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Argentinians Speaking Welsh? Celtic in Patagonia

By Kelly Mui The Mimosa , from Wikipedia Argentina seems like the last place you would find Welsh speakers because of how far the original homeland of the language, Wales, is from South America. However, due to mass emigrations from the British Isles in the 19th century, there has been a relatively large community of Welsh speakers in Argentina for over 150 years. In 1865, around 150 Welsh settlers arrived in the region of Patagonia from the city of Liverpool on the Mimosa (Johnson, 2010). The exact number of emigrants from Wales in the early years is unknown, but many more immigrants were encouraged to settle in this new Welsh colony a decade later when the Argentine government granted the newcomers ownership of their land. But why not settle in North America where large numbers of immigrants were moving in order to gain religious freedom and chase their “American dream”? The answer to this question is that some settlers felt that Welsh immigrants in North America adapted to ...

The Wealth of Welsh

by Delvan Willis Delvan Willis is a junior in Political Science at the University of Illinois. He is planning on attending law school after graduation and is interested in International Relations, especially in regards to the Middle East. He wrote this piece while enrolled in 418 ‘Language and Minorities in Europe.’ Image Source In case you couldn’t grasp the meaning of the title, this blog is about the struggles and triumphant revitalization of the Welsh language. First a little background on the Welsh language is important! It is the official language (along with English) of Wales, but that is a big problem since only a little more than half a million of the population of about 3 million of Wales can speak the language! To have an official language that such a small percentage of the population is able to speak fluently seems problematic. Consider, however, that this small percentage of speakers is actually an improvement on past times. According to the 1911 census, at the be...

Welsh, the Powerful

by Alex Joyce | Editor: Jessica Nicholas (PhD candidate in French) Alex Joyce was a senior in Political Science in the spring of 2012 when she took the ‘Language and Minorities in Europe’ (418) EUC survey class. In this blog entry, she argues passionately in favor of official bilingualism, as demonstrated by Wales, home to one of the best protected Celtic languages (Welsh) in the world. To begin, watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPYkYfi_IiM You’ll hear that it was difficult to learn English for Adam who was learning in Welsh for so many years. And Adam still enjoys speaking Welsh! This video is great because it shows how one individual finds Welsh unique and important. Image Source The maintenance and promotion of Welsh in Wales (United Kingdom, see map) has proven to be successful despite the prevalence of English as a dominant language in the UK.  The purpose of this blog is to show all those who think that it is impossible to maintain one official state l...