Wales plans to revive Welsh language with one million speakers by 2050

Trumpeters playing at the Welsh Eisteddfod festival. (Visit Wales)

Wales has launched bold plans to revive the Welsh language, which is deemed “vulnerable” to extinction by UNESCO.

The Welsh government has set a target of one million speakers of the minority language by 2050.

Language extinction is currently taking place at a rate far quicker than species extinction. Every fourteen days a language dies, or a speaker of a language dies and a unique tongue goes with them.

Half of the 7,000 languages spoken on the planet are expected to have disappeared by the end of the century.

Welsh legends

Wales in the 12th and 13th centuries is immortalised in the Princes of Gwynedd stories. (Visit Wales)

Wales has a rich mythology of local legends and losing the language would mean losing a significant slice of the culture, according to Jonathan Kasstan, fellow of linguistics at Queen Mary University.

“Folklore is passed on through human history and transmitted by language,” he says.

“As the world gets smaller, people look for increasingly local ways to define themselves. If a language becomes moribund, younger generations feel robbed of a cultural richness.”

Considered a ‘bad’ language

Most people consider minority languages such as Welsh to be a bad language to learn, says professor of developmental linguistics at the university of Edinburgh, Antonella Sorace.

“Languages such as Welsh, that are not associated with political and economic power, are considered bad languages that aren’t worth learning, but this isn’t true,” says Sorace.

Sorace, who is the founding director of Bilingualism Matters, insists it is positive for people to speak more than one language, regardless of how many others speak that language.

‘Bilingual children are open-minded children’

A dance performed by children at Eisteddfod. (Visit Wales)

“The bilingual child better understands others’ perspectives because the brain constantly works to compare two languages even if they are not aware of it, they choose the right language depending on who they are talking to,” says Sorace.

“Bilingual children are aware that not all people speak the same language as them. This makes it possible to understand others’ points of view, which is particularly important in today’s society that needs to work on mutual understanding.”

Language revival success stories

A Maori warrior performing. (Photo by Kai Schwoerer/Getty Images)

Maori has been brought back from the brink of extinction by the sheer determination of communities in New Zealand.

But perhaps the greatest language revival story is that of Hebrew, the language was extinct two centuries ago but was brought back from the dead and is now spoken by the population of Israel.

It’s unlikely modern Hebrew is a perfect mirror image of the dead language from centuries ago, but that doesn’t matter because any living language is constantly adapting, says Sorace.

“English is spoken in many different ways all over the globe.”

Speakers often don’t talk in a language or teach it to their children because they’re not confident they have got it correct.

Sorace says this is a shame, adding that people need to speak the languages they know, regardless of whether they are correct.

Hope for Welsh

A sign in Welsh at Eisteddfod. (Visit Wales)

Israelis managed to bring a language back from the dead, but the Welsh simply need to work on “maintenance,” says Kasstan.

“Gaelic has died out, there are very few if any speakers left,” he says. “Cornish died out, but – like Hebrew – has been revived recently, there are now 400 neo-native speakers.

“Welsh has a good track record, we are looking to Welsh as an example of revitalising and using a language in modern society.”

The Welsh government plans to fund sabbaticals so teachers can train in how to teach Welsh at all levels.

It hopes to increase the number of children learning Welsh at each stage of their education.


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