In the field of L2 pronunciation teaching and learning, intelligibility and comprehensibility are often regarded the most important considerations (
Derwing and Munro 2015). Whilst models of L2 speech learning (
Best 1995;
Tyler 2019;
Flege 1995;
Escudero and Boersma 2004;
Van Leussen and Escudero 2015) do allow for ‘native like’ production by individuals who learn a language during adulthood, this is seen as an unusual outcome rather than the expectation for most individuals (
Best and Tyler 2007). As such, direct imitation of the accents, dialects or other pronunciation traits of native speakers is not seen as being particularly desirable for L2 speakers, especially in contexts where they would be using the target language mostly with other non-native speakers (
Jenkins 2002). However, whilst this may be true in the case of international languages, such as English, there is evidence that this is not the case for smaller, regional or minority languages. New speakers of many, such as Breton (
Hornsby 2015a), Sami (
Jonsson and Rosenfors 2017), and Corsican (
Jaffe 2013), face the additional challenges of navigating the questions of identity and legitimacy posed by the perceived ‘nativeness’ in their speech. Indeed, the concept of new speakerhood is intrinsically linked to the context of minority language endangerment and the will to protect and transmit these languages.
The issue of the perceived degree of ‘nativeness’ is reflected in the terms used to describe speakers and their roles in these contexts. Research in the field of language acquisition and research regarding widely spoken, global languages, such as English and Spanish, refer to first and second language (L1 and L2) or ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ speakers. This is viewed as problematic in the context of minority languages (
O’Rourke and Pujolar 2013) as it is considered that these terms encourage the perception of a hierarchy of speaker legitimacy, which undermines individuals who have acquired the language outside familial settings (
Hornsby 2019). The terms ‘new’ and ‘traditional’ speakers are used to better reflect the complex social realities attached to speakerhood of non-majority languages.
Hornsby (
2015b) states that new speakers are often defined as individuals who have attained the minority language through formal education, as opposed to familial transmission, which means that every new speaker has invested their time and resources to attain language. This does not mean that there are not those who acquire minority languages through community transmission or any other linguistic context, but these are exceptions and most have made significant efforts.
The current study considers the experiences of individuals who are, or have, acquired the language as adults. This is opposed to individuals who are acquiring Welsh through Welsh medium education at primary or secondary levels (
Mayr et al. 2017), or those learning Welsh in English medium primary or secondary schools (
Selleck 2018). We choose to refer to individuals who have made this effort as ‘new’ speakers as opposed to ‘learners’. The term ‘new speaker’ has been used in the Welsh context, often to refer to individuals accessing the language through Welsh medium education (
Selleck 2018;
Robert 2009) but is arguably confined to academic discourse. The alternatives used in non-academic discourse in Wales, such as ‘dysgwyr’ (learners), can exclude competent users who are able and wish to use the language (
Hornsby and Vigers 2018). We also use the terms L1 and L2 when discussing the process of acquiring language competence. Understanding the motivations and perceptions of individuals who often go to great lengths to attain a language is of vital importance to support language transmission outside of the classroom setting, both for new and traditional speakers.
1.1. The Welsh Context
Welsh is a Brittonic Celtic language spoken by 562,000 (19%) of Wales’ 3.1 million inhabitants (
Welsh Government 2011). All speakers also speak English and both languages have equal legal status, with education at all levels, local and national government, and some media available in Welsh. There was a marked decline in speaker density during the 19th century, a period of rapid industrialization which led to great population growth and movement within the country, especially towards the coal mines of the southern valleys. These social changes, combined with the negative attitudes towards bilingualism commonly held at the time, led to many parents choosing not to transmit the language to their children. There are now many individuals who are reclaiming the language despite the broken chain of transmission within their families.
Hodges (
2010) refers to this as the ‘cenhedlaeth goll’ (lost generation) of speakers and in the context of individuals who desire to interact with the Welsh language and how this can influence choices regarding Welsh medium education.
There is variety in terms of speaker density within the population in different areas, with as much as 80% of some communities speaking Welsh in the north West, whilst many communities in the south and east have considerably lower percentages. This means that new speakers in the various regions can face different challenges in their linguistic journeys. Whilst an individual in Gwynedd, a county in the north west with the highest percentage of Welsh speakers, might expect to find the language in daily use in the community, individuals in the more urban southern regions would have to seek out opportunities to gain access to the language. The present study focuses on individuals currently living in South Wales. The average population density over the 14 counties of South Wales reporting ability to speak Welsh was 13.6%, ranging from 43.9% in the county of Carmarthenshire to 7.8% in the county of Blaenau Gwent (
Welsh Government 2011). This suggests that opportunities for Welsh to be transmitted within the community may be more limited in South Wales and that individuals who choose to acquire the language may be forced to search for more formalised opportunities to use Welsh.
In recent years, there has been an increase in the interest and support for individuals choosing to learn Welsh as adults. These individuals residing in Wales may come from Wales or from further afield. Individuals who were educated in Wales will almost always have had some Welsh lessons in school as a second language. Therefore, speakers of Welsh English who are learning Welsh as adults are likely to have had some contact with the language in childhood whilst those form outside of Wales often have no previous experience. In 2017, the Welsh Government published the current Welsh language strategy, Cymraeg 2050: A million Welsh speakers, which outlines the aim to increase the number of speakers of Welsh to one million by 2050. The Welsh Government recognises the importance and contribution of the Welsh for Adults sector in achieving opportunities for adults to learn Welsh and improve their Welsh language skills. Data from providers of language teaching, such as the National Centre for Learning Welsh, indicate that growing numbers of people are choosing to learn, with 13,260 individuals accessing their Welsh for Adults provision in 2018–2019 (
National Centre for Learning Welsh 2020). Online providers, such Duolingo, have also noted a marked increase in uptake, with Welsh being the fastest growing language on the platform (
Watkins 2020). Understanding experiences of learning pronunciation, as well as how new speakers interact with traditional speakers, will not only allow providers to tailor their teaching to the needs of their clients but also allow for greater understanding of the challenges that individuals face with integrating into communities.
1.2. Sounding ‘Native’
Passing for a native speaker is often considered to be the ultimate mark of success in language learning, and pronunciation is one of the most obvious elements (
Gnevsheva 2017). However, it is commonly accepted that native-like acquisition is not the norm for most individuals learning languages, especially those learning as adults. Whilst there is evidence that some individuals do indeed acquire ‘native-like’ proficiency (
Birdsong 2003) these are generally accepted to be the exception and not the rule. Most models of second language perception and production do allow for the possibility of ‘native-like’ perception and production in the target language despite cross-linguistic influences from the first language. The Second Language Linguistic Perception model (
Escudero 2005;
Van Leussen and Escudero 2015) also posits that dialects within the L1 can influence the perception of the target language, meaning that individuals who speak the same language might face differing challenges, especially in terms of vowel perception and production (
Escudero and Williams 2012). This is of particular interest in the context of Welsh new speakers as the linguistic background of the individuals choosing to learn and use the language can vary greatly, from Welsh English to other varieties of British English (
Müller and Ball 1999), to an array of languages from all around the world.
In addition, the concept of adopting the accents and pronunciation of traditional speakers may not be desirable for some new speakers, given that they have connotations of links to geographical locations and socio-economic status. In many instances, traditional varieties of minority languages are linked to rural life, with the speech of older, traditional speakers being viewed by some as more ‘authentic’ (
Bucholtz 2003). This concept of an inherent bond between specific ideals of language, history and location may not reflect the modern, urban realities of many new speakers across many language contexts. This was reported for Scottish Gaelic (
McLeod and O’Rourke 2015;
Nance et al. 2016), where individuals displayed very different aspirations in terms of constructing speaker identities around more or less traditional varieties. In both papers, whilst some speakers felt strongly that they wished to use localised dialects, especially those used by family members, others felt that they had no desire to emulate the speech of traditional linguistic heartlands to which they had no connection.
Trosset (
1986) observed similar attitudes by some new speakers of Welsh, especially those who had no connection to particular areas, who felt that using more traditional varieties could become performative rather than allowing for greater ease of communication.
This calls into question the assumption that ‘nativeness’ is the ultimate goal in minority language learning. Whilst some do aspire to pass as native speakers, assuming that this is a universal phenomenon for all new speakers risks adding pressure to conform with identities that may not feel relevant to their experiences.
1.3. Sounding ‘Welsh’
Despite having a standard written form, Welsh does not have a standard spoken variety, and as such, the phonetic inventory of the language varies between dialects (
Ball and Williams 2001;
Awbery 2009). These are generally discussed as northern and southern varieties, though there are numerous local variants within this divide. While this study considers individuals currently living in South Wales, we provide a general overview of the phonetic inventory of northern and southern varieties as it is possible that some tutors use northern variants when teaching, and there are some aspects of vowel pronunciation that differ between the varieties that can be ambiguous to those learning the language.
Welsh has 29 distinctive consonants (
Ball and Jones 1984;
Ball and Williams 2001;
Hannahs 2013). These include the plosives/b, d, g, p, t, k/, the nasals /m, n, ŋ/, the trills /r, rʰ/, the fricatives /f, v, θ, ð, s, ʃ, χ, h/. The lateral fricative /ɬ/, the approximant/j/and the lateral approximant/l/are also present. The affricates /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ are present in some loan words. Welsh has initial consonant mutation in certain lexical and syntactic environments, and the voiceless nasals /mʰ, nʰ, ŋʰ/ occur in word initial position in nasal mutated forms. The orthography of Welsh consonants is generally agreed to be fairly transparent, and the consonants are similarly pronounced across dialects, though the identity of certain phonemes in southern dialects is contested (
Ball and Williams 2001). The identity of the uvular fricative, for example, /χ/, has been argued by some to be velar in some varieties (
Fynes-Clinton 1913;
Watkins 1961). Generally, there is a 1:1 relationship between the orthographic representation of consonants and their pronunciation, with most phonemic units being represented by a single grapheme. However, certain phonemic units are represented with digraphs, such as <ll> and <ch>, representing /ɬ/ and /χ/.
The vowels of Welsh vary more between dialects, though there are many similarities (
Ball and Williams 2001;
Hannahs 2013;
Mayr and Davies 2011). All monophthongs, except for schwa, have both a short and long form. As shown in
Table 1 below, southern varieties contain 11 monophthongs, while northern varieties have an additional pair /ɨ, ɨː/. This difference influences the number of diphthongs in both dialects: 13 for northern varieties and 8 for southern varieties. Earlier accounts (
Ball and Williams 2001) suggested that the northern pairs are only differentiated in length whilst the southern pairs differ in terms of vowel quality as well as duration. However, acoustic analyses of the vowel inventories of both dialects (
Mayr and Davies 2011) suggest that these distinctions are present in both varieties.
When it comes to orthography, in minimal pairs where vowel length is the differentiating factor, e.g., ‘tan’ (until) and ‘tân’ (fire), the circumflex is used to indicate the long vowel. However, when there is no minimal pair, there is no indication of vowel length, e.g., ‘nos’ (night) having a long vowel /noːs/ but no orthographic information to show this. There are several rules which dictate vowel length in various contexts, but this is not always reflected in the orthography (
Morris-Jones et al. 1928;
Ball and Williams 2001). This is confounded by the vowels in certain words, e.g., ‘pell’ (far) being pronounced differently according to differing dialects. The standard pronunciation in northern varieties would feature a short vowel [peɬ], but speakers of southern varieties would more likely produce [peːɬ]. The orthography, therefore, gives much less information regarding the pronunciation of monophthongs than consonants and could potentially pose difficulty to new speakers, particularly if they lack access to spoken input.
Diphthongs are represented by a combination of the two vowel graphemes but are not considered as unit graphemes in the way that consonants, such as <ch> and <ll>, are. Some diphthongal graphemes have more than one realisation. For example, <wy> represents /ʊɪ/ but also a combination of consonant plus vowel /wɪ/ or /wə/ and <yw> represents /ɪʊ/ and in some cases /əʊ/ (
Ball and Williams 2001). The ambiguities around vowel length and diphthong identity are considered in this study as they may pose challenges for new speakers due to the fact that there are several options for pronunciation, especially as these are not present in English L1.
There is evidence of the influence of long-term language contact on the pronunciation of Welsh and English in Wales. There have been several investigations of language contact and (the lack of) differences between the pronunciation of bilingual speakers of Welsh and English, compared to monolingual speakers of English who live in the same communities. For example,
Mayr et al. (
2017) investigated the effects of long-term language contact on the production of monophthongs by bilingual and monolingual speakers in south Wales. They found strong convergence between both languages and that the majority of cross-linguistic vowel pairs were produced identically in Welsh and English by the participants. This convergence has also been reported in prosodic features by
Mennen et al. (
2020) who investigated the production of lexical stress in the same speakers as
Mayr et al. (
2017). They reported that Welsh and Welsh English have become alike in their realisation of lexical stress which they suggest indicates convergence between the two languages in the community. This convergence in segmental and prosodic features is important for this study because we investigate people learning Welsh who are originally from Wales and have lived in the community for many years, as well as participants with English as an L1 from elsewhere in the British Isles. This may have implications for participants’ perception of their own pronunciation in the present study.
The production of vowels was acoustically investigated in adults learning Welsh by
Müller and Ball (
1999). They compared the production of Welsh and English monophthongs and diphthongs by the individuals attending a Welsh language class in South Wales and their tutor. They found that speakers of ‘Welsh English’ were more likely to produce vowels similar to those of the tutor, a native speaker of Welsh, whilst those who spoke ‘non-Welsh English’ showed a tendency to diphthongise monophthongs. As mentioned above, we are interested in the question of speaker origin in the present study, aiming to investigate whether speakers from Wales who have decided to learn Welsh have differing perceptions of their own accent and pronunciation to speakers who have moved to South Wales from further afield.
Rees and Morris (
2018) considered the challenge of pronunciation from the point of view of Welsh for Adults tutors. By using a questionnaire and conducting focus groups they were able to gain understanding of the elements of pronouncing Welsh which tutors saw as challenging for individuals at various points of their language learning trajectories. The input from language tutors is of particular interest, as these individuals teach a wide range of students and are often very experienced, but generally have very little phonetic training. The tutors generally agreed that the vowel sounds posed greater challenges in the longer term, especially the diphthongs. In addition, they suggest that further pronunciation training across all levels, from beginners to advanced speakers, could be beneficial. However, they also note that developing opportunities for new and traditional speakers to interact within their communities is vital.
1.4. Interactions between New and Traditional Speakers
The interactions between new and traditional speakers of minority languages are of great importance when considering the trajectories of new speakers. There is evidence of hierarchization, and even friction, between these groups in many settings, including Breton (
Hornsby 2019) and Scottish Gaelic (
McLeod et al. 2014;
McEwan-Fujita 2010). In some cases, it is even claimed that the differences between the varieties spoken by both groups are so vast that most new speakers do not understand traditional varieties (
Hewitt 2020), but this is strongly refuted by others, who view this as “actively [engaging] in the creation of such divisions, through a rhetoric of failure to reach ‘authentic speakerhood’” (
Hornsby 2019, p. 395). In the case of Welsh, the experiences of individuals starting to learn Welsh by attending Welsh for Adults courses for beginners in North Wales have been examined from different perspectives in two large-scale studies.
Baker et al. (
2011) considered the implications of differing motivation to learn in the context of language planning, noting that individuals who had long-term integrative motivation, such as wanting to speak Welsh with their children, generally had more favourable outcomes in terms of language learning. This was echoed by
Andrews (
2011) who saw that integrative motivations, such as using the language in the community, were considered to be of greater importance than instrumental reasons, such as improved employment opportunities. It is, however, worth remembering that these studies were carried out in areas where there are more opportunities to use Welsh in the community than the areas considered in the current study.
Indeed, in areas where the language is only spoken by a small percentage of the population, access and opportunities to use the language are often considered to pose some of the greatest challenges.
Mac Giolla Chríost et al. (
2012) suggest that this lack of opportunities to communicate is partly due to the tendency of traditional speakers to switch to English when speaking with new speakers. This may happen for many reasons, which can be positive in their intention, e.g., wanting to facilitate communication (
Trosset 1986), but is discouraging for individuals wishing to integrate into Welsh-speaking communities. This challenge is even greater in communities where the language is not used by the majority of the population as casual contact with traditional speakers, e.g., interactions in shops or cafés, is unlikely. This would suggest that individuals are forced to search for more formal opportunities to interact with other speakers. However, there is very little evidence available directly from the new speakers in communities in South Wales that are not in the traditional heartlands of the language.
Hornsby and Vigers (
2018) investigated the experiences of five ‘new’ speakers in the traditional Welsh-speaking areas of North Pembrokeshire and South Ceredigion. They found that, despite having attended Welsh-medium education and having a high level of competence in the language, the new speakers did not always feel that traditional speakers treated them as valid speakers and therefore that “a linguistic repertoire that includes Welsh competence does not automatically confer legitimacy as a speaker.” (p. 425) Indeed, they mentioned that they encountered individuals who chose not to speak Welsh with them, despite being aware of their ability to use the language. This raises questions regarding the ways in which new speakers define themselves within their communities, but also the ways in which the communities define them.