Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The territory of Wales was first determined from the outside, in 778, when King Offa ordered a dyke to be erected to protect his kingdom, Mercia, against intrusion from the Brythonic Celts who inhabited the lands bounded by the Irish Sea in the west and the estuaries of the rivers Dee in the north and east and Wye and Severn in the south and east. They were already calling themselves Cymry (compatriots) and their country Cymru , although the Germanic population east of Offa's Dyke called them Wealas , a term denoting Romanized strangers. From this developed the modern English appellations “Welsh” for the people and their language, and “Wales” for the country. Despite Wales's early incorporation into the emerging English state with the Acts of Union (1536/1543), it was not until the twentieth century, and through a process fraught with conflict and resentment, that English became the majority language in Wales. An Anglo-Welsh literature developed only from the 1920s and the existence of a present-day “Welsh English” remains questionable. Although Wales is a bilingual country in which, according to the 2001 Census, English was claimed to be spoken by nearly all of its 2.8 million inhabitants but Welsh by only about 20.5 percent, the Welsh language remains a stronger marker of national identity than its “Welsh Englishes.” The present status quo is grounded in the history of Wales. ... log in or subscribe to read full text