The History Of The Welsh Language And Its Celtic Roots Explained
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Welsh is one of the oldest living languages in Europe with a rich and fascinating history.
It evolved from the ancient Celtic languages spoken by the early Britons before the Roman empire existed.
Today, it remains a vibrant community language spoken by hundreds of thousands of people.
I’ll explain the complete history of the Welsh language from its Celtic origins to the modern day.
Table of Contents:
The Celtic language family tree
To understand Welsh, you have to look at the Indo-European language family.
This massive family tree includes everything from English and Spanish to Hindi and Russian.
One specific branch of this tree is the Celtic language group.
Thousands of years ago, Celtic languages were spoken all across western and central Europe.
The Celtic branch eventually split into two smaller categories known as Goidelic and Brythonic.
The Goidelic branch gave birth to Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx.
The Brythonic branch is where Welsh comes from, alongside its sister languages of Breton and Cornish.
Before the English language even existed, the ancient Britons spoke this Brythonic language across almost the entire island of Britain.
The impact of the Romans on Welsh
The Roman empire invaded Britain in the year 43 AD.
They stayed for hundreds of years and brought the Latin language with them.
During this time, the native Brythonic speakers began borrowing words directly from Latin.
The Romans eventually left, but their vocabulary stayed behind.
Many everyday Welsh words still show this distinct Latin influence today.
Here are a few common examples that show the connection between the two languages:
| English | Latin | Welsh |
|---|---|---|
| Window | Fenestra | Ffenestr |
| Bridge | Pons | Pont |
| School | Schola | Ysgol |
| Wall | Murus | Mur |
| Fish | Piscis | Pysgod |
The era of Old Welsh
Old Welsh emerged as a distinct language around the 6th century.
During this time, Anglo-Saxon invaders arrived and pushed the native Britons to the western edges of the island.
This geographical split physically isolated the Welsh speakers from other Celtic tribes.
Because they were separated, the language slowly drifted apart from Cornish and Breton.
The oldest surviving Welsh poetry dates back to this specific historical era.
Famous poets like Aneirin and Taliesin wrote epic verses in Old Welsh that are still studied by scholars today.
Middle Welsh and the Mabinogion
The Middle Welsh period lasted from the 12th century through the 15th century.
The language became much more standardized during this time.
It’s most famous for the Mabinogion, a collection of ancient Welsh mythological tales.
These incredible stories of magic and folklore were written entirely in Middle Welsh.
If you learn to speak modern Welsh today, you can actually still read and understand a surprisingly large amount of Middle Welsh text.
The translation of the Welsh bible
Modern Welsh officially began in the 16th century.
A Welsh bishop named William Morgan translated the entire bible into Welsh in 1588.
This was a massive turning point that ultimately saved the language from dying out.
It gave the Welsh people a high-quality, standardized written language to use across the country.
Because of this book, ordinary people could regularly read and hear the language spoken during church services.
It cemented Welsh as an important language of faith and daily life.
The decline of Welsh in the 19th century
The Industrial Revolution brought massive social changes to Wales.
Thousands of English speakers moved into the Welsh mining valleys to find work.
English quickly took over as the language of government, business, and education.
Schools actively punished children for speaking Welsh by forcing them to wear a wooden board around their necks.
This horrible punishment was known as the “Welsh Not”.
If a child was caught speaking their native language, they were beaten.
These oppressive policies caused the number of fluent Welsh speakers to drop dramatically over a very short period.
The modern revival of the Welsh language
The 20th century saw a powerful push from activists to save the language.
Protests and campaigns led to the creation of dedicated Welsh-language television and radio stations.
The Welsh Language Act of 1993 finally gave Welsh equal legal status with English in Wales.
Today, the language is experiencing an incredible revival.
Every single child in Wales now learns Welsh in school.
Road signs are bilingual, and young people are using the language in music, social media, and daily life.
The Welsh language survived against all odds and is currently gaining new speakers every single day.
