A history of the Welsh language and its interactions with politics, from the Celtic migration to the isles of Britannia and Hibernia, to the modern-day. Twitter: / carpenterunion Patreon: www.patreon.com/user?u=51058612
It is often argued that the concessions made to the Welsh with respect to their language by Elizabeth I, stemmed from the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549 when the Cornish, whose language was enjoying a period of relative strength, rebelled over the introduction of a English liturgy instead of latin then in use. The overriding grievance was that “ we the Cornyshe men (whereof certen of us understande no Englysh) utterly refuse thys newe Englysh”. It is estimated that over 5,500 people lost their lives in the rebellion when the English Crown adopted a military solution to the Cornish problem. Subsequently, and in order to prevent a potentially more serious confrontation with the larger population of Wales, the Welsh were permitted a bible and religious services in their own language. The importance of this outcome to the Welsh language is manifest particularly when compared to the sad fate of the Cornish language.
Yes that, and she feared Roman Catholicism holding up in Wales, making it a possible landing base for a Spanish armada etc. She wanted the country to become thoroughly Protestant and loyal, and the way to do that was to use the Welsh language to bring it about quickly.
27:09 Not only was Lloyd-George pompous in claiming that Welsh didn't have a word for "republic", he was also wrong - the word "gweriniaeth" had been coined as far back as the mid-17th Century :) Excellent video, by the way!
Great video, very informative! "Burning down holiday homes" as some one from a rural area riddled with those things, all I can say is based. And yes, as you mentioned, I would love to see a video on the rebirth of languages, and what we can do to help.
@@RobinKoenig1917 It is Will Paynter. Welsh communist, Spanish Civil War volunteer, and leader of the South Wales Miners Federation. He also introduced Paul Robeson at the Porthcawl Miners Eisteddfod.
@@RobinKoenig1917 I always refer to this video when either he or Robeson are mentioned. If you're interested in reading more I recommend 'The Fed' by Hywel Francis who sadly passed away only a few weeks ago. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-H1hLPRnmAjw.html
@@galileancarpentersunion702Robeson was and is a hero. I will definitely take a look at that book, though it is sad to hear about its author. Thanks for the rec. :)
This explains why in certain areas there'd be a silent resentment towards us when my family visited Wales. I always assumed there'd be a good reason for it and now I know thanks to this video. North Wales is like a second home to me, and I really want to learn Welsh to build bridges but also to connect to my Welsh heritage on my mother's side and my Brittonic heritage further back. P.S. I love that fellow comrades appear to be congregating here. This is my first video of yours so maybe I'll find even more reason to subscribe than I already do.
There tends to be an animosity towards English speakers in North Wales in particular. That isn't to say everyone in the North resents the English, but that the character of Welsh speaking Wales is often defined against the English. If we look at Balsom's 'three wales model', which suggests that Wales can be politically divided into three sections, I'd say that Y Fro Gymraeg's political culture is defined around language, while American Wales's political culture is defined around class. Were you in the South Wales Valleys, I'd wager there would be far less attention paid to your ethnic or linguistic background, and far more paid to your class and the political party you vote for. Wales is a bit of a muddled polity in terms of identity. We are united by a common culture, but our histories and politics are significantly different depending on where you are.
just listened to this one a second time, very interesting, thank you.. honestly never really thought to incorporate history of language into my analysis so def looking forward to more of this series .. too much good info in this vid for my little brain so I'll probably re-dose a third time at some point
Very interesting and well thought out video, thank you for sharing! I would love a more in-depth video about the Blue Books and maybe a video going into more detail about Welsh nationalists efforts in reviving the Welsh language such as how Saunders Lewis' 'Tynged yr Iaith' acted as a sort of catalyst in these efforts. Keep up the good work :)
I knew there were Welsh speakers in Argentina but not why they were there, it is really funny that the reaction to the decline of Welsh would be to make a settler colonial community. I would find a video on how extinct/endangered languages can be revived very interesting personally!
Luckily Welsh is no longer an endangered language. The decline over hundreds of years has now been reversed and is steadily growing again. Welsh is by far the most successful of all the Celtic languages in the UK.
No idea why some of the Welsh still say the English are Saxons not like Britain wasn't heavily invaded for the next few hundreds years by everyone and their aunt. It's like my dad turned up yesterday as Saxon for some Welsh people. I was speaking to a Welsh lad and he brought up out of no where that Yorkshire was old Wales till the Saxons showed up (I told him my ancestry is North East Yorkshire). Wales is a great place and Welsh should be more widely taught in all British nations as the land birthed the language, and it should be called Cymru not called Wales ffs, no wonder the Welsh are still finding reasons to see the English as Saxons and completely by pass the Celtic, Roman, Norse and Norman bloodlines in Britain, Welsh and Scots included.
On the subject of the origin of the Welsh language; you really should look at Barry Cunliffe’s Celts From The West or any of the lectures he has given on the subject of Britain’s Celtic origins. In essence he attests that the origins of the Welsh Language goes back much further than was previously thought. Previous narratives are outdated, he claims, with little adjustments or considerations given to a three hundred year old narrative. His research brings him to the conclusion that the Welsh language began here in Britain. His bolder claim is that Celtic Culture began here in the British Isles and on the Atlantic Iberian coast and then spread out into Europe, which is the opposite of the normalised narrative, which is the one presented here. Unfortunately there has been little interest in the importance of the Welsh language outside of Wales itself. Cunliffe is a rare breed as an English historian as as an Englishman, he has no real vested interest or subjective or fanciful inclinations in trying to establish the Welsh Language’s ancient footprint here in Britain. His attestations have dramatic implications on the collective self concepts of the Welsh. One significant historical landmark is the fact, if Cunliffe’s theory is true, is that Stonehenge was built by Celtic speaking peoples. Moreover these Celtic peoples had long been in Britain by the time it was indeed built.
There are a couple of points I would like to make, but please don't just take my word for it. Alan Wilson and Baram Blackett have spent decades researching the original records and visiting historical sites. They have written a number of books on the subject. Also, the you tube channel Britain's Hidden History contains a wealth of further information. 1. Britain and Ireland are not Celtic. This is a misnomer invented in the 18th century when the migration histories were discredited in favour of mainly fabricated Anglo/Saxon and Roman connections. The first wave of migrations from ancient Syria under Albyne landed in Totnes around 1500 BC. Ships of this date were found in the Humber. The 2nd, around 500 BC came from Troy. Troy was considered to be a myth, and therefore British history claiming descent from Brutus of Troy was discarded. However, the migrations are recorded in both The Saxon Chronicles and Bruts of England. The unpopular House of Hanover monarchy were German speaking, and coming so soon after the French revolution and Wars of American Independence, it was deemed politic to play up a supposed common German heritage. 2. The Roman Occupation. This was more along the lines of a trade agreement. The Romans and Britons shared a common ancestry, both tracing their ancestry to Brutus of Troy and Several Emperors were in fact British, such as Constantine and Magnus Maximus. 3. The Saxon invasion and settlements only really took hold after the British Isles were hit by debris from a comet in 562 AD. The land was devastated and largely depopulated, in fact uninhabitable for several years after, giving rise to the stories of the Great Wastelands in Arthurian tales. Many survivors did flee to Brittany, others took ship to America under Madoc, brother of King Arthur 2nd. Their relics have been found in and around Kentucky and the late Jim Michaels and his colleagues in Kentucky have for decades been tracing their history there. 4. The Coelbren alphabet is key to understanding the migrations. The latest in a long tradition of maligning anything Welsh is to claim that this ancient alphabet which has been found carved on stones, stele, pottery, gold and bronze tablets all over Britain and along the route our ancestors took from Palestine, Turkey, The Aegean, Greece, in Etruria, Italy (Etruscan is actually Coelbren); on manuscripts in the Bodleian library, British Library and elsewhere, is a forgery. Since these examples are several hundred years old it is hard to see how the language could have been forged in 1800. Furthermore, the inscriptions translate into understandable Welsh and form part of the evidence of what happened. 5. Further examples of how the Welsh people and language have been discredited begins with their name. The term Welsh actually comes from Saxon Walliche (I may have spelled that wrong) meaning foreigners. The persecution continued for centuries, Edward 1st annexed Wales, Henry 3rd banned the use of writing materials in Wales, and later Caxton's printing press was also denied the Welsh for over 200 years. Finally, in 1847 came the Treachery of the Blue Books. At this time, the Kings of Britain, including both the 4th and 6th century King Arthur were still taught in schools, as they always had been. Welsh speaking teachers were replaced by English speakers, despite the fact that only around 10% of the children spoke any English. It is, until today, still forbidden to speak Welsh in the Houses of Parliament.
never really thought about cardiff existing in the past weirdly so seeing people in roath park in the 50s(?) is so weird to me lmao, diolch fidio arbennig :)
You're spot on. If I remember correctly all the footage of Cardiff in this video was taken from 'Look At Wales', which was a 1956 British Pathe film advertising the attractions of Wales.
Interesting take. My wife and I are members of the North American Wwlsh Choir and attend various Welsh-American events. The emphasis on the later decline of the language, from what we've learned, is the Welsh Not: that, much like the attempts to "De-Indianize" Indians by kidnaping Native American children ane putting them in special schools where they were forced to conform to Western ways, dress, and English, in a less harsh way Welsh was forbidden in schools in Wales and the use of Welsh was derided and people who spoke Welsh were considered not quite civilized, and this was the chief reason for the decline of the use of Welsh. Now my wife and I do not have recent Welsh ancestry, if any, so your socio-economic take was something new. And it makes a lot of sense. I'll be interested in sieeing what you have to say in future about Welsh and particulalrly the Welsh Not. m
Thank you for this video. The Reformation was not the first time that Welsh was heard from the pulpit. Sermons had always been given in the vernacular. You mean that the Reformation brought Welsh for the first time to the altar. That is, the words of the liturgy began to be in Welsh, not Latin.
I was reading the other day about how when the Welsh were given land in Patagonia that due to it's success it attracted more communities from other countries like England and France and the colony began to flourish. which then began to diminish the welsh language , do you think this had a bigger impact on the indigenous language of the area rather than the impacts of the Welsh speaking community?
the Welsh colonists, when compared in particular to Spanish, but also to Italian, English, German and French colonists, had a relatively minor role in the suppression of the indigenous Patagonian languages. I only mention it in this video as an acknowledgement that this occured. We are both colonised, and complicit in colonisation. Welsh was not the primary, or even really a greatly significant factor in the extinction of the languages in the Chubut region, but it is worth mentioning all the same.
@@galileancarpentersunion702 Super interesting thanks for the additional details!:) Awful it happened, if there's even a small chance of a revival of any of the languages i feel like we may owe it to them to help, i'd definitely be down to do it! Been trying to give cornish a go recently!:)
@@laurena227 No problem at all! I'm in the process of graduating and moving house at the moment so I haven't been working on any videos, but once I am settled I'll be doing a video on how language preservation can happen and what individuals can do as well as governments. Cornish is a lovely language. Reading it does feel like reading Welsh in a West Country accent sometimes.
I don't know much about linguistics as a science, and my field tends to be more policy-oriented than it is practically concerned with psycholinguistics. I can't in good faith recommend any work I'm not particularly familiar with, but I would say if you have access to any work on psycholinguistics I would never discourage you reading it. From my surface level understanding of the field I know Chomsky has put out a lot of good work (he had to be right about something), so maybe that will spur you on. If you are interested in language and colonialism then I think the best place to start is Linguistic Imperialism by Robert Phillipson as it is a great primer to how language has been used for economic exploitation. Sorry I can't be more help in terms of psycholinguistics, but if I find any good reading in my research I'll be sure to send it your way.
@@galileancarpentersunion702 Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer. I've come across a bit of Vygotsky (I am a psychology student and he is very much important in my field) and I noticed a few similarities between his theories and marxist theory. Chomsky's linguistics theories are extremely interesting (a broken clock is right twice a day I guess). Thank you for the book recomendation. Great video btw
@@josemaria8177 Soviet linguistics were a fascinating field of study where all old norms were open to scientific inquiry. If you're interested in linguistics study in the Soviet Union more broadly I'd read Stalin's 'Marxism and The Problem of Linguistics'. It gives a lot of scope to what discussions were being had in linguistics in the Soviet Union at the time, and applies concepts within Marxism to the field. I can't remember if Vygotsky is ever specifically mentioned, but that might be an interesting read for you. Thanks for the support!
Whos to say welsh words come from latin, when there is a great similarities between welsh and hebrew, and also a story that the early Cymru also taught the early greeks how to write thier alphabet? Latin/ roman influence came much later....
W=OO CWRW = COOROO (BEER) Welsh is ot wierd looking ghoti is pronuced F I SH gh like "F" in rough "O" as in I women SH as "TI" in nation. English is very weird looking.
