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British Council 2010

1 When you cross over the border from England

into Wales you dont have to show your passport

but you do notice a difference immediately. All the

road markings and signs are shown in two

languages English and Welsh. Not all visitors to

Britain know that other languages are spoken in

the country. Theres the Gaelic language inScotland and a few people speak Cornish in the

south west of England but the most widely spoken

language in the UK apart from English is Welsh.

2 Perhaps the first Welsh word youll see on

the road into Wales is ARAF. Theres a helpful

English translation next to it SLOW. As you

can see, Welsh looks quite different to English.

It sounds very different too. If you think English

pronunciation is difficult, try this:

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysili-

ogogogoch.

Thats the name of a small town in Wales and,

in English, it means The Church of Saint Mary

in the hollow of the white hazel tree near therapid whirlpool and the church of Saint Tysilio

near a red cave.

3 Welsh looks and sounds so different from

English because its a Celtic language. Celtic

cultures still exist around the edges of the UK

in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and also

in parts of France. For hundreds of years,

almost everyone in Wales spoke Welsh but

nowadays there are about 500,000 Welsh

speakers - about 20 per cent of the population.

4 So is Welsh dying out? Not at all. Nowadays all

schoolchildren in Wales study Welsh and many

choose to go to an all Welsh speaking school.

Because, by law, Welsh is as important as English,it means you can get public information in Welsh,

speak Welsh in court or study a course at

university in Welsh. You can surf the net in Welsh,

look up things in the Welsh Wikipedia, keep up with

friends on facebook and write your blog in Welsh.

5 What else do Welsh speakers do in their free

time? Well, they can watch the award winning

Welsh soap opera, People of the Valley on TV,

read a weekly newspaper or magazine or tune in

to a Welsh radio station. They can even go to their

local video store and hire their favourite Welsh

language DVD, like Oscar nominated Hedd Wyn

or Solomon & Gaenor. In the summer they can

choose from the many Welsh festivals to go to,

but the biggest and best is probably the National

Eisteddfod where around 150,000 people come

together for 8 days to see over 6000 peopletaking part in music and poetry competitions.

6 The number of Welsh speakers and

opportunities to use Welsh is growing in Wales

but is it always easy to have two official languages

in one small country? Most of the time everything

goes smoothly but occasionally things dont quite

go to plan. For example, a few years ago

somebody in charge of road signs sent for the

Welsh version of, No entry for heavy goods

vehicles. Residential site only. As soon as they

got the reply from the translation service they

enthusiastically made the sign and put it up. A few

days later some Welsh speakers told them what

the sign said - I am not in the office at the

moment. Send any work to be translated. It wasonly then that they realised they had made a big

mistake. In the same year, a sign in Cardiff might

have caused some nasty accidents for

pedestrians. In English it clearly said Look Right,

but in Welsh it said Look Left!

And by the way, Croeso i Gymru! means Welcome

to Wales I hope youll be able to visit one day.

Croeso i Gymru! If you dontknow what this means, read onto find out more.

Fun CornerWales facts:

The population of Wales is 3,000,000

The capital city is Cardiff.

The Welsh flag has a red dragon on a green and

white background.

The most common surname in Wales is Jones

One of the national symbols is a yellow flower

called a daffodil

The national day is March 1st St Davids day.

The national song is called Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau

(Land of My Fathers)

Activity 1 SummariesMatch the six numbered paragrpahs in the article

to the summarising statements below.

a Sometimes funny mistakes are made when

translating English to Welsh ___

b Where the Welsh language is used on TV and

in the arts ___

c Welsh and other languages are spoken in

Britain as well as English ___

d The origins of Welsh and some statistics about

the Welsh language ___

e Some examples of Welsh words ___

f Where the Welsh language is used in public

and on the internet ___

Activity 2: Collocations

Match the verbs with the nouns to form

phrases from the article. One answer

is given.

Activity 3: categories read,listen or bothPut the following words into the correct category.

Write (R) for things people read, (L) for things

people listen to or (B) for both if people listen to

them and read them.

Activity 4: ReflectionDo you think we should try to preserve

minority languages?

What are the benefits of being bilingual?

The fall and rise of the Welsh language

Are there any disadvantages?

1 road signs (R)

2 languages

3 Wikipedia

4 a blog

5 a newspaper

6 a music festival

7 a radio station

1 cross over

2 keep up with

3 study

4 tune in to

5 hire

6 put up

7 surf

8 write

a friends

b a radio station

c the border

d a course

e the net

f a sign

g a DVD

h a blog

Mat Wright

Answers

Activity1

1c2e3d4f5b6a

Activity2

1c2a3d4b5g6f

7e8h

Activity3

1R2B3R4R5R

6L7L