St David's Day: A Welsh Language Profile by Rhian Davies

Tomorrow is Saint David’s Day, the national day of Wales. Thousands of people across Wales will be donning daffodils and leeks on their shirts to celebrate their patron saint and national day.

Welsh is a Celtic language closely related to Cornish and Breton and evolved from the native language of Britain, Brythonic. It is the official language of Wales and is also spoken in Y Wladfa, Argentina, where Welsh settlers emigrated in the mid-1800s, with the purpose of avoiding further influence from England and the English language.

Over the centuries, Welsh has been highly influenced by Latin, English, and to a lesser extent, Norse and Irish through various invasions of Britain. It has a rich poetic tradition with some of the oldest British poetry being attributed to Welsh, dating back to the 9^th century. The language has always been written using the Latin alphabet, but a literary forger in the 18^th century invented a runic alphabet known as the Bardic Alphabet, claiming it was used by ancient Celtic druids.

Anglesey, North Wales

Welsh is one of the most vibrant and widely spoken minority languages with 560,000 speakers in Wales, 5,000 in Argentina and thousands more worldwide. Welsh-language media is widely available with a Welsh radio station, numerous magazines and local newspapers as well as a television channel. It is a compulsory subject in Welsh schools until the age of 16, and Welsh-medium education is available through to university.

The language has many dialects which are often categorised by linguists into two main varieties: Northern and Southern. The standard language is a mixture of the two, and the grammar of literary Welsh is so vastly different from the colloquial varieties that it may be considered a separate language altogether.

Despite being seen by many as having a harsh and guttural sound and an unconventional orthography, it is highly influential in the construction of fantasy languages, namely Tolkien’s Elven language, Sindarin, which shares many features with Welsh.

Rhian Davies is a Language Policy & Planning student currently working on a website detailing the Brythonic languages.

The Best of 2013

What a year it's been! Today we'll be looking back at the best of 2013, including your favourite posts and guest contributions. We'll start with the Top 10 Posts of 2013:

Top 10 Posts of 2013

10: Intro to Linguistics: Thematic Relations

In April for our Intro to Linguistics series we looked at thematic relations. You guys seemed to appreciate it, as it makes its way into our Top 10 Posts at number 10.

9: Which is the Best Language to Learn

Exactly a year ago today we encouraged you to learn a language and helped you on your way by providing you with a shortlist for the best languages to learn in 2013. We hope you stuck to your resolution!

8: Russian Loanwords

Russian is often overlooked when it comes to languages that have influenced the lexicon of English. Back in April we had a look at a few examples of words that came from Russia with love, which made it our number 8 post this year.

7: Debunking Language Stereotypes: English

Though we hate language stereotypes, people seemed to like us setting the record straight back in March.

6: The Index Translationum

In January we looked at the Index Translationum, a list of books translated in the world. We found this bibliography of translations interesting and given that it is number 6 in our top 10 posts of 2013, you did too.

5: Swearing: How Words Become Offensive

Some people swear, others don't. Some people hate swearing, others don't. Back in March, we looked at just how cursed cursing is and whether we should really be so upset by it. Clearly you lot aren't massively upset by swearing or it wouldn't be number 5 in our list.

4: The Worst Use of Foreign Languages in Songs

We also addressed our dislike of artists using their non-native tongue in a song in March. Whilse we want people to learn languages, these examples were so bad that they show that the artists that were named and shamed should have studied a lot harder in school.

3: The Pros and Cons of Compulsory Language Learning

In May we addressed the educational issues surrounding compulsory language learning, an issue close to our hearts. It's clearly close to your hearts too and that's why it's number 3 in our list.

2: Intro to Linguistics: Morphological Typology

Another entry from our Intro to Linguistics series, our look at morphological typology was far more popular than we could have dreamed and made its way into our list in a silver medal position at number 2.

1: Word Categories for Dummies

Sometimes it seems that we are all suckers for life's simple pleasures. Our simplified look at word categories was the most popular post of 2013.

Favourite post not featured? Check out the other months of 2013!

January | February | March | April | May | June

July | August | September | October | November | December

Best Guest Contributions

To mark our first birthday back in September, we opened up The Lingua File to guest contributions. Here are the top five guest posts from this year, though that's not to say the others weren't amazing too! If you'd like to contribute to The Lingua File, send an email to info@thelinguafile.com.

5: Language and Politics: Defining Language by Jennifer Collins

In September, linguist and ESL teacher Jennifer Collins of Saundz.com looked at the relation between language and politics, how we define languages, whether countries can own languages, and how we choose official languages. We found it fascinating and so did our readers, making it number 5 in our best guest contributions.

4: Spelling Wars: The Problem with Reviving Languages by Rhian Davies

Rhian Davies, language policy and planning student, evaluated the spelling issues you encounter when you revive languages. Her post focusing on the minority language of Cornish was fascinating and earned it fourth place in our top 5 guest contributions.

3: Ways to Motivate Students to Learn English by Steven Armstrong

In October, freelance writer Steven Armstrong of SolidEssay.com looked at ways to motivate students to learn English. This informative and useful post is the first onto our imaginary podium.

2: 12 Uncomplicated Ways to Implement Italian into Your Everyday Routine by Cher Hale

Language enthusiast and adventurer Cher Hale of The Iceberg Project gave us 12 ways to get the Italian language into our everyday routine in order to help us master this beautiful and romantic Romance language. We found the steps indispensible and so did you. It's second in our list.

1: How to Be an English Language Tourist? by David Crystal

Our guest contribution from famed linguist David Crystal was always going to be number one on our list. The distinguished linguist was kind enough to contribute to The Lingua File and easily earned his place at the top of this list.

If your favourite Guest Post wasn't here, check out our other Guest Posts.

Thank you for being with us so far and we hope that 2014 is as good for you as 2013 was for us!

Happy New Year!!!

Spelling Wars: The Problem With Reviving Languages by Rhian Davies

You may be one of those who cringes at the sight of a misplaced apostrophe or a misspelled word. You may even dislike the spelling differences between American and British English; the sight of an extra ‘u’ (or lack of) in words such as colour or honour may cause you to shudder. But these are somewhat minor in comparison to other languages, which are yet to agree on a standard spelling at all. This is especially true for minority or endangered languages whose speakers may disagree on spelling for various reasons.

The example I present to you today is Cornish, a Celtic language closely related to Welsh and Breton. Many claim that the Cornish language died in the late 18th century along with its last native speaker, while others say it never died at all. It is at least agreed that Cornish certainly died as a widespread community language and so it has been undergoing a revival since the early 1900s.

Cornish is rather unique in that its dialects today are based on time rather than geographical location, the latter being the case for the majority of languages. This is because revivalists have chosen to base their versions of the language on various sources from different eras, namely from the 18th century, as it was last spoken natively, and from mediaeval manuscripts. Both varieties have different grammar, lexicons and of course, orthographies.

Cornwall, the historical home of the Cornish language.

But why was there any need to revive the language from the Middle Ages when it was spoken right up until the 18th century? Many revivalists saw the Cornish spoken in the 18th century to be so influenced by English that it was too impure, so they looked back for a ‘golden age’ of the language on which to base a revival. Mediaeval Cornish undoubtedly had far fewer English loanwords and was seen by many as being superior, whereas others believed the revival should be based on how Cornish was last spoken, to continue where the language left off, as it were. Because of these disagreements there have been a number of different varieties of spoken and written Cornish that have come out of the revival, each with their own supporting groups. Some orthographies for example make use of the letters C, Q, Z while others use only K and S respectively. We need only look at the various spellings for the language's name itself to see how much variation there has been over the years: We have Kernowek, Kernewek, Curnoack, Kernuack, Kernûak amongst several others. In English, many often get confused over which is the correct or appropriate spelling: grey or gray? In Cornish, we have had loes, lōs, loos and looz to disagree and scratch our heads over.

In recent years, the Cornish-speaking community has come to an agreement over a standard written form of the language, aptly named the Standard Written Form. Even within this official standard there are acceptable spelling differences: “A wodhes ta kewsel Kernewek?” and “A wodhes ta kowsel Kernowek?” are both acceptable ways to spell the Cornish for ‘can you speak Cornish?’. Even after the standardisation of the language, there is still some dispute amongst speakers and Cornish linguists on how the language should be written.

Rhian Davies is a Language Policy & Planning student currently working on a website detailing the Brythonic languages.

Follow @ONaRhian

St. George's Day: The Languages of England

St. George was also the bad-ass who killed dragons.

As today is St. George's Day, we thought we'd honour England's patron saint with a look at the languages of England. It goes without saying that England is home to English, but before the Angles, Saxons and Jutes made their way to the British Isles, other languages were spoken across the land. Let's jump straight in...

Aside from being famed for pirates and their accent, the Cornish in fact have their own language. The Cornish language, also known as Kernowek or Kernewek in Cornish, has somewhere between 500 and 3,500 speakers. The language is related to Welsh and Breton and evolved from the native language of the British Isles, Brythonic.

Though classified as an extinct language, Cornish has seen a good level of revival in the UK, forcing UNESCO to reconsider its classification back in 2010. Cornish belongs to the Celtic language family along with Irish, Scots Gaelic, Scots and the next of our languages, Manx.

The Manx language, found principally and almost exclusively on the Isle of Man, actually lost its last native speaker in 1974, but thanks to the efforts of some great linguaphiles, it has been revived. It's now classified as a revived language, though we prefer the term zombie language. Manx now has between 100 and 1,800 speakers.

The Coonceil ny Gaelgey (Manx Gaelic Council), the regulatory body responsible for the Manx language, was set up no less than eleven years after the extinction of the language. It's clearly doing a good job!

St. George's Day is also the saint day of Catalonia, as well as UNESCO World Book and Copyright day. World Book Day in the UK was celebrated back in March.

As the English get vaguely patriotic today, remember that despite their reputation, they're more than a group of monolingual savages!