Tomos Glyn Cothi (Thomas Evans, 1764–1833): Beauty of the bilingual mind

almost twenty-five years ago, the topic was Undeb Cenedlaethol y Cymdeithasau Cymraegthe National Union of Welsh Societiesfounded in 1914 to stem what was described as a 'rising tide' of English by creating spaces for Welsh speakers to socialise in their own language and later uniting local societies in campaigns for the public use of Welsh, e.g. on cheques and in education, and for Welsh-language broadcasting on the BBC. 1 Founders and members had been jolted into action by the results of the 1901 census, which demonstrated that at 49% of the population, Welsh speakers now constituted a minority for the first time in the history of Wales. 2 Of those 49% only 15% spoke 'Welsh only', the remainder were bilingual.By 1911, Welsh speakers constituted 43.5% of the population, with just about 8.5% now recorded as 'Welsh only'. 3 Bilingualism appeared to be a fleeting stage in the process of moving from speaking Welsh to only speaking English.Human geographers had long taken note of the role of bilingual language areas, too.In 1879,