Minority Languages of the UK

There are some minority languages in the world. I learned about minority languages which are spoken in the UK by my seminar. People in the UK speak English mainly, but some people in the UK speak some minority languages. The languages are Welsh, Scots, Scottish Gaelic, Cornish and Manx. These languages are classified into Celtic languages. Welsh, Scots and Scottish Gaelic are spoken now. But Cornish and Manx had gone. I researched about Welsh by using the Internet.

Welsh
Welsh is a language still spoken in Wales and is one of the Celtic languages. Wales is located northwest Europe and is part of Great Britain. Welsh is called Welsh or Cymric in English. In 1536, English became an official language in Wales. So Welsh was prohibited to speak in the school and everywhere. And teachers were prohibited to teach Welsh by the Education Act of 1870. However, the preservation movement of Welsh became active when becoming the 20th century. Therefore, the number of people who can speak Welsh has increased. Now Welsh became an official language as well as English and became a bilingual country. And every signs and the official document are written in two languages.

Welsh Speakers
According to the 2004 Welsh Language Use Survey, this shows 508,100 people (18.7%) of the population of Wales are Welsh speakers in 1991. In 2001, this shows that 582,400 people (20.8%) are Welsh Speakers. In 2004, this shows that 611,000 people (21.7%) are Welsh speakers. The numbers of people who speak Welsh have increasing gradually. This influences that government took Welsh education system in elementary school and junior high school. Also, a Welsh radio broadcasting station (BBC Radio Cymru) started on 1977 and HTV (ITV Wales) broadcasted on November 1, 1982 by S4C (Sianel Pedwar Cymru 'Channel Four Wales'). S4C is a Welsh television channel broadcast from the capital, Cardiff.

The below graph is showing proportion of people aged 3 and over able to speak Welsh.













Place Name
Finally, I would like to introduce about the longest place name in the world. The longest place name in the world is Maori names 'Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaunga horonukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu' of some towns in New Zealand. The second longest place name in the world is 'Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogoch' in Wales.

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_language
Storry, M. and Childs, P. (2007) British Cultural Identities. (3rd Ed.) Routledge.