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Hi, everyone, and welcome back to Britain Under the Microscope. 欢迎回来【闲话英伦】. Hi, 安澜.
Hi. Lulu. Hi, everyone.
So what are we going to talk about today?
Before we start talking, I wanna actually ask you to listen to these recordings. I want you to tell me where do you think these come from. Yeah, Okay.
（clips）
So what do you think?
Okay, obviously I don't have a vast knowledge of all the world languages, but a lot of these sound elements, I would say probably some languages closer maybe to Hebrew, maybe?
No. I can give you a hint. This is Britain Under the Microscope. Are these native languages in Britain? Yep! So the first recording that you heard…
如果是英国本地语言的话, maybe we are talking about like Welsh, 威尔士语or… I don't know the languages…woo like maybe Scottish?
Welsh definitely. So Welsh was the first language, and the second language was actually Gaelic from Scotland. Yes, because Scottish is not a language.
No there’s something called Scotts and we’ll talk a bit about that in a sec. So I guess we're talking about languages in the UK.
Yeah, and more specifically we're talking about native languages in the UK, because whenever you think about Britain, the first thing you think about is English. Definitely.
But actually even though the vast majority of British people speak English, there was still about 8% of the population where… there's still about 8% of the population whose first language isn't actually English.
You know what, that is a bit surprising. So you have other official languages then?
Yeah, we also have other official languages. These are also languages such as Welsh.
威尔士语 and?
And also Gaelic to a certain extent. But if you look at government websites, if you look at the NHS (National Health Service) they actually offer translation services for many languages spoken in the UK.
刚才这个Gaelic就是盖尔语.
So I thought let's start first of all with Welsh. Okay. I'm assuming Welsh is spoken in Wales.
Yes, it’s spoken by over 500,000 people with varying degrees of fluency, but there are still quite a few native speakers and those that speak it at proficient level.
500,000! That's not a small number. Does that mean that people living in or born in Wales, they would have to learn Welsh in school?
Yeah, you have to learn Welsh at school up until the age of 16. Some people take that even further and they learn it at university, but also the government is trying to encourage the use of Welsh. So it's also spoken in the Welsh parliament.
I'm just a bit … you know what I'm picturing? So, what if for example, you, if you move to Wales to live in Wales and you work for the government, how can you communicate with other… with Welsh speakers when you don't speak the language?
From what I've heard, I think they actually really encourage you to at least learn basic Welsh. But you have to think also they do speak English.
They do speak English. Yeah. Which brings me to the question how far apart is Welsh to English? I mean, we heard the little clip and that sounds like a completely different language.
Completely different. Welsh is actually one of the oldest languages in Europe. It's descended from the language that was spoken in Britain before the Roman invasion. So Welsh is completely different to English. English is closer to German, French. Welsh is a completely different language family.
Is it just pronunciation that's different or like vocabulary…? 可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~