Welsh among the top 50 most influential languages in the world
Luke James
Welsh is now among the top 50 most influential languages in the world, according to a French government study.
The latest edition of the World Language Barometer, which ranks more than 600 languages on 13 criteria ranging from the number of speakers to its online presence, places Welsh in 45th position.
That’s an increase of 10 places since the last edition in 2017, with Welsh leapfrogging languages with millions more speakers like Afrikaans and Tamil.
When it comes to numbers of speakers, Welsh sits in 343rd place between Pangasinan, an official language of the Philippines, and Venda, which is used by around 2.5% of the population of South Africa.
And time might not be on our side, according to the study, which places Welsh in 477th place when it comes to “fertility”.
But Welsh punches above its weight because of economic and social factors.
With 278,583 articles, a relatively strong presence on Wikipedia is one of its advantages, the study shows.
| Language | Speakers | Influence ranking |
| Bulgarian | 7,521,400 | 40 |
| Hebrew | 5,583,790 | 41 |
| Kazahk | 15,662,700 | 42 |
| Northern Azeri | 9,892,500 | 43 |
| Bosnian | 2,820,200 | 44 |
| Welsh | 1,483,700 | 45 |
| Lithuanian | 1,447,200 | 46 |
| Hausa | 5,0784,600 | 47 |
| Malay | 24,407,300 | 48 |
| Afrikaans | 10,084,400 | 49 |
As is use in universities, where Welsh ranks 81st in the world, just ahead of Egyptian Arabic which has 70 million speakers.
Influence is also accorded to Welsh simply as a result of it being spoken in a part of the world with a relatively high level of GDP, life expectancy and education.
Professor Alain Calvert, one of the authors of the study, explained: “What are the strengths of Welsh? It benefits from being spoken in the UK. It is present on Wikipedia and above all has high values on the translation parameters as original and target language. These shows that speakers of Welsh are active and Welsh educated.
“One of its weaknesses is that it is not an [international] communication language. Someone speaking Welsh will most likely communicate with someone speaking Frisian using English .
“By comparison, Afrikaans has many speakers, it is official in South Africa and several of its provinces, and is a communication language. But it is spoken in a less developed country and it is not an important original or target language as far as translation is involved.”
The authors admit “it can appear useless” to try to rank languages, but say their method of studying the “influence” of languages builds a more useful picture than simply looking at the number of speakers of each language.
Mandarin and Hindi are the two most spoken languages in the world, according to the study. But neither feature in its list of the top 10 most influential languages, which are all European.
| Language | Speakers | Influence ranking |
| English | 361,699,340 | 1 |
| French | 70,709,790 | 2 |
| Spanish | 442,656,200 | 3 |
| German | 65,861,800 | 4 |
| Russian | 135,785,870 | 5 |
| Italian | 41,088,600 | 6 |
| Swedish | 9,461,200 | 7 |
| Romanian | 24,265,000 | 8 |
| Portuguese | 221,813,570 | 9 |
| Polish | 41,200,200 | 10 |
English, French and Spanish are at the top of the ranking. Mandarin is 15th, some three places behind Catalan, and Hindi is 39th, just six places above Welsh.
Linguist David Crystal said recently that Welsh had done “wonderfully well” compared to other minority languages.
“Welsh is one of the success stories of the 20th century in terms of the revitalization process”, he told S4C’s Stori’r Iaith programme.
“Welsh is in the top 7% of the languages of the world as far as number of speakers is concerned.”
The programme’s host, comedian Elis James, quipped that it was a “Premier League” performance.
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Welsh has 1,483,700 speakers? Seriously?? Where on an earth did they get these figures?
And English only 360m. With languages like Mandarin, Arabic, and Hindi ranked below Swedish and Polish it’s definitely an odd study.
There’s almost a million Welsh speakers in Wales, plus all the Welsh speakers in other parts of the UK and around the world. I met a fluent Welsh speaker living in the northern part of Greece last year. Must be plenty scattered around the world. Plus of course Patagonia.
There are 538,300 Welsh speakers in Wales according to the 2021 census. There are round 100,000 in England. Some 5,000 in Patagonia. That’s still a long way off the 1.4 million + speakers mentioned here. The figures don’t seem to add up.
It depends what you. mean-first language or about as good as my schoolboy French or not even that.
These types of articles are giving a false picture of the Welsh language and are damaging to the fight for its survival. We need to face facts and not search for stories that make it appear that the language is healthy which creates a false sense of complacency. Regardless of how many Welsh speakers who live outside Wales the survival of the language depends on those who live inside Wales. The last two censuses show the language is in decline and if it continues on the same trajectory the language will be dead in a century. Unless we are honest… Read more »
Quite right,our cup is three quarters empty,its how its always been and how we like it.
Cytuno cant y cant – mae eich llygad yn ei le, Iago! ~ Agree 100% – you’re spot-on, Iago!
I don’t even need to read the study to see there are clearly some methodological issues here. The fact that French researcher’s found French to be the second most influential language above Spanish smacks of bias. Welsh is in decline because no one needs to speak it. It’s a hobby, and hobby languages don’t influence how the world works. Wales is too small to have any impact on global affairs, so how a language spoken by less than 18% of it’s inhabitants (based on self report data, so likely an overestimate anyway) could have any measurable impact is a mystery.
It’s in decline because it was banned and people were made to feel ashamed by speaking it. It was seen as lesser language and anyone speaking it was seen as a lesser people. Stop absolving the English of what they did to the native language of Britain. Stop making it seem people don’t speak Cymraeg by choice!
Welsh was only ever banned for use in law courts. The people who actually tried to stop It’s use in public spaces, like teachers who used the Welsh knot were Welsh themselves, and they werent made to do so by an English law. I’d wager 99.9% of English people have never had any opinion on the Welsh language one way or the other. The Welsh language has seen plenty of legislative and other governmental support in Wales since the 40s, and yet it has declined in this time. It’s a fringe interest, but so what? That isn’t a bad thing.
The Education Act 1870, which stipulated that all education in England (which at the time also applied to Wales) obliged teachers in Wales, whether Welsh or English, to teach through the medium of English, if necessary through corporal punishment in the form of the Welsh Not. English was the language of the industrial workplace, and a Welsh monoglot could only get a job in that workplace with great difficulty. The responsibility for the catastrophic decline in the number of Welsh speakers (it stood at 80% of the country in the late 19th Century) belongs entirely to successive Westminster Governments.
It was banned by welsh people looking for favour, not by the English if you check your history.
Plied propoganda. Devisive i whats supposed to be an inclusive Wales
Some yes! After a compilation was created that was of a demeaning nature which outlined an apparent cause of what’s holding Wales back…Welsh mothers were apparently the sole cause of all evil in Wales, so they were said to have been holding their children back by defending their language. If you understand this element, in conjunction with the invention of the BBC….both these events were disastrous for Wales and Cymraeg, and it’s still being felt over a Century later. The fact that Wales is so heavily dominated by English media will mean Cymraeg will never get back to its levels… Read more »
Who banned it?
Look up the “Treachery of the Blue Books” – it’ll explain everything!
I have looked it up and can’t see it was banned.
Don’t be ridiculous. Welsh may be many things, but a hobby language is not one of them. For many it’s their first language, for others it’s their second, and for the large numbers who are learning or re-learning it as adults, their reasons for doing so tend to be more important than a need to find a hobby. Some do so for career purposes, others to enhance their sense of belonging to the country or as a matter of principle. Some even do it to help their kids with their homework. Whatever the reason, it won’t be because they need… Read more »
His comment is a perfect example of what The language and the people who speak it have been up against, and continue to be! he is subtly demeaning it, as if it has no inherent value. It has tremendous value as it’s a direct link to our ancestors and what they did and the times they lived through. Major events, Mythology, etc. It also helps in finding Places of historical importance, some of which will be lost forever if the language is lost. This factor is one of the reasons many want it gone. So effectively, If the language goes… Read more »
The Office of National Statistics also under take an Annual Population Survey. One of the questions asked is about the Welsh language. Their results are very different to their census results. This indicates that 899,500 or 29.9% of the people in Wales speak Welsh. Their next survey results will be published on the 25th April 2023. The APS results are designed to produce reliable estimates at local authority level.
Is this a joke. I hear polish and Arabic spoken more in Wales. Not even my own Welsh speaking children speak it outside the classroom.