Welsh has largely been a success story over the past 40 years, greatly helped by the launch in 1982 of S4C – a free-to-air television channel aimed at Welsh speakers. S4C was crucial in revitalising the language and making it relevant to a rapidly changing Wales. But how much longer will that be the case? A report from the House of Commons Welsh affairs committee last month warned that the rise of streaming services threatens the position of S4C, which has also suffered a substantial drop in real-terms funding and, like the BBC, is faced with a government that has fallen out of love with public service broadcasting funded by a universal licence fee.
The cross-party committee says there is a danger that Welsh-language broadcasting will be marginalised as streamers with a global perspective take over. Welsh is a living language, yet the makers of Netflix’s The Witcher, a fantasy TV show, used it as the secret tongue of a mystic land. That being said, the streaming service also bought the hit Welsh-language drama Dal Y Mellt. The success of Welsh broadcasting has rested on the close connections between broadcasters and Welsh policymakers. But Amazon Prime Video would not appear before the committee.
The ideological temper of our times threatens to make things worse. MPs said the move of live sport from free-to-air channels to paid-for networks with no statutory requirement to broadcast in Welsh, and the consolidation in the radio industry, with local stations being absorbed into larger corporations, will have a deleterious effect. In any battle between culture and commerce, the latter usually wins. Money talks – and not in Welsh but in English, with a transatlantic accent.
The report sensibly calls for new laws to safeguard Welsh-language broadcasting and for rugby and football matches involving Wales to be ringfenced on free-to-air TV. Its resonant conclusion that lack of reform in public service broadcasting will lead to “digital extinction” for Welsh culture and language should not be dismissed; just witness the uproar over the language app Duolingo’s announcement that its Welsh course would be “paused”.
Welsh, one of Europe’s oldest languages, owes its success to political support. In the early 1990s MPs decreed that Welsh speakers should be able to have access to all public services in Welsh. By the start of the 21st century, the rise of Welsh‑medium schools, and increasingly jobs in politics and media requiring a degree of bilingualism, saw the language spread. But this went into reverse a decade ago. The 2022 census showed a decline in Welsh speakers over the previous decade, from 562,000 (19%) in 2011 to 538,300 (17.8%). Confusingly, the Annual Population Survey in 2022 estimated that 900,600 people in Wales (29.5% of the population) could speak Welsh, but what constitutes “speaking Welsh” is subjective – can you speak French if you can order coq au vin and pay l’addition? – and the census is seen as a more reliable indicator of genuine fluency.
The Welsh government is aiming for a million Welsh speakers by 2050, and is committed to using census data rather than the much more encouraging Annual Population Survey. This is a worthy aim but depends on Welsh retaining its place on radio and TV, and also greatly expanding its online presence. The alternative is a return to the dark days of the 1950s and 60s when Welsh was portrayed as a dying language, out of step with modernity. And that would be a trasiedi.
