The Welsh Government's Welsh language strategy, Cymraeg: A million Welsh speakers [Welsh Government. 2017a. "Cymraeg 2050: A Million Welsh Speakers." Cardiff: Welsh Government], aims to increase the numbers of Welsh speakers to one million by 2050. The creation of new Welsh speakers and immersion education form an integral part of the…

Purpose: We investigated cross-linguistic differences in fundamental frequency range (FFR) in Welsh-English bilingual speech. This is the first study that reports gender-specific behavior in switching FFRs across languages in bilingual speech. Method: FFR was conceptualized as a behavioral pattern using measures of span (range of fundamental…

Educational initiatives in many minority language communities in Europe and beyond are producing 'new speakers' of the languages in question. The status of such speakers is often contested, however, and many people who have been through immersion education in a minority language can find themselves on the fringes of the language community of which…

Attempts at the definition of multilingualism range from the structuralist interpretation as the coexistence of multiple codes to the critical sociolinguistic efforts to go beyond the idea of languages as fixed entities. The author's purpose is to explore the suitability of Pierre Bourdieu's model of linguistic production and circulation to…

This study provides the first systematic account of word-final cluster acquisition in bilingual children. To this end, forty Welsh-English bilingual children differing in language dominance and age (2;6 to 5;0) participated in a picture-naming task in English and Welsh. The results revealed significant age and dominance effects on cluster…

In this paper we review and compare language policy in relation to adult numeracy education in Wales and New Zealand with respect to the Maori and Welsh languages in the latest stage of our international comparative study of adult numeracy education. While much has been written about the relationship between language and literacy, the relationship…

Children raised in the home as English or Welsh monolinguals or English-Welsh bilinguals were tested on untrained word form recognition using both behavioral and neurophysiological procedures. Behavioral measures confirmed the onset of a familiarity effect at 11 months in English but failed to identify it in monolingual Welsh infants between 9 and…

This paper examines language reproduction in the family in the context of a highly innovative project in Wales, where the Welsh language has been in decline for over a century. Although Welsh-medium schooling has played a pivotal role in slowing and even reversing language shift in recent decades, there is mounting evidence of the dangers of …

The Reporter's Test (DeRenzi and Ferrari, 1978), which investigates the expressive abilities of aphasics, is proven to be useful, through its use in two studies of features of Welsh, for sociolinguists studying language features. The test has great capacity for predicting syntactic forms and eliciting casual styles of speech. (Author/CB)

In Wales, bilingual education in Welsh and English has an increasingly high profile and Wales shares international leadership of bilingual education policies and practices alongside other countries where bilingual education flourishes. Ever since the first designated Welsh-medium primary school was opened in 1939, Welsh-medium and bilingual…

Argues that language shift appears to correlate highly with the development or nondevelopment of political movements based on language issues. Three major Celtic languages are described to illustrate this: Scottish Gaelic, Irish, and Welsh. Degree of politicalness of language issues seems to correlate inversely with the rate of language shift.…

Describes a study using matched-guise technique designed to (1) determine how West Welsh preadolescents would react to Welsh speakers reading a passage of prose in one of three language varieties (Received Pronunciation English, Welsh-Accented English, Welsh) and (2) to examine what effect language of testing might have on children's social…

Reports a study of the values of three groups of British adolescents: bilingual Welsh, English-only-speaking Welsh, and English-only-speaking English. The Rokeach Value Survey was used and a comparative study was made of actual and perceived differences in values. Results are discussed according to a model of the functions of social stereotypes.…

Examines the attempted acquisition of Welsh by English speakers in Wales in relation to the native association of Welsh-language speech with Welsh cultural identity. The learners' status as verbal performers is investigated together with the psychological impact of that status and the ambiguity of the learners' identity on the learning process.…

Describes one aspect of a Welsh/English bilingual child being raised in England. The father is a native speaker of Welsh, and the mother has learned Welsh in order to speak it to her son. The father accommodates both the mother's and the child's linguistic errors. Areas of accommodation are identified and possible reasons discussed. (Author/LMO)