Elinor Staniforth from Cardiff hated Welsh lessons at her English-medium school – after her GCSEs, she said, she “forgot all about it”. Winning a place at Oxford University, however, made Staniforth reassess her identity and relationship with the language.
“I suddenly became very aware of being Welsh,” the 28-year-old said. “There were only two Welsh people in the whole college. People would ask if I spoke Welsh, and I’d have to say no. It’s like a switch turned on while I was at uni. I was thinking that I’d missed out on something.”
Staniforth graduated and moved back to Cardiff shortly before the Covid pandemic broke out, so she began learning Welsh in an online class. She was a finalist for the Cymraeg Learner of the Year prize at the 2024 national Eisteddfod, and now teaches the language herself.
Elinor Staniforth. Photograph: Huw John
She said: “I found the classes for adults an amazing experience. I made such good friends, I learned about Welsh culture, I discovered new bands and books, a new world. I wanted to give back.”
New figures from Y Canolfan Dysgu Cymraeg Genedlaethol – the National Centre for Learning Welsh – suggest Staniforth is far from alone: the number of adult learners taking courses with the centre has increased 12% in a year, and has now reached more than 20,000 for the first time.
The news is welcome after the latest five-year report from the Welsh language commissioner, which found that while the number of Cymraeg speakers has remained more or less stable for decades, it has not risen in line with significant population growth, making the language more vulnerable. The commissioner, Efa Gruffudd Jones, previously said that “bold and transformative” intervention would be needed if the Welsh government was to meet its target of a million Welsh speakers by 2050.
Dona Lewis, the chief executive of Dysgu Cymraeg, said: “We are really pleased with the numbers; the statistics show consistent growth since we were established. There’s huge demand and we have a big contribution to make to the language in the future.”
The number of people on Dysgu Cymraeg courses has risen every year since the programme began in 2016, and is up 61% since data was first published for the academic year 2017-18.
Almost 40% of people come to the classes through the workplace, where uptake is particularly strong in the NHS and the police. There has also been a huge increase in younger people learning Welsh, with the number of learners aged 16 to 24 up 56% in 2024-25 compared with the previous year. The percentage of learners who gave details about their ethnicity and identified as from “diverse ethnicities” was 5%, compared with 1% the year before.
Scott Gutteridge: ‘It’s a fantastic time to start learning Welsh because there are so many resources available.’ Photograph: Marc Brenner
Scott Gutteridge, 29, a London-based actor who grew up in Llanelli, said he believed a language “reclamation” of sorts was under way. He said: “It’s a fantastic time to start learning Welsh because there are so many resources available. It seems like a fire that’s burning again, there’s a lot more young learners. And there’s a lot of inspiring Welsh arts out there, I think people really connect with the poetry of the language.”
Gutteridge fell in love with Cymraeg while working on a bilingual production of Romeo and Juliet. He started studying in the evenings, and trying out what he’d learned at work the next day.
He said: “Sometimes it was difficult with dialects, but you just start somewhere. It’s Wenglish in the beginning, people are so happy you’re trying and giving it a go.”
Like Staniforth, Gutteridge said that the adult learning experience was more enjoyable than compulsory Welsh lessons in school. He described a recent residential course at Nant Gwrtheyrn, the Welsh language heritage centre on Gwynedd’s Llŷn peninsula, as “magical”.
“I like learning anyway, but Cymraeg has an added element for me. It’s good for the mind, good for the heart, good for the soul,” he said.
The new influx of learners are not just Welsh people who grew up in English-speaking households, Staniforth said – fellow learners and students she has encountered include English and Scottish people with children or grandchildren in Welsh medium education, those who have moved to Wales for love or work, eastern European, Japanese and Singaporean learners, and people joining online from the US and Australia.
Despite the welcome increase in the number of learners, Cymraeg’s future is complicated, she said, partially because of what she called a “big divide between school and adult learning”.
Staniforth said: “Considerably more kids go to English than Welsh school, and there’s not enough focus on them. If you learn a language you have to want to do it: asking an 11-year-old to do it when they have no interest in it will be challenging.
“Learning Welsh has to be enjoyable, because finding and creating a community, that’s what keeps the language alive.”
