Although the proportion may not sound much, remember that nearly two-thirds of Welsh people live in the anglicised south-eastern corner, and that almost everywhere else, Welsh speakers make up a significant slice of the population: the majority in Gwynedd, Anglesey, Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire and parts of Powys, Pembrokeshire, Conwy and Denbighshire.

After centuries of steady decline, the 2001 census recorded the first ever rise in the proportion and number of Welsh speakers. Considering the fact that English language culture is the most expansionist the world has ever seen, and that its base lies slap next door, the survival of Welsh, and its modest resurgence, is a remarkable story.

The status of the Welsh language has long been a thorny issue, and it remains so today. During the nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries, there was considerable official indifference, even hostility, to its fate. Only in the last thirty years has that turned around, with government support and funding to try and reverse the decline. The principal areas in which this can be found are:

• Education. All school students must study Welsh up to the age of sixteen, whether as a second language in English-medium schools or by doing the majority of their subjects in Welsh at the growing number of Welsh-medium schools. Over 60% of the world's children are bilingual, and many tests have shown that early use of more than one language helps develop the brain to accommodate even more later in life.
• The Media. S4C is the Welsh-language TV channel, which broadcasts around forty hours per week of peak-time programmes in Welsh. Their digital channel (S4C Digidol) is in Welsh all day and evening. Most programmes have subtitles on-screen or on teletext for non-Welsh speakers. BBC Radio Cymru broadcasts every day in Welsh, many local radio stations are bilingual and there is a wide variety of magazines and newspapers in Welsh too.
• Officialdom. Under the 1993 Welsh Language Act, all statutory services are offered in Welsh and English. For the first time in history, both languages have official status.

There's a lot more going in Welsh than that, however. A buoyant music scene, covering everything from folk to hip-hop, thriving publishers of poetry and literature, festivals from the mighty National Eisteddfod to the more raucous Sesiwn Fawr or Miri Madog and a whole slew of new technology in Welsh make this a very exciting time for the language.

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