Welsh (Cymraeg)

1. Introduction & endangerment status

Welsh (Cymraeg) is an Insular Celtic language of the Brittonic branch, making it a close relative of Cornish and Breton and a more distant cousin of Irish and Scottish Gaelic (the Goidelic branch). It is spoken chiefly in Wales (Cymru), a constituent country of the United Kingdom, with smaller communities elsewhere, including the historic Welsh-speaking settlement of Y Wladfa in Patagonia, Argentina.¹² Confidence: High.

The 2021 census recorded 538,300 people aged three and over in Wales (17.8%) able to speak Welsh, with about a quarter of residents reporting some Welsh-language skills; counting speakers outside Wales raises the worldwide total above 750,000. UNESCO classifies Welsh as 'vulnerable' — the least severe endangerment category, applied because, although the language is widely used, intergenerational transmission in the home is not assured everywhere.²³ Confidence: High.

Welsh has the strongest institutional position of any Celtic language: it is an official language in Wales, compulsory in schools to age 16, used in government, broadcasting (the channel S4C and station BBC Radio Cymru), road signage and the courts. The Welsh Government's Cymraeg 2050 strategy aims for a million speakers by 2050. That support makes Welsh one of the most learnable of all endangered languages.¹² Confidence: High.

This guide rises through the eight CEFR sub-levels, from the alphabet (A1.1) toward reading Welsh media and literature and joining the language community (B2.2). Each level is marked with a visible heading.

Welsh is written in the Latin alphabet and is highly phonetic — words are pronounced as written once you know the letters. It has 29 letters, several of which are digraphs treated as single letters: ch, dd, ff, ng, ll, ph, rh and th. The famous letter ll is a voiceless lateral fricative /ɬ/ (put your tongue as for 'l' and blow); dd is the voiced 'th' of 'this'; w and y are vowels. Circumflex accents (to bach, 'little roof') mark long vowels, as in tŷ 'house'.¹ Confidence: High.

A first set of greetings and polite expressions opens almost any conversation with a fellow learner or community member. All forms below are drawn from the cited reference materials.¹

The cardinal numerals one to ten are listed below, with twenty and one hundred. Like the other Celtic languages, the traditional higher numbers use a vigesimal (base-twenty) system.⁴

Welsh default word order is verb–subject–object (VSO): the verb comes first, as in Mae'r ci yn rhedeg 'The dog is running' (literally 'is the dog running'). There is no indefinite article ('a/an' is simply omitted) and the definite article is y / yr / 'r. Nouns have grammatical gender (masculine or feminine), which affects the words around them.¹² Confidence: High.

A starter set of everyday words — family, common nouns and colours — for first sentences:

The signature feature of Welsh — shared across the Celtic languages — is initial consonant mutation (treigladau): the first sound of a word changes depending on the preceding word or grammatical context. There are three mutations: soft (e.g. cath 'cat' → fy nghath is eclipsis, ei gath 'his cat' soft), nasal and aspirate. So 'Wales' Cymru can appear as i Gymru 'to Wales'. Mastering when each mutation applies is the central task of the intermediate learner.¹² Confidence: High.

Welsh verbs are often expressed periphrastically: a form of bod 'to be' plus the linking particle yn plus a verb-noun, as in Dw i'n dysgu Cymraeg 'I am learning Welsh'. Bod is highly irregular and its present-tense forms (dw i, rwyt ti, mae e/hi, dyn ni, dych chi, maen nhw) are learned early. Welsh also keeps distinct 'you' forms: ti (singular/familiar) and chi (plural/polite).¹ Confidence: High.

Advanced competence means handling the gap between literary Welsh (Cymraeg llenyddol), used in formal writing and the Bible, and colloquial Welsh (Cymraeg llafar), plus the broad north–south dialect divide (e.g. north nain vs south mam-gu for 'grandmother'). Centuries beside English have produced loanwords and code-switching; recognising borrowed material helps keep inherited Celtic structure clear.¹² Confidence: High.

At the top of the ladder the living community is the classroom. Welsh has the Welsh-language television channel S4C, BBC Radio Cymru, a vigorous music and Eisteddfod festival tradition, a centuries-deep literature (from the medieval Mabinogi and the poetry of the cynghanedd metrical tradition to modern novels), and abundant online resources. Reading goals at this level include Welsh news, fiction and poetry.¹² Confidence: High.

Core phrases

Useful sentences for a first conversation, all drawn from the cited materials:¹

Example dialogue

A short model dialogue assembled from the greetings and phrases above:

Learning resources

• Welsh language and alphabet (Omniglot)A1–B1 — alphabet, pronunciation & phrases
• How to count in Welsh (Omniglot)A1–A2 — the numeral system
• Welsh language (Wikipedia)Background — history, grammar & status
• Welsh language, Wales: Census 2021 (ONS)Background — official speaker statistics

Revitalization & preservation

Welsh is the success story of the Celtic family: official status in Wales, compulsory schooling to 16, Welsh-medium education (ysgolion Cymraeg), the S4C television channel, BBC Radio Cymru, bilingual signage and the law all support it, and the Cymraeg 2050 strategy targets a million speakers by 2050. The continuing challenge, reflected in UNESCO's 'vulnerable' label, is securing day-to-day intergenerational transmission, especially in areas where English dominates social life.²³

Downloadable resources

A spaced-repetition vocabulary dataset for this guide (82 verified, sourced entries) is available below in four formats. Each row carries the target word, English translation, an example sentence and its translation where one is given, an (empty) audio placeholder, notes, and a category for beginner-first review. Only items that could be reliably sourced are included; no vocabulary has been invented. The dataset is eligible for additive expansion toward the 100-word target in future runs.

• Vocabulary — CSVAll levels — spreadsheet-friendly
• Vocabulary — TSVAll levels — tab-separated
• Vocabulary — Anki text importAll levels — tab-separated Anki import
• Vocabulary — Anki deck (.apkg)All levels — ready-to-import APKG