- The Celtic Languages Today -
'integrative' reasons (representing a positive attitude towards Welsh culture and the
Welsh language as such) were high among those where one or both parents were
Welsh-speaking, while non-Welsh-speaking couples tended to lay greater emphasis
on 'instrumental' reasons (the advantages, particularly in terms of job prospects, of
having a knowledge of Welsh).
Roberts (1991) bases his conclusions on a questionnaire sent to the parents of all
children in the area covered for the purposes of education by Comhairle nan Eilean
(,The [Western] Isles Council'), i.e. the islands of Lewis and Harris, North Uist,
Benbecula, South Uist, Eriskay and Barra, and achieved a 61 per cent response rate.
One disturbing feature that emerges, almost incidentally, from the survey is that 'in
the Western Isles as a whole, a clear majority of children are now coming to school
from homes where Gaelic is not "normally" spoken' (Roberts 1 99 I: 255). Despite
that, the same percentage as in the Anglesey survey, namely 86 per cent, wished their
children to be bilingual, and 71 per cent supported Gaelic-medium education as a
part of the Western Isles bilingual policy - though how far this should be taken, i.e.
for how many years of a child's primary education, was much more controversial.
If we assume that positive attitudes towards a language are a necessary, though not
a sufficient, condition for its survival, we can perhaps draw some encouragement
from these two surveys.
There are wide differences among Celtic languages in respect of their legal and
official status at the present time.
In the Republic of Ireland, the Constitution asserts that 'the Irish language as the
national language is the first official language' and an active interventionist policy has
been adopted with a view to encouraging the use of the language in education, in
the media and, to some extent, in the field of industrial development. In 1978, the
Irish Language Board (Bord na Gaeilge) which had come into being in 1975 was
'established by Act of the Oireachtas (Legislature) as the official State agency for
planning and policy-making in relation to the Irish language' (0 Murchu 1985: 36).5
Irish is also an official language of the EC but not a working language, i.e. there
is no requirement for the provision of an Irish-language version of all working
documents of the Community's institutions, committees, etc.
The public and official use of Irish, at least outside the Gaeltacht areas, is very
often little more than tokenism. In reality, the Celtic language that has achieved
the greatest degree not only of formal recognition but of actual use in public life
generally is incontrovertibly Welsh.
As far as the legal and official status of Welsh is concerned, the situation has been
completely transformed within the last thirty years. Until fifty years ago, Welsh had
no official status whatsoever. A first, though minimal and in practice more or less
ineffectual, step towards acceptance of the language for use in the courts of law
was made by the Welsh Courts Act of 1942 which enacted that 'the Welsh language
may be used in any court in Wales by any party or witness who considers that
he would otherwise be at any disadvantage by reason of his natural language of
communication being Welsh': this, it must be observed, fell far short of allowing any
participants in a trial the option of expressing themselves in Welsh as a matter of right
and merely because they preferred to do so.
A major step forward was made in 1967 when, after the publication in 1963 of an