Elinor Staniforth from Cardiff hated Welsh lessons at her English-medium school \u2013 after her GCSEs, she said, she \u201cforgot all about it\u201d. Winning a place at Oxford University, however, made Staniforth reassess her identity and relationship with the language.<\/p>\n
\u201cI suddenly became very aware of being Welsh,\u201d the 28-year-old said. \u201cThere were only two Welsh people in the whole college. People would ask if I spoke Welsh, and I\u2019d have to say no. It\u2019s like a switch turned on while I was at uni. I was thinking that I\u2019d missed out on something.\u201d<\/p>\n
Staniforth graduated and moved back to Cardiff shortly before the Covid pandemic broke out, so she began learning Welsh in an online class. She was a finalist for the Cymraeg Learner of the Year prize at the 2024 national Eisteddfod, and now teaches the language herself.<\/p>\n
Elinor Staniforth. Photograph: Huw John<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cI found the classes for adults an amazing experience. I made such good friends, I learned about Welsh culture, I discovered new bands and books, a new world. I wanted to give back.\u201d<\/p>\n
New figures from Y Canolfan Dysgu Cymraeg Genedlaethol<\/a> \u2013 the National Centre for Learning Welsh \u2013 suggest Staniforth is far from alone: the number of adult learners taking courses with the centre has increased 12% in a year, and has now reached more than 20,000 for the first time.<\/p>\n The news is welcome after the latest five-year report from the Welsh language commissioner, which found that while the number of Cymraeg speakers has remained more or less stable for decades, it has not risen in line with significant population growth, making the language more vulnerable. The commissioner, Efa Gruffudd Jones, previously said<\/a> that \u201cbold and transformative\u201d intervention would be needed if the Welsh government was to meet its target of a million Welsh speakers by 2050.<\/p>\n Dona Lewis, the chief executive of Dysgu Cymraeg, said: \u201cWe are really pleased with the numbers; the statistics show consistent growth since we were established. There\u2019s huge demand and we have a big contribution to make to the language in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n The number of people on Dysgu Cymraeg courses has risen every year since the programme began in 2016, and is up 61% since data was first published for the academic year 2017-18.<\/p>\n Almost 40% of people come to the classes through the workplace, where uptake is particularly strong in the NHS and the police. There has also been a huge increase in younger people learning Welsh, with the number of learners aged 16 to 24 up 56% in 2024-25 compared with the previous year. The percentage of learners who gave details about their ethnicity and identified as from \u201cdiverse ethnicities\u201d was 5%, compared with 1% the year before.<\/p>\n Scott Gutteridge: \u2018It\u2019s a fantastic time to start learning Welsh because there are so many resources available.\u2019 Photograph: Marc Brenner<\/p>\n Scott Gutteridge, 29, a London-based actor who grew up in Llanelli, said he believed a language \u201creclamation\u201d of sorts was under way. He said: \u201cIt\u2019s a fantastic time to start learning Welsh because there are so many resources available. It seems like a fire that\u2019s burning again, there\u2019s a lot more young learners. And there\u2019s a lot of inspiring Welsh arts out there, I think people really connect with the poetry of the language.\u201d<\/p>\n Gutteridge fell in love with Cymraeg while working on Theatr Cymru\u2019s bilingual production of Romeo and Juliet<\/a>. He started studying in the evenings, and trying out what he\u2019d learned at work the next day.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cSometimes it was difficult with dialects, but you just start somewhere. It\u2019s Wenglish in the beginning, people are so happy you\u2019re trying and giving it a go.\u201d<\/p>\n Like Staniforth, Gutteridge said that the adult learning experience was more enjoyable than compulsory Welsh lessons in school. He described a recent residential course at Nant Gwrtheyrn, the Welsh language heritage centre on Gwynedd\u2019s Ll\u0177n peninsula, as \u201cmagical\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI like learning anyway, but Cymraeg has an added element for me. It\u2019s good for the mind, good for the heart, good for the soul,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The new influx of learners are not just Welsh people who grew up in English-speaking households, Staniforth said \u2013 fellow learners and students she has encountered include English and Scottish people with children or grandchildren in Welsh medium education, those who have moved to Wales<\/a> for love or work, eastern European, Japanese and Singaporean learners, and people joining online from the US and Australia.<\/p>\n Despite the welcome increase in the number of learners, Cymraeg\u2019s future is complicated, she said, partially because of what she called a \u201cbig divide between school and adult learning\u201d.<\/p>\n Staniforth said: \u201cConsiderably more kids go to English than Welsh school, and there\u2019s not enough focus on them. If you learn a language you have to want to do it: asking an 11-year-old to do it when they have no interest in it will be challenging.<\/p>\n \u201cLearning Welsh has to be enjoyable, because finding and creating a community, that\u2019s what keeps the language alive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elinor Staniforth from Cardiff hated Welsh lessons at her English-medium school \u2013 after her GCSEs, she said, she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-502149","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}