in modern-day Welsh, though
many of these have entered at various times since the end of the Roman
occupation. Today's visitors to Wales who know some Latin are surprised to
find hundreds of place names containing Pont (bridge), while ffenest
(window), pysgod (fish), milltir (mile), melys (sweet or honey) cyllell
(knife), ceffyl (horse), perygl (danger), eglwys (church), pared (wall or
partition), tarw (bull) and many others attest to Roman or Latin influence.
When the city of Rome fell to the invading Goths under Alaric, Roman
Britain, which had experienced hundreds of years of comparative peace and
prosperity, was left to its own defences under its local Romano-British
leaders, one of whom may have been a tribal chieftain named Arthur. It
quickly crumbled under the onslaught of Germanic tribes (usually
collectively referred to as Anglo-Saxons) themselves under attack from
tribes to the east and wishing to settle in the sparsely populated, but
agriculturally rich lands across the narrow channel that separated them.
More than two hundred years of fighting between the native Celts, as brave
as ever but comparatively disorganized, and the ever-increasing numbers of
Germanic tribesmen eventually resulted in Britain sorting itself out into
three distinct areas: the Britonic West, the Teutonic East, and the Gaelic
North. It was these areas that later came to be identified as Wales,
England, and Scotland, all with their very separate cultural and linguistic
characteristics (Ireland, of course, remained Gaelic: many of its peoples
migrated to Scotland, taking their language with them to replace the native
Pictish).
From the momentous year 616, the date of their defeat at the hands of the
Saxons in the Battle of Chester, the Welsh people in Wales were on their
own. Separated from their fellow Celts in Cornwall and Cumbria, those who
