Welsh: the language that shaped Britain

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.