Mari A. Williams – författare

"A Forgotten Army" reconstructs the experiences of Welsh women who undertook essential munitions work during World War II. The events of wartime are placed against the background of the wider Welsh social, economic and cultural context.

This is an authoritative and thorough analysis of the fortunes of the Welsh language in the most tumultuous period of its history. Twenty-one chapters discuss not only the numerical and territorial decline of Welsh but also its struggle for official recognition and its role in a wide variety of social domains. Of all the memorable phrases coined in the twentieth century, none has had greater resonance for the Welsh speaker than ‘Tynged yr Iaith’ (The Fate of the Language), and this volume provides a stimulating commentary on the processes of linguistic change, decay and revival experienced by the oldest spoken language in Britain. The fruit of the second major research project of the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies of the University of Wales, this volume will interest and intrigue the general public as well as specialists in the field and help readers to familiarize themselves with the history of a language which, over the centuries, has been an integral part of the everyday life of the Welsh people and their sense of nationhood.

The 1891 census was the first to collect information about the language spoken by the people of Wales, and is therefore a particularly reliable source for historians analyzing the socio-economic structure of Weslh- and English-language ability and the process of language change in Wales at the end of the 19th century. This study concentrates on 20 communities, chosen for their geographical, economic and linguistic characteristics which in 1891, accounted for about 5 per cent of the total population of Wales. For each of the selected areas, a detailed picture of the socio-economic pattern of language use has been constructed by examining a range of social variables, such as age, sex, relation to head of household, place of birth and occupation, in relation to the language spoken. Intergenerational language shift, the linguistic influence of extra-family members, and the effects of mixed marriages on language change are investigated, and particular consideration is given to migration streams and the presence of incoming strangers and returning kin.

A comprehensive study and detailed analysis of the condition of the Welsh language at the end of the 19th century in 20 areas in Wales, derived from evidence taken from the 1891 Census by David Llewelyn Jones, Gwenfair Parry, Robert Smith and Mari A. Williams, together with a foreword by Geraint H. Jenkins. 11 maps and figures and 158 tables.