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Opinion

Welsh: the language that shaped Britain

01 Jun 2025 4 minute read
The Celtic languages – Brythonic and Goedelic – were spoken across this island archipelago.

Owen Williams

Listen carefully, and you’ll hear it: a language older than the hills, older than the state.

The names of rivers and mountains still whisper it – Pen-y-Fan, Penicuik, Aberystwyth, Aberdeen.

These are not English names. They are Welsh, Brythonic, Celtic – fragments of the first voice of these islands. Before English. Before empire. Before the Roman war machine.

The Celtic languages – Brythonic and Goedelic – were spoken across this island archipelago. They named the rivers, the hills, the valleys. They told the stories. They shaped the way people thought, moved, and lived.

Indigenous

Welsh is not a “minority language.” It is an indigenous language of Britain. It’s a language that grew here, shaped by the deep time of these islands – by the millennia it has spent in, and of, this land, shaping it and being shaped by it.

It’s the language of people who have lived with the land – naming rivers, charting mountains, telling stories that stretch far beyond a single lifetime.

It’s a voice that echoes not just in history books, but in the very earth beneath our feet.

Languages like Welsh don’t need to justify their existence. They don’t need permission to survive. They’re not an optional extra. They’re not a museum piece.

You don’t treat the first voice of the land as an optional extra. You don’t reduce it to a museum piece. You respect it. You protect it. You let it breathe, thrive and grow.

Flourish

Welsh is a living language. It deserves not just to survive, but to flourish. To be seen in the workplace, the media, the street. To be heard in schools, in politics, in everyday life. To be treated as equal, not as a curiosity.

The dominance of English isn’t natural. It’s not inevitable. It’s the result of history – of conquest, colonisation and centralisation. It’s a political choice, not a linguistic destiny. And it’s a choice we can unmake.

This isn’t just about Wales. It’s about the kind of country we want to be – whether in Wales, Scotland, Ireland or beyond. A place where languages thrive, or a place where the oldest voices are silenced by the false promise of English as the only way forward.

The legacy of empire, of linguistic centralisation, has left us with a flattened public sphere where English is treated as the default, and everything else is marginal.

But when we step outside, the land itself tells a different story. In Pen, in Aber, in Nant, in Llan, we hear the first voices of these islands – voices that connect us across borders, across nations, across time.

Hope

To speak Welsh today is an act of care. It’s an act of resistance, yes – but it’s also an act of hope. It says: this language is worthy.

These stories matter. This voice will not be silenced. If we care about fairness, if we care about justice, if we care about the richness of our shared future, we must do more than just protect Welsh.

We must prioritise it. Invest in it. Put it at the centre of our education systems, our public services, our media and our everyday lives. Not as a token, not as an afterthought – but as a language that belongs here, in its own right. Because if we can’t make space for the first voice of the land, what does that say about the future we’re building?

It’s time to listen. And it’s time to act.


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Arfon Jones
Arfon Jones
7 days ago

Cenedl heb iaith
Cenedl heb galon.

Dal dy dîr!

John Ellis
John Ellis
6 days ago

Echoes of yr hen iaith linger all over England. I grew up in England’s north-west where there’s a river Gowy, a village called Bryn and a suburb by the name of Landican, which originally was probably something like Llandegain.

But in England almost nobody knows. I didn’t even know that a Welsh language existed until we got a television when I was ten years old – even though I lived barely thirty miles from the Welsh border.

Last edited 6 days ago by John Ellis
Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
6 days ago

Geology and its natural ruination wrote the script…

Crwtyddol
Crwtyddol
5 days ago

It’s obvious to all and sundry, but to quote the Bard:
” There are none so blind as those that will not see”
It should be part of a syllabus of General Studies that every child should experience as part of the national (UK) curriculum.

John Tate
John Tate
5 days ago
Reply to  Crwtyddol

Great idea, at least an option. But weight of momentum works against the language, eg here in Lpool there would once have been so many welsh speakers. Globalisation works against specific lesser spoken tongues. Needs big effort.

Archie
Archie
5 days ago

Surely if” Welsh” is the original British language it should be renamed “brythonic” so that all Britons can embrace it ,if they wish.

Wogan Jones
Wogan Jones
5 days ago
Reply to  Archie

In Welsh, the name of the language is Cymraeg. The meaning of that is pretty much ‘our language’. So anyone in Britain should feel free to embrace it. Brythonic is the name of the language Cymraeg emerged from.

Mawkernewek
5 days ago

I like to think that Cornish goes back 5000 years, because the traditional Cornish name for St Michael’s Mount is “Karrek Loes y’n Koes” The Grey Rock in the Woods.

It was about 3000 BC when the Mount was joined to the mainland with a forest covering what is now sea.

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