where the Siarad corpus was collected (see Chapter 5), speak Welsh;
59.2% of the population of Miami-Dade County, which is where the
Spanish-English corpus was collected, speak Spanish.
(b) With regards to visibility, both minority languages are present in writ-
ten form, such as on street signs, advertising, and in literature.
(c) Both minority languages are also associated with sociocultural prac-
tices such as for example the ‘quince’ (a girl’s 15th birthday celebra-
tion) in Miami and the Eisteddfodau (musical and literary festivals) in
Wales.
(d) Both communities share the majority language, English, which is in
contact with the minority language.
(e) Education in the minority languages is a recent phenomenon in both
communities. Although the two communities have this in common,
Wales is much more committed to bilingual education than Miami.
Lewis (2008) reports that the first Ysgol Gymraeg (Welsh-medium
school) was opened in Aberystwyth in 1939 as an independent Welsh-
medium primary school with only seven pupils. Since then, Welsh-
medium and bilingual primary education developed across Wales, with
an increasing number of non-Welsh-speaking families taking advantage
of this provision. Baker and Prys Jones (1998) note that modern Welsh-
medium education was facilitated by the Education Act of 1944, with
the first public Welsh-medium primary school opening its doors in
1947 and the first public Welsh-medium secondary school in 1956. It
was with the 1988 Education Reform Act, and the introduction of the
National Curriculum, that Welsh, as a subject, became compulsory in
schools, as reported in the Welsh-medium Education Strategy (Welsh
Assembly Government, 2009: 26). The legal basis for equality between
Welsh and English in Wales is furthermore enshrined in the 1993 Welsh
Language Act (see Thomas, 1997). Nowadays Welsh is either learned at
home, at school or both. Today, a large proportion of the school-age
population in Northwest Wales attends school through the medium of
Welsh. Lewis (2008) reports that, in 2007, 30.5% of primary schools in
Wales taught through Welsh, and 15.4% of secondary school pupils in
Wales were being taught Welsh as a first language. (For further infor-
mation about Welsh-medium education in Wales, please see Chapters 7
and 8.)
As García (2009) reports, it was not until 1963 that, with help from the
Ford Foundation, the first Spanish-English bilingual programme was estab-
lished at the Coral Way primary school (Dade County, Miami). García and
Otheguy (1985: 6) report that this programme included both Spanish-
speaking and English-speaking students. However, as years passed, the moti-
vation for bilingual schools diminished among both the Cuban and Anglo
elites and the goal of promoting bilingualism in the public schools was
116 Part 3: Bilingual Language Use