In a message dated 31/03/2006 07:01:27 GMT Standard Time,
GLAMORGAN-D-request(a)rootsweb.com writes:
I hope that you analyse the data for age. Since the teaching of Welsh from
primary school has been compulsory from the 1980s presumably a proportion of
the increase will turn out to be schoolchildren.
The questions about knowledge of Welsh in the last two censuses were not
particularly clear, and they may as a result have over-estimated the
proportion of fluent Welsh-speakers.
The validity of comparisons between any two sets of data is diminished if
the data was not collected in exactly the same way.
Hi Jeff
Here in sunny Sneggie there is a large Welsh school. If the question was
asked in the village how many people can speak Welsh, the data would probably
show that well over 50% can.
Of these 99% would be under the age of 30.
If the question was asked in a different way ie do you use Welsh as a
language the data would show up as probably less than 10% and these would be
children using it at school.
If a similar question was asked in Cardiff 150 years ago it would show that
the main language other than English would have been Gaelic.
Regards Phil T.C.M.