Welsh English: phonology

Cultural and socio-historical background

The longer-standing language of Wales is Welsh, belonging to the Celtic branch of the Indo-European family. In pre-Roman times, Celtic speakers were dispersed over most of western Europe, but during the age of the Roman Empire Celtic appears to have been pushed to the peripheries, with two branches developing: Goidelic or Q Celtic, and Brittonic or P Celtic, to which Welsh belongs. The arrival of Angles, Saxons and other Germanic-speaking tribes in Britain from the fifth century onwards exerted a pressure on Welsh which continues to the present day. Celtic speakers were driven into the area now known as Wales, thereafter to be subject to a long process of anglicization. At the end of the eighth century AD, a physical boundary was constructed to mark the political separation of the nascent England and Wales, in the shape of Offa’s Dyke, a linear earthwork running north/south for some 130 kilometres from the River Dee to the Severn Estuary. It was constructed by Offa, king of Mercia, to indicate the western boundary of his territory. Aitchison and Carter (2000: 24) point out that whilst the construction of Offa’s Dyke should not be understood as marking a firm divide between Welsh and English speakers, it does serve “as a base line from which to chart the slow and complex westward retreat of the Welsh language”, or to put it another way, the inexorable advance of English to all parts of Wales.

The first major incursions of English came in the wake of the Norman invasion of Wales, which began towards the end of the eleventh century AD. The Normans established strongholds through the north and south, and English speakers arrived in numbers. The areas most affected were the lower-lying borders with England, and substantial parts of south Wales, with perhaps the most interesting developments occurring in the Gower Peninsula and south Pembrokeshire. Here, dialects of Welsh English influenced by the south-west of England existed from the twelfth century onwards, brought about it seems by population movement across the Bristol Channel from Somerset and Devon.

Anglicization down the centuries was aided by events which boosted the status of English and lowered that of Welsh. Under the Acts of Union of 1536–1543, English was made the sole language of government and law in Wales. Aitchison and Carter (2000: 27) state that although this “formally abstracted a domain of use from Welsh which had effectively been lost long before”, it also meant that “[i]f Welsh were not to be used in a significant formal context then it meant, too, that its use in informal contexts would diminish”. They add:

Inevitably, if the Welsh gentry wished to participate in public life then that participation would be in English and the language of polite society, if such it can be called, would also be English. There followed the conviction that Welsh was the language of the barbarous past, English the language of the civilized future. (Aitchison and Carter 2000: 27)

Aitchison and Carter here probably borrow from the (at least in Wales) well-known editorial of The Times of 8 September 1866 which argued that the “antiquated and semi-barbarous” Welsh language, together with ignorance of the English language, was responsible for the exclusion of the Welsh people “from the civilization, the improvement and the material prosperity of their English neighbors”. Certainly, higher prestige (further enhanced by the education system during the second half of the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth especially) and increasing incoming speaker numbers (from the Industrial Revolution onwards) helped establish English as a language of the whole of Wales by the second half of the twentieth century. Census statistics show large increases in the numbers of mono-lingual and bilingual English speakers in Wales during the twentieth century, and the extinction of monolingual Welsh speakers.

However, none of this has led to the demise of the Welsh language. Even in the areas subject to the earliest anglicization, Welsh-speaking persisted for centuries, and although its traditional geographical heartlands continue to shrink, up until the end of the twentieth century Welsh remained the first language in much of rural Wales (in the north-west, west midlands and south-west). The concerted attempt in recent decades to promote the use of Welsh, in particular through expanding the availability of Welsh-medium education, has apparently led to positive news for the language’s supporters in the most recent statistics, but arguably what lies ahead for Welsh is a process of ‘Latinization’, in which its use becomes restricted to a decreasing number of social domains as its traditional regional dialects decline.

These regional dialects in particular have had the greatest influence overall on the special character of English in Wales. As noted in Penhallurick (1993: 33), there are notable differences between the traditional Welsh dialects of north and south Wales, in phonology, lexis and grammar. These differences are mirrored to a degree, more so in pronunciation, in spoken English. Thus it is possible to talk of two main types of Welsh English, one centred in the north-west, the other in the mid-south. In these main northern and southern sub-varieties, non-standard features tend to be derived from Welsh-language influence. But there are other determining factors, such as influence from the neighboring non-standard dialects (rural and urban) of England, particularly but not exclusively in the border areas, south Pembrokeshire and Gower.

As for the term Welsh English, it has not been the universal label of choice. At the outset of the only national survey of spoken English in Wales, David Parry chose the term Anglo-Welsh for the varieties used by elderly English-speaking Welsh people. In addition, Welsh English has the potential to arouse nationalist sensibilities. As Coupland and Thomas (1989: 2) noted:

chose the term Anglo-Welsh for the varieties used by elderly English-speaking Welsh people. In addition, Welsh English has the potential to arouse nationalist sensibilities. As Coupland and Thomas (1989: 2) noted:

My view, briefly, is that English is a thoroughly established language of Wales, a language used by and belonging to the Welsh people – not that they have sole ownership of it, of course. My only anxiety over using the umbrella Welsh English could apply equally to other similar labels: that it masks diversity (that is, of English in Wales) and connections (between English inside and English outside Wales).