The official Wales song for the FIFA Men’s World Cup 2022 is “Yma o Hyd” (“Still here”), a protest song first released by Dafydd Iwan and Ar Lôg in 1983. Its unashamedly patriotic verses describe the adversity that Welsh people have endured over the centuries, including:
Byddwn yma hyd ddiwedd amser,
a bydd yr iaith Gymraeg yn fyw.
(We’ll be here until the end of time,
and the Welsh language will be alive.)
The Welsh government has a language strategy that aims to have a million people speaking Welsh by 2050. And it seems to be working: recently on TV channel S4C, 230,000 children from more than 1,000 schools across Wales sang “Yma o Hyd” together at the same time. They included children not only from Welsh-speaking households or so-called Welsh-speaking heartlands, but from across Wales.
