The unit outlined in this policy will focus on house names, the names of topographical features, and historic names. Recent announcements by Eryri and Bannau Brycheiniog National Parks concerning the use of Welsh names for their organisations are positive statements in terms of the status of Welsh place names. The unit will also have one additional responsibility to what was proposed in the draft policy, namely our commitment to safeguard Welsh place names, which derives from our Programme for Government and the Cooperation Agreement with Plaid Cymru. The relationship between the unit, the Language Technologies Unit at Bangor University who are responsible for the Termiadur Addysg (Education Terminology), and Adnodd will be vital in this regard. These education resources need consistent terminology so that they can be published simultaneously in Welsh and in English. These will be suitable to be used by teachers and learners in the classroom, as well as in the home for independent study and revision. We’ve also established a new company called Adnodd, that will maintain an overview of resources for learning and teaching, and will commission appropriate resources for the Curriculum for Wales and the new qualifications. Of course, ensuring that coordinated, easy to use resources are available to learners of all ages, as well as teachers, school pupils and parents, is essential to the success of these proposals, and the success of the Curriculum for Wales in its entirety. At the core of the White Paper proposals is improving linguistic outcomes for leaners between the ages of 3 and 16, but it also suggests expanding the role of the National Centre for Learning Welsh to be a specialist organisation supporting the acquisition and learning of Welsh for learners of all ages in Wales. For instance, we’ve recently consulted on a White Paper which includes proposals that will form the basis of a programme of work which includes the Welsh Language Education Bill. The unit will have a role that extends across linguistic infrastructure resources, as well as policy areas within the Welsh Government.Ĭoordinating resources is essential as wider Welsh language policy continues to develop. The main one, perhaps, is setting up a new unit in the Welsh Government to be responsible for linguistic infrastructure.

We’ve already started taking some of the things in this policy forward. We’ve taken those responses into consideration when drafting this final policy. We received 88 responses, and I’d like to thank everyone who contributed. The question arises, therefore – is this good enough? That’s what we asked in our consultation on the draft version of this Welsh Linguistic Infrastructure Policy. But this area of work remains reactive, with terms only commissioned if there’s great demand for them, and no one keeping a high level, strategic overview of future needs. Other resources, such as Bangor University’s Porth Termau, and the Welsh Government Translation Service’s BydTermCymru, have arisen more recently in response to gaps in the provision and the demand for up to date terms. Work on Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru (the standard historical Welsh dictionary), for instance, started in 1921, and is by now the basis for all other work on Welsh words and terms. We have many projects of the highest calibre here in Wales. I know that some people are increasingly turning to websites like Bing and Google Translate, and although these can be useful in some situations, the answers we get from them aren’t always reliable. And then not every resource will have the answer to every query, or an answer in one place will be different to an answer in another. It means that it’s not always obvious which resource is the most appropriate one, and we find ourselves jumping from one website to another to find a word or term. There are several resources available but, rather than making it easier to find an answer, there are times when that becomes a problem.

When we speak of ‘linguistic infrastructure’, we mean the resources which help us use the Welsh language from day to day, such as dictionaries, terminology resources and corpora, and all the research and standardization work that enables these resources to grow and develop.

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