The Welsh describe themselves as “Cymraeg” but the English word ‘Welsh’ is a derivative of the Anglo-Saxon term ‘Waelas’ meaning ‘foreigners’ or ‘strangers.’
The Welsh language, like most of the languages of Europe, and many of those of Asia, has evolved from what linguists term Indo-European. Indo-European was spoken at least 6,000 years ago (4,000 BC) by a semi-nomadic people who lived perhaps in the steppe region of southern Russia, or perhaps in Anatolia.
Speakers of the language migrated eastwards and westwards; they had reached the Danube valley by 3,500 BC and India by 2,000 BC.
The Aryans who first came to Britain were the Celts. They came in two waves, starting perhaps about 600 B.C. The first wave – the Goidelic Celts or Gaels – settled in Ireland and the highlands of Scotland. The second – the Brythonic Celts or Britons – settled in England, Wales and the Scottish Lowlands.
The name Britain is derived from them. The Welsh language comes from that of the Brythonic Celts.
The Welsh language emerged from the increasing dialect differentiation of the ancestral Brythonic language in the wake of the withdrawal of the Roman administration from Britain and the subsequent migration of Germanic speakers to Britain from the fifth century.
Conventionally, Welsh is treated as a separate language from the mid sixth century. By this time, Brythonic speakers, who once occupied the whole of Britain apart from the north of Scotland, had been driven out of most of what is now England.
In 1542 Henry VIII decreed that Wales would be incorporated within England, and under the much resented ‘Acts of Union’, the Welsh language was dismissed as English became the only officially recognized language in Wales.
The origin of Welsh language
