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Wales's capital city is on the way to becoming bilingual. There are 16 Welsh medium primary schools with two new schools due to open in Cardiff in the autumn. Estimates show that 20 % of the children who began their education last September went to Welsh medium primary schools. That figure is set to grow rapidly in years to come. In September 2012 a third Welsh medium secondary school will open in the city.

The population of Cardiff is 305,340, so as we look to the future we can project a healthy growth in the language. And it is continually improving, if not without some opposition to the progressive plans of the ruling Liberal party. Numbers in English medium schools are falling, due to falling birth rates, leaving empty places in English classrooms while demand for Welsh medium education ensures that Welsh schools are growing.

In the past the major growth area for Welsh medium education was the Rhondda and Pontypridd area. In Pontypridd, a third (33 %) of children from 4 to 16 attend Welsh medium schools. Pontypridd is the largest town in the borough of Rhondda-Cynon-Taf, yet a hundred years ago it was the most Anglicized town in industrial South-east Wales. In the Rhondda, about a quarter (25 %) are educated through the medium of Welsh. Cynon is not so good.

But there has been very little development in Rhondda-Cynon-Taf for at least 15 years although Welsh medium schools are full to bursting with tales of children being turned away from them, while many English medium schools are half empty. Local politicians do not like closing schools, and in the large urban areas it is English medium schools that have declining numbers.

Over all, figures for Welsh medium education in the densely populated Southeast are very encouraging. There is a steady growth in Gwent. Other areas, such as Merthyr and Swansea, are not so enlightened, and there are difficulties in many traditionally Welsh-speaking rural parts because of inward migration from England, people who often, if not always, can be quite hostile to the Welsh language.

There has been surprisingly little research into why so many parents who do not speak Welsh themselves – it is often claimed they account for well over 90 % of the parents of Welsh schools - make the choice of sending their children to schools where they will be taught in a language which their parents do not speak themselves. Dr Huw Thomas, former headmaster of Ysgol Gyfun Cwm Rhymni (Rhymney Valley Welsh Comprehensive School), is the only one that I am aware of who has gathered data on parents' motives.

Was it job opportunities when they leave school? The excellent reputation which Welsh schools universally enjoy? The secondary Welsh-medium schools certainly out-perform all but the most privileged, mostly private, of Wales's English-medium schools. Surprisingly, Dr Thomas found that the great majority of parents simply wanted their children to be able to speak Welsh, something that had been denied to them.

The British – overwhelmingly English – have a problem with languages. Maybe it is because English, apart from its idiosyncratic spelling, is easy for others to learn. The teaching of English grammar is neglected and monolingual English speakers tend not to have a very good understanding of the rudiments of grammar in general. This does not help older children and adults to learn a new language. And a perceived lack of necessity as it is a global language makes them think they need not bother.

Add to this the confused attitudes as articulated fairly recently by prominent English politicians. Two - by now former - Education Ministers, Estelle Morris and Ruth Kelly were decrying the inability of British school children to learn a foreign language. Two other politicians - David Blunkett and Ann Cryer - were talking about the “negative impact” of children growing up speaking a different language in the home to the language they use in school. They were thinking of the Asian communities in England - it would never have occurred to them to consider the Welsh experience!

They could still consider research done among Asian communities in England. A study in Leicester by Arvind Bhatt found that bilingualism improved a child's overall educational performance by instilling a more subtle use of language and better communication skills.

Blunkett and Cryer base their opinions on an outdated belief that children can learn only one language at a time and that learning a mother tongue interferes with English. Enlightened educators in Wales discarded this belief 50 years ago!

Another study in Watford found that bilingual children learn to read in more than one language at the same time. I learnt to read in Welsh, a phonetic language, and began to read English around the age of eight. The same thing happened to my children and now, again, with my grand children. Using a phonetic language helps them to understand the mechanical process of reading. English, because of its strange spelling, can be difficult for young readers and literacy – or the lack of it – is a continuing subject for debate in England.

Research done in Leicester has shown that young Asians tend to do better than average academically. The skills they acquire and develop in their language use is transferred to other subjects. Another study showed that 11-year-old children are performing better generally than monolingual English-speaking children of a similar background, as well as being fluent speakers of a dialect of Gujarati and Urdu, which they use for religious purposes.

In 2004 Dr Andrea Mechelli of University College London published research showing that bilingualism – especially in children under five – boosts grey matter density in the left-brain. Learning other languages altered the grey matter - the area of the brain which processes information - much the same as exercise builds muscles in the body. Her research also showed that there was a difference in children who had become bilingual by the age of 10 but had not been bilingual at the age of five. So the earlier children become bilingual, the better. Scientists know the brain has the ability to change its structure as a result of stimulation, an effect known as plasticity. But this research demonstrated how learning languages develops it.

Research done by Dr Ellen Bialystok of York University in Toronto, Canada, showed that the intellectual advantages of speaking two languages begins early in life. She found that four and five-year olds who were learning two languages were more intellectually advanced in other ways. I should note that in Welsh medium schools, young non-Welsh speaking children – the majority - learn Welsh through play, often beginning in nursery schools or play-groups and are invariably bilingual at the age of five..

In 2005 Dr Ann Dowker, Oxford, showed that bilingual children taught through the medium of Welsh have an early advantage in basic mathematics. I attended a secondary school in an overwhelmingly Welsh-speaking area. We were taught in English, but the language in the homes and the playground was Welsh. That very small school, total 380 pupils, with both grammar and secondary modern (non-academic) streams, produced – and still produces, I believe – students every year who went on to be distinguished mathematicians and physicists. Which suggests a connection between early bilingualism and intelligence.

There can only be one practical way of making children bilingual by the age of five – by taking full advantage of any language that is spoken in the home or the community. This can be a language from another part of the world – in Britain it may be a language from the Indian sub-continent, Chinese, Cantonese, or Polish. And, even more so, native languages, such as Welsh and Gaelic.

I have never understood why France has always been neglectful – hostile even - towards its regional languages. There may have been difficulties at the time of the Revolution when half the country's population of 20 million could not speak French and another 4 million were not comfortable speaking it. But to continue its unsympathetic attitudes towards Breton, Euskadi, Provencal &c is unforgivable. A child brought up speaking Provencal alongside French is well on the way to becoming fluent in Catalan, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

There is a vast pool of words common to many languages, so the more languages a person may speak the more words he or she will absorb from that pool, and with a further understanding of grammar, brought about by these experiences, the easier it becomes to understand and learn new languages. However small a language may be in its number of speakers, its value to the individual is practically and culturally immeasurable.

I think of Wales. For a country with a population of less than 3,000,000 it produces a very large number of actors, singers, people who have shone in the performing arts. More often than not, they were Welsh-speaking – Richard Burton, Sir Geraint Evans, Bryn Terfel, and among the current crop of emerging Hollywood stars, Ioan Gruffudd and Matthew Rhys. There are many others currently known only in Britain, like Aled Jones, Connie Fisher and Rhydian Roberts. The Welsh-speaking culture and community has fostered and enhanced their talents. It may be argued that the Welsh language and the culture it encompasses has helped to export them, too. But it certainly enriches the individual.

There are other arguments in support of bilingualism. Researchers found that bilingual people are far better at retaining their mental abilities into old age than the majority, who speak only one language, in fact that they were less prone to problems such as Alzheimer's disease in later life. Dr Ellen Bialystok of Canada (2004), in another study came to the conclusion that people who had been bilingual for most of their lives were better able to concentrate on complex tasks. For elderly people, she said that “bilingualism appears to offer widespread benefits across a range of complex cognitive tasks”.

She said that as people grew older they generally found it harder to concentrate on a task. “Life-long experience of managing two languages slows this age related decline,” she added. Her work confirms other research which indicates that brains, like muscles, grow and develop with use or atrophy with neglect.

For most people, acquiring real fluency in another language in a secondary school or as an adult is hard work. You need the analytic brain of a scientist, the ear of a musician and the patience of Job.

We need linguists and languages – Asian, Chinese, East European … as well as the traditional European languages. Language teaching can only be easy and effective when the children are caught at a very young age. And let us not forget the connection between early bilingualism and enhanced intelligence. Where there are indigenous languages – minority languages or otherwise - used by people in various parts of France or Britain or Europe, it is a resource that should be used and promoted. For the sake of our intelligence, mental health as well as cultures.

Gwyn Griffiths

( voir notre article ) for a translation in French by Bernard Le Nail

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