Welsh Language
In recent decades the number of Welsh speakers in the town has increased dramatically. The 2001 census recorded 10% of the local population spoke the language, a five fold increase over ten years from the figure of 2% recorded in 1991.
The town has one of the two Welsh-medium primary schools in Monmouthshire, Ysgol Gymraeg y Fenni, which was founded in the early 1990s. It is also home to the Abergavenny Welsh society, Cymreigyddion y Fenni, and the local Abergavenny Eisteddfod.
Read more about this topic: Abergavenny
Famous quotes containing the words welsh and/or language:
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making ladies dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)
“The sayings of a community, its proverbs, are its characteristic comment upon life; they imply its history, suggest its attitude toward the world and its way of accepting life. Such an idiom makes the finest language any writer can have; and he can never get it with a notebook. He himself must be able to think and feel in that speechit is a gift from heart to heart.”
—Willa Cather (18731947)