Wales.
Wales is a country of lakes and mountains. Its about the half the size of
Switzerland, and it has a population of two and three quarter million. On
the north of Wales is some of the most beautiful scenery in the British
islands, the Snowdon mountain. Snowdon is Britain’s second highest
mountain.
Wales is an not independent nation. In 1292, the English king, Edward (,
invaded Wales and built fourteen huge castles to control the Welsh people.
His son, Edward, became the first prince of Wales, since then all the kings
and queens of England have given their eldest sons the title, Prince of
Wales. Prince Charles became the twenty-first Prince of Wales. Although the
English have ruled Wales for many centuries, Wales still has its own flag,
culture, and, above all, its own language. In the towns and villages of
North Wales, many people speak English only as a second language. Their
first language is Welsh. In Llanberis, a small town at the foot of Snowdon,
eighty-six per cent people speak Welsh as their first language. At the
local primary school children have nearly all their lessons in Welsh. The
children should be bilingual by the time that they are eleven years old. It
is not a problem for children to learn two languages at the same time.
Children have insight into two cultures, so have all the folk tales of two
languages. Children like Welsh because in Welsh you spell things just how
you say them, in English there are more silent letters.
Welsh is one of the oldest languages in Europe. Its a Celtic language, like
Breton in France, Gaelic in Ireland, or Gaelic in Scotland. Two and a half
thousand years before these languages were spoken in many parts of Europe.
They died out when the Romans invaded these areas, but some of them
survived in the north-west corner of Europe. But over the last hundred
years the number of Welsh-speaker has fallen very quickly. Now only twenty
per cent of Welsh people speak Welsh. Here are some of the reasons for the
decline.
In the nineteenth century people thought that Welsh an uncivilized
language. If you wanted to be successful in life you had to learn English,
the language of the British Empire. So in many schools children were
forbidden to speak Welsh.
At the beginning of the twentieth century many English and Irish people
moved to South Wales to work in the coal mines and steel works. They did
not learn Welsh.
People, especially young people, moved away from the Welsh-speaking
villages and farms of north and west Wales to look for work in the big
towns and cities, so the Welsh-speaking communities became much smaller.
In the 1960s and 1970s many English people bought holiday cottages in
villages in Wales. Most of them did not learn Welsh. This also pushed up
the price of houses so that local Welsh-speaking people cold not afford
them.
English comes into every Welsh home trough the television, the radio,
newspapers, books, etc. There are Welsh-language TV and radio stations, but
far fever than English ones. And now there is cable and satellite TV, too-
in English, of course!
The decline has now stopped, because a lot has been done. Road signs,
bilingual documentation, and there is a Welsh language act. The future of
Welsh is uncertain. The problem is that Welsh has to survive next door to
English, and, as we all know, English is a very successful language.
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