Welsh Voice Over Agency

Everything you never wanted to know about the Welsh language

The Welsh Alphabet
The Welsh alphabet uses 29 letters The letter J was introduced into the Welsh language so it could use borrowed words from English. There are double letter combinations which are pronounced as single letters, these are ch, dd, ff, ng, ll, ph, rh and th.

Welsh is old
Welsh is one of the oldest languages in Europe. You’ll hear it spoken in Wales, England and Scotland. Welsh poetry appears between 400 and 700 AD.

Magpies
Seeing two Magpies is lucky, but if you only see one you must salute it to avoid bad luck. Another thing Welsh people do for luck is to put a horse shoe above the front door.

Love Spoons
Love spoons are a tradition in Wales. Years ago the menfolk would visit their loved ones and spend the time carving a love spoon to demonstrate to their girlfriends father that they weren’t up to no good. Today Love spoons are considered a lucky item for love.

Everest is Welsh (well sort of)
Mount Everest was named after Welshman, Sir George Everest. He was the man who mapped Mount Everest and so he gave it his name. The highest peak in Wales is Mount Snowden which is 1,085 metres or 3,560 feet high.

The Menai Bridge
Did you know that the Menai Bridge in Anglesey was the first road suspension bridge in the world? It was opened on the 30th of January 1826 and at the time it was also the world’s longest bridge with a span of 386 meters, or 1,265 feet.

Beer in cans
It’s thanks to the Welsh you can drink your beer out of a can. The oldest brewery in South Wales, Felinfoel Brewery, was the first place to sell canned beer outside of the USA in 1931.

Eat your cake!
Bakers from the Tan Y Castell Bakery in Carmarthan baked the world’s largest Welsh cake in March 2020. It weighed 28 kilos and was just over 6 feet in diameter. The 31 kilos of ingredients were mixed by hand and rolled out o to a 7-foot griddle.

The tiny city
If you want to visit the smallest cathedral city in the world then come and see St. David’s in Pembrokeshire. It is the only city that lies within a national park and it has a population of 2,000 people.

It’s not fool’s gold
The British royal family always use Welsh gold for their wedding rings. The last celebration was the wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan., which also happens to be a Welsh name and a diminutive of Margaret.

A short history on the Welsh language

Welsh (Cymraeg) belongs to the Celtic language group, one of the nine branches of the Indo-European family of languages. It is one of the oldest languages in Europe – possibly dating back 4,000 years.

Celtic languages were spoken throughout Europe before the spread of the Roman Empire. The ones that survived were those that had migrated from the mainland to the western islands of Britain and Ireland during the Bronze Age or Iron Age.

Over time, Proto-Celtic divided into four sub-groups. Of these, two are now extinct (Gaulish and Hispano-Celtic). The others are Brittonic (which includes Welsh, Cornish and Breton, as well as the extinct languages of Cumbric and Pictish) and Goidelic (which includes Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic).

The Welsh language has faced significant threats over the years, particularly dilution by the influx of English-speaking workers to Wales during the Industrial Revolution; by 1911 it had become a minority language. There is now a huge drive to keep the language alive in Wales, with Welsh a compulsory subject in schools up to the age of 16.

Which countries have Welsh as a national language?

Welsh has official status in Wales, and is recognised as a minority language in Patagonia, where there is a Welsh-speaking community descended from late 19th century Welsh immigrants.

How many people speak Welsh as their first language?

Approximately 20% of the population of Wales (over 500,000 people) speak Welsh – 12% fluently. It is estimated that around 40,000 Patagonians speak Welsh as their first or second language.

Did you know…

• There are three main varieties of Welsh: North Wales Welsh (Gog), South Wales Welsh (Hwntw) and Patagonian Welsh (Cymraeg y Wladfa).
• Henry VIII’s Act of Union in 1536 not only fixed English sovereignty over Wales, but also prohibited the use of Welsh in public administration and the legal system.
• Various acts passed by the Welsh Assembly state that Welsh and English must be treated equally, with official literature issued in both languages, as well as road signs. There is a dedicated Welsh language TV channel (S4C) as well as radio station (BBC Radio Cymru).
• Welsh words that have passed into the English language include bard, cart, crag, coracle, dad, druid, flummery and mither.

The Welsh economy

The Welsh economy is the 10th largest of the UK’s 12 regions, ahead of Northern Ireland and the North East of England. It is dominated by the service sector (66% of GVA), followed by manufacturing (32%).