Definition of "Cymraeg"

While some families of the oldest Welsh stocks talk English only, a large number, whose forefathers were Teuton, Norse, or Irish, now converse in Cymraeg. […] The natural conclusion is that the Silurians or Iberians, now represented by the little, dark Welshmen, are the oldest existing race in Wales, and, though now speaking Cymraeg, were long before the Cymry there. […] The dark-eyed Silurian or Iberian is the typical Welshman. He has the Welsh fire, energy, poetry, and enthusiasm. He it is who has displayed patriotic fervour, from the days of his great ancestor, Caractacus. It is his lofty soul that has dignified the noble Cymraeg, his adopted and his honoured tongue. […] The fact of so many Welsh speaking Cymraeg no more proves them Celts than the Latin tongue in Spain proves the people Romans.

1881, James Bonwick, Who Are the Welsh? (Our Nationalities; III), London: David Bogue, […], pages iv, 46, and 48

But this does not mean that parallelism took place; contrary to the opinion of Professor T.F. O’Rahilly, Cymraeg shook off most of its archaic features long before its sister language. […] Cymraeg could only have been developed, as Professor Jackson is forced to admit, north of Hadrian’s Wall. […] by individuals speaking Cymraeg badly? At manhood their children would have returned to them speaking the mother tongue of the strangers perfectly their own badly.

1975, Arthur Henry Evans, English Historians and Welsh History: An Examination, pages 12, 21, and 53

A few of the women have pre-school age children and are preparing in advance for the time when their children will be fluent in Cymraeg. Those who have waited until their chilren[sic] have learned the language have found that the transition to Cymraeg in the home as well is resisted; their children have come to think of Cymraeg as the language of education and English as the everyday language — an ironic twist on the situation of the last century. While speaking Cymraeg is encouraged, the children have difficulty making the transition and, though the mothers originally intended to help their children by learning Cymraeg, the opposite has become the case.

1981, Carn, volumes 33–39, Celtic League, page 10, column 2

“What brings you into our lands?” The strange looking barbarian asked again. / He was speaking Cymraeg, which means the language of the aborigines, or “the language of the first race.” It was the same language of the Cymry of which Cedric and his tribe was a people of.

2001, Jodie K. Scales, Of Kindred Celtic Origins, volumes 1 (Myths, Legends, Genealogy and History of an Ordinary American Family), Lincoln, Neb.: Writers Club Press, iUniverse, page 416

The inherently imperial nature of the term Welsh, both in its meaning and its origin, is why this book will consistently use for the pre-colonial language and culture of the country the native term Cymraeg. […] Historians like John Davies, writing originally in Cymraeg, and Gwyn A. Williams, at once insistently Welsh and distinctively English-speaking, have outlined how in the nineteenth century a major social and economic struggle broke the power of the Welsh aristocratic and semi-aristocratic landowners, since Tudor times inherently English in their orientation. […] A popular hymn-book, Llawlyfr Moliant (Handbook of Praise), first published in 1880, contains 942 hymns in Cymraeg: each one had to be sung at least once a year, often to magnificent tunes.

2004, Stephen Knight, A Hundred Years of Fiction: Writing Wales in English, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, pages 4–5

I hated to leave her in a world she didn’t understand, but I was comforted by the kindness of the staff, and one day she came home speaking Cymraeg!

2007, Edith Thomas, “Birth at 47”, in Lindsay Ashford, Rebecca Tope, editors, Strange Days Indeed: Autobiographical Stories about Motherhood by Women from Wales, Dinas Powys: Honno, page 154

Labels matter greatly in Wales, starting with ‘Wales’ and ‘Welsh’, which derives from the Anglo-Saxon waelsc, meaning ‘foreigner’; Stephen Knight, for example, in A Hundred Years of Fiction (2004), prefers Cymraeg, ‘the language’s name for itself’, and also claims that: “Anglo-Welsh” is found unacceptable by most authors … on the grounds that it refuses Welsh status to Welsh people who, not speaking Cymraeg, nevertheless do not feel at all English’. […] I also use ‘Welsh’, rather than Cymraeg, without intending what Knight calls ‘a damaging mockery’ of either the language or authors using it; this usage, I feel, will be the least confusing to the majority of this book’s readers (not all of whom will be Welsh-speaking critics of WWE). To use Cymraeg instead of ‘Welsh’ if you do not speak Welsh seems to me to run the risk of patronising those who do and criticising those who do not.]

[2013, John Goodby, The Poetry of Dylan Thomas: Under the Spelling Wall, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, page 46

According to Jenkins (2007), at the time of the 1901 census roughly 80% of the Welsh population in mid and west Wales (what Balsom referred to as Y fro Gymraeg in his “three Wales Model”) spoke Cymraeg. […] Many of the changes that have occurred in recent years in Welsh education have been primarily concerned with the reclamation of Cymraeg. […] Whereas in previous years educators and clergy were concerned with the salvation of the souls of the Welsh, many influential contemporary educational authorities regarded Cymraeg as the spirit of Welshness and were concerned with saving the soul of Wales itself. […] Edwards’ cultural sensitivity may have been influenced by his attending Ysgol y Llan, a “Welsh Not” school which punished pupils for speaking Cymraeg.

2016, Kevin Smith, Curriculum, Culture and Citizenship Education in Wales: Investigations into the Curriculum Cymreig (Palgrave Studies in Global Citizenship Education and Democracy), London: Palgrave Macmillan, pages 21 and 29

It was then that I realized that all four of us had been speaking Cymraeg since Gwil and I had woken up. […] “Bleddyn, I—” pausing at the strange, yet utterly familiar sound of Cymraeg—coming from my mouth, I sighed and forced myself to sit up and look at my cousin? My lover? / Neither appellation seemed to fit.

2016, E. L. Phillips, In Shining Armor, Valley Falls, N.Y.: Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

The Mostyn Gallery – or Oriel Mostyn, depending on whether you’re fluent in Cymraeg – is one of the grandest buildings in Wales’s grandest, richest seaside town, which with its tall, rather Wes Anderson hotels and bizarre, sensual crags beyond can be a heady experience.

2021, Owen Hatherley, Modern Buildings in Britain: A Gazetteer, London: Penguin Books

There are as many fluent-in-Cymraeg English-accented young people as there are Cymreig-accented old folk who’d lost their Cymraeg. Communicating in English was usual till a common language could be established. But neither I nor Rob wished anyone to prioritise English on our behalf and the fact that anyone could be offended at hearing Cymraeg in Cymru was wretched. […] My friends had only been in Cymru a year, but Tim knew more local history than me, and the kids, being young, were already nearly fluent in Cymraeg.

2022, Julie Brominicks, The Edge of Cymru: A Journey, Bridgend: Seren, published 2023

Welsh identity and Welshness had been galvanised around Cymraeg and this had become the new measuring stick for moulding a pan-Welsh identity. […] Everything changes but nothing changes. On my return I observed Black and brown people, im/migrants and nonmigrants, who like me all those years ago, were still trying to prove and validate their Welshness. This time it was by learning or speaking Cymraeg.

2022, Darren Chetty, Grug Muse, Hanah Issa, Lestyn Tyne, editors, Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales, London: Repeater Books