文档介绍：PART II PREHENSION (30MIN) (Score: ) 2007
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The Welsh language has always been the ultimate marker of Welsh identity, but a generation ago it looked as if Welsh would go the way of Manx. Once widely spoken on the Isle of Man but now extinct. Governments financing and central planning, however, have helped reverse the decline of Welsh. Road signs and official public documents are written in both Welsh and English, and schoolchildren are required to learn both languages. Welsh is now one of the most essful of Europe’s regional languages, spoken by more than a half-million of the country’s three million people.
The revival of the language, particularly among young people, is part of a resurgence of national identity sweeping through this small, proud nation. Last month Wales marked the second anniversary of the opening of the National Assembly, the first parliament to be convened here since 1404. The idea behind devolution was to restore the balance within the union of nations making up the United Kingdom. With most of the people and wealth, England has always had bragging rights. The partial transfer of legislative powers from Westminster, implemented by Tony Blair, was designed to give the other members of the club—Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales—a bigger say and to counter centrifugal forces that seemed to threaten the very idea of the union.
The Welsh showed li