Language in the News: Welsh

In Bangor, Wales (not the one in Maine), a company called Sports Direct appears to have issued orders that Welsh people weren’t allowed to speak Welsh in Wales. (Here’s the original article, as well as a follow-up article that indicates it wasn’t an official directive from the company. The intrigue continues.)

The company stated that English is the official language of their company, and no other language should be spoken by their employees while on the job, even during personal conversations. Now, you could argue all you want that they can do whatever they like, since it’s their company, but it seems a little tone-deaf, if not straight-up rude, to tell people they can’t speak their own native language in their own country, even if it’s included on a list of a bunch of other languages they also can’t speak on the job. It just seems like a bad move, especially when you’ve come into that country from elsewhere. In fact, as of 2011, it’s actually illegal in Wales to tell people they can’t speak Welsh.

Distribution of Welsh speakers in Wales per the 2011 census. Graphic from Wikipedia.

Wales has gone to a lot of trouble to be sure Welsh, aka Cymraeg, is an actively used language. Like most Celtic languages, it’s been beleaguered for centuries, being pushed out by English, and is now only spoken by about 20% of the population of Wales. It’s mostly spoken even in Wales as a second language, though parts of the north and west of Wales are home to native speakers (i.e. those who learn it as their first language). With the government passing protections for the language as well as establishing organizations to preserve it, Welsh has the kind of backing it needs to stay alive, at least in its native land. Technically, then, it’s not an orphan language, but it’s one that could easily be lost if efforts to maintain it are for some reason discontinued.