Welsh language (redirected from Gymraeg)

Welsh language, member of the Brythonic group of the Celtic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. See Celtic languages.

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Welsh language

Celtic language of Wales. Besieged for centuries by the English language, Welsh continues to be spoken by 18–20% of the population of Wales, or more than half a million people, though estimates of the actual number of first-language speakers vary widely. Welsh is traditionally divided into three periods: Old Welsh (c. 800–1150), attested mainly in glosses and short textual passages; Middle Welsh (c. 1150–1500), with a rich medieval literature including poetic texts originally composed much earlier; and Modern Welsh (from c. 1500). Modern literary Welsh was largely fixed by William Salesbury's Bible translation. Vernacular Welsh, split along dialectal lines, has long been diverging from literary Welsh; many modern speakers cannot write or easily understand the traditional written language. The issue of an acceptable modern standard remains unresolved.