- Chapter Forty-One -
worrying is the fact that, all around the coast, in what had long been strongly Welsh-
speaking areas such as Anglesey, Merioneth, Cardiganshire and northern Pembroke,
there are sizeable pockets, mainly in and around urban centres such as Holyhead,
Beaumaris, Aberdyfi, Aberystwyth and Fishguard, where the proportion of the
population able to speak Welsh is in the 40-55 per cent band. There are even parts
of Anglesey that fall within the 25-40 per cent band. Already on the basis of the
results of the 1971 census, Professors E.G. Bowen and Harold Carter drew attention
to the presence of an 'anglicized corridor' in mid-Wales, whereby the concurrence of
the anglicizing influence of the university town and tourist resort of Aberystwyth in
the west and 'a long established drive' proceeding up the valley of the Severn and
across the valley of the Dyfi seemed likely to drive a wedge through the Welsh-
speaking heartland:
From the point of view of those concerned with the preservation of the
language this corridor is a geographical feature of great concern, for there are
clear indications that its extension will leave the country in the near future with
its Welsh-speaking area irrevocably divided into two separate sections, the
north-west and the south-west.
(Bowen and Carter 1975: 6)
If Welsh is to be preserved as a living language, the decline must of course not only
be slowed down but halted and, if at all possible, reversed. This is inevitably a long-
term task, but there are signs that it might perhaps be successfully accomplished.
It is, after all, possible to extrapolate from existing census figures, to the extent
that these provide a break-down by age-groups. As we have seen, 19 per cent of the
total population aged 3 years and over were recorded as Welsh-speaking in 1981 but,
not unexpectedly, there are wide differences among age-groups.2 Whereas 27.4 per
cent of the population in the age-group '65 and over' were Welsh-speaking, the
proportion for the group aged 45-64 was 20.7 per cent, and that for the age-group
25-44, which we may classify as 'young adults', was 15.5 per cent and that for
the age-group 15-24, whose pattern of linguistic competence may be considered to
be more or less firmly established, was 14.9 per cent. However, that of the critical
age-groups 10-14 and 5-9 was 18.5 per cent and 17.8 per cent respectively, corres-
ponding to 17 per cent and 14.5 per cent respectively in 1971, this suggests that the
increased encouragement and teaching of Welsh in schools in the intervening decade
was having an appreciable effect. Whether this will be maintained it is too early to
say but, at the very least, it is as yet too early to abandon hope.
We have dwelt at some length, but even so only in summary fashion, on the
situation of Welsh as revealed by census reports. The other remaining Celtic
languages will have to be dealt with even more summarily.
The census figures for Scottish Gaelic reveal that, whereas over a quarter of a
million (254,415) claimed to speak the language in 1891, this had been reduced by
over two-thirds to 79,307 by 1981, i.e. within one (if lengthy) human lifetime. To give
percentages for the whole of Scotland would be pointless, given that Gaelic has never
been the language of the whole of Scotland and that many parts of the country,
particularly in the south-west, that were once Gaelic-speaking have long been totally
bereft of the language. We can, however, trace the decline, often to the point of virtual