Siarad Cymraeg?

Supporters of the Welsh Language's revival will have been heartened by the figure in YouGov's poll that 42% of people in Wales consider themselves to have some grasp of the language. That's a huge rise on the last census, which told us that only 28.5% would have said the same. That's a pretty impressive leap, especially when you remember that the poll only had three choices: Fluent, Yes but not fluent and No. The census on the other hand offered five different levels of understanding of Welsh apart from a simple "No" so you would have assumed that those with only a little Welsh would have been able to fit into any of those categories easier than in the poll.

But I'm not so sure that this is the good news it first seems. The "lowest" level of Welsh knowledge available on the Census was "can understand spoken Welsh only". I feel that many people who know a little welsh, enough to tick "Yes but not fluent" wouldn't feel confident enough in their ability to say that they understand spoken Welsh. If that is correct then the jump in numbers since 2001 is not a big increase in the nation's ability to speak Welsh, nor is it, as Vaughan believes, an increase in people's willingness to consider themselves Welsh-speaking, it could be nothing more than the effect of a differently worded question. We'll see in 2011!

What Welsh-speakers should be worried about is the following question in the survey, the one about speaking Welsh at home. According to the answers given to that question only 7.46% of Welsh people always speak Welsh at home. That's a ridiculously low figure and one I cannot explain. If correct it means that well over half of the people who speak fluent Welsh don't always do so at home which, to be frank, is shocking.

One final bunch of figures to dwell on regarding Welsh speakers are the party political ones. A stunning 51% of fluent Welsh speakers vote Plaid in Assembly elections but, both for the London elections more fluent Welsh speakers vote Tory than Labour. That's another reminder of the damage Labour has self-inflicted when it comes to gaining the votes of Welsh-speakers and of the challenge that faces them in "re-gaining the West".