Welsh Language
Prior to 2001, there had been a decline in Welsh speakers in Gwynedd. According to the 2001 census the number of Welsh speakers in Wales increased for the first time in over 100 years, with 20.5% in a population of over 2.9 million claiming fluency in Welsh, or one in five. Additionally, 28% of the population of Wales claimed to understand Welsh. However, the number of Welsh speakers declined in Gwynedd from 72.1% in 1991 to 68.7% in 2001. By 2003 however, a survey of schools showed that just over 94% of children between 3 and 15 were able to speak Welsh, though there have been concerns that the influx of English speakers is damaging the standing of Welsh.
Read more about this topic: Gwynedd
Famous quotes containing the words welsh and/or language:
“Thy tongue
Makes Welsh as sweet as ditties highly penned,
Sung by a fair queen in a summer’s bower,
With ravishing division, to her lute.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words.... Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)