Why Welsh is Being Erased from the Map

On a side note: Your video was very well done. an English person having so much respect for Wales and its history is a rare sight to see.

I'm Asian, but I'm learning Welsh now. I'm studying in Wales. I love here. I think it's too arrogant if I don't learn it at all. so I started to learn Welsh, and hopefully, I can be fluent one day. I'm not very optimistic about Welsh, but some good news remains. I knew several people in person who were not Welsh but sent their children to Welsh medium schools. And they are learning Welsh too. A friend just told me that an African lady has become a Welsh language teacher and is teaching beginners Welsh. These stories are inspiring. It's a pity I hardly heard people speaking Welsh in South Wales. Yesterday I finally heard a man talking on the phone and saying "siarad Cymraeg"(speaking welsh), but then he shifted to English. Hey guys, if you are just like me, living in Wales but not Welsh, you can just learn some Welsh for fun! You will know more very friendly Welsh people. By the way I can pronounce llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch! 😜

Having grown up in England I grew up thinking Welsh was an anachronism that was just a bit silly. As an adult I had a holiday in Brittany and read a bit about the decline of Breton in the face of the hostility of French speakers. I thought that this was a terrible thing, but then realised that this was exactly my attitude to Welsh as an English speaker.

As a Welsh speaker I can’t say that Welsh towns have weird names at all, they’re almost always descriptive which helps out place where I am. For instance if I’m in Aberystwyth, I know that I’m at “The Mouth of the River Ystwyth”, or if I’m in Pontypridd I must be near the “Bridge of Earth” (or would have once upon a time but you get the idea!). It helps connect you with where you are. Interestingly, Welsh has 2 words for landscape: tirwedd, which would be more or less the same in English, but also tirlun, which means more like “picture of the land,” how it lies - it’s this that I think of when it comes to Welsh place names, as they can indeed be very poetic.

This video hit home in many ways. So I’m a Zulu guy raising a 4 year old in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Obviously it’s the most prominent language here but because it’s historically more of a spoken language and due to colonisation, every piece of academia as well as other signage and labels are in English (and Afrikaans, but that’s a whole other story of Apartheid I won’t get to). We still have a lot of places with Zulu names, even though spelling has butchered many of them but that’s as far as it gets. Back to my 4 year old. So she consumes a lot of English content in the form cartoons and nursery rhymes. There’s little to none on mainstream media that’s in Zulu. As a result, she speaks English, even if I speak to her in Zulu, she’ll reply in English. So I’m constantly debating with myself whether I should not force the Zulu and let her be great in English because Zulu is just her heritage as far as she chooses to identify with it and its importance to her. Or I force her to be fluent in Zulu as well to ensure she can communicate and fully understand other Zulu speaking people and places better. Long story short, English’s hostile takeover as a language is at the detriment of the heritage of the native language of a specific region. Great video. I actually started noticing the Welsh names when watching the Wrexham documentary. I’ll stop here.

A Basque speaker here! I hope Welsh is having a bright future despite globalisation and the influence of the massive English language. Our languages may be vulnerable but they make what we really are as Welsh/Basques.

I'm not from Cymru but it's important that the language is preserved. You pointed out so many reasons why in this video. Your research and genuine passion for the subjects you cover come through so much and that's why I love this channel. Cymraeg is a beautiful language just to listen to, even if you don't understand a word of what is being said It's worth mentioning that Cymraeg isn't the only language that's at risk in the UK. There's also Gaelic in Alba (Scotland) and Cornish in Kernow. As an English speaker, I will always try at least, to learn and pronounce the places names I visit outside of England. The way I see it, we wouldn't like it if people came to England and started making up different names for places or purposely mispronouncing them, so why should we do that to the places we visit? It's just respect for the places you visit at the end of the day!

Very well presented, I think you covered the issue really well, and your pronunciation is really good! It’s a really important issue, as you mentioned it’s possible to erase the history of the entire place, both known and undiscovered. Cae’r Gastell (field of the castle), for example, inadvertently preserved the location of a Roman fort that was only uncovered a few decades ago, and replacing actual names with alternatives for the lazy just dampens the already threatened language. Diolch!

I'm a welsh person, never felt connected to my country or my language. School ruined welsh lessons, made them boring and uninspired! Fast forward to age 36 and I am deeply immersed in welsh myth and folklore, the mabinogi and the book of taliesin. The ancient books of wales are rich and varied and permeate the lands of wales, myths run through the veins. The welsh place names tell a story, they connect the land to the history and connect us to the land and the history. They tell the stories that are part of who we are. The idea of stripping society of their individual identity is a big agenda right now. It's not one I am willing to indulge in. I do not speak welsh yet but I am learning. Every time I go to a new place I immediately feel drawn to want to understand what the name means. It's truly magical and feels really exciting to have a deeper understanding of the land. I tell you what is also a huge shame is that in schools in south wales no one teaches the kids about the myths and folklore! No one ever teaches you about the magical and myth and the beauty of the language. No one ever tells you about the connection to the land and your own identity. It's something I am passionate about and I am making changes to this with my own children! They are definitely aware of their deeply immersive and magical culture. Also the census. Maybe a lot of people just didnt fill it in this time? It could reflect the lower numbers in the census.

I’ve visited Wales almost every summer (from the US) the past 30 years. When I’m visiting a new place, I work ahead of time to learn to pronounce. I’ve also loved watching the Welsh channel in hotel rooms in the mornings. The kids programs help to learn (even a little bit) of the language

I’m from Perranzabuloe in Cornwall and I hope, like Wales, that such places retain their distinctive names and culture, indeed, it would be sad if they all sounded English because our collective history says otherwise.

I find it ridiculous that people move somewhere, won't bother to learn the language, and then need to change a place name because of their laziness.

They don’t, Welsh place names have hundreds of years of history and mean something, from Battles, People, Treaties etc. The Weird names in Wales comes from certain colonists who were unwilling to learn the native names and in doing so they replaced them with names that have no direct meaning to anything in the immediate area, or the country on the whole.

As an Australian who loved visiting Wales, I enjoyed looking at the bilingual signs. What did annoy me was that when driving you need to read the signs quickly. Most of the signs had the English in the same place (I don’t remember if they were on top or bottom) but when you need the sign most, some were the other way around. Good on Wales for having these signs but please be consistent. I loved Wales and the people we met. The Welsh were friendly and even the English living in Wales were friendlier than the English in England.

Ireland uses the Gaelic language for everyday administration and legal documentation. If the Welsh government increase the amount of fluent speakers, they may be able to preserve the identity through everyday use in government, legal documents, and conversations. For policy on language preservation, Ireland may be an excellent example to see what have to offer that Wales can implement.

I’ve been living in North Wales for a while now and it’s amazing to hear Welsh spoken everywhere I go, although there is a growing problem though, as so many properties are AirBNB style holiday lets meaning some communities are dying out as there’s barely anyone there during the Autumn/Winter months - it’s a vicious cycle of tourists keeping the areas going, leaving little room for local affordability for properties, meaning people move away, leading to fewer non-tourist related jobs available, cycling back to the reliance on tourism!

This is sometimes presented as a new problem, but it has its roots in Victorian times and the early days of mass tourism. The railways were responsible for the loss of a lot of names: for example, the village of Llansanffraid Glyndyfrdwy (which translates to the Church of St. Brigit in the Dee Valley) was evidently too much of a mouthful for GWR, so they named their new station for the nearby Carrog Hall instead. Now, the village itself is known as Carrog to practically everyone. Tourist hotspots often gained twee Victorian monikers which were copy-pasted from elsewhere in the UK. I'm sure viewers who live here will all know of a Fairy Glen or two, or perhaps a Happy Valley, or a Constitution Hill. They probably don't know the names these places used to have: Ffos Anoddun, Cwm Maethlon or Craig-Glais. The Cable Bays, Happy Donkey Hills and Lake Australias of this world are just the latest phase in a two-century long assault on Welsh place names.

Once you learn a few rules, Welsh names aren't that difficult to pronounce. This is coming from someone who doesn't speak Welsh but lived in Llanelli and had relatives in Pwll etc. It was also the only coded language during the war that the Germans never broke.

Da iawn, good video. I've just returned from travelling through 12 nations on continental Europe, and every single one of them had everything either totally in their one national language or in the two or more languages housed within their borders. That's all the adverts, press, product labels, street signage and official information as well as other media. Wales needs to assert itself more. Some of this has been happening, especially since the 60s, but we have a long way to go. (Anyone learning Welsh - gwych, dwi wedi, a dyna un o'r penderfyniadau gorau i mi wneud yn fy mywyd.)

Native languages should not go extinct, they make life interesting 😊