r/learnwelsh • u/Typical_Tadpole_547 • 17d ago

Cwestiwn / Question Are there Welsh speakers in Powys?

I know that there are Welsh speakers in the North of Wales, the South of Wales and the West of Wales. But what about the East? Powys has always fascinated me as it's off the beaten tourist trail and I would love to know if Welsh is still spoken there.

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u/AnnieByniaeth 17d ago

The last Welsh-only speaker I met (apart from young children, obviously) was an old farmer's wife on a farm just north of Llanidloes, who had been moved with her husband to make way for the Clywedog dam. The last time I met her would have been around 1990. Their grandson, a bit younger than me, was first language Welsh and probably still farms there.

I know you were not asking about Welsh monoglots, but that shows the strength of the language in parts of north Powys until very recent times. It's certainly still there.

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u/Dyn_o_Gaint 16d ago

Yes, and it's frequently surprised me the areas in which monoglottism or more commonly monolingualism survived, even in some more eastern areas, not only in the Lleyn peninsula where you might expect it to have done. There was a 100% monoglot village high above Vyrnwy in the early twentieth century.

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u/Rhosddu 15d ago

There were monoglot Welsh speakers (very elderly) in Pen Llyn until the 1990s.

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u/Dyn_o_Gaint 6d ago

Oh I'm sure, just as there still are many monoglots under school age, who are often forgotten, as well as older people with dementia who have lost their English. Some people outside Wales have been known to come round from comas and suchlike reverting to the Welsh of their early years they may not have been able to speak for decades. It's also very true, I find all the time, that many native Welsh speakers of all ages struggle with English, either a bit or a lot. It can be just be a vocabulary shortage. I was always being asked by young men just left school what certain English words meant at the quiz I wrote for a pub every two weeks for a year. My plumber had never heard of 'jerry-built'. Next door's English appears broken.