REFERENCES
- Versions of this paper have also appeared in B. Thomas, ‘Accounting for language shift in a South Wales mining community, Cardiff Working Papers in Welsh Linguistics 5 (1987), pp. 55–100,, and ’Accounting for Language Maintenance, and Shift: Socio-historical evidence from a mining community in Wales’, in G. MacEoin, A. Ahlquist and D. 0 hAodha (eds), Third International Conference on Minority Languages: Celtic Papers (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1987), pp. 13–26.
- See J. Aitchison and H. Carter, The Welsh Language 1961–1981: An Interpretative Atlas (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1985), p. 40.
- Census statistics given in this paper refer to Michaelston Higher civil parish, the administrative unit which corresponds most closely to the community of Pont-rhyd-y-fen. Unfortunately a small but significant part of Pont-rhyd-y-fen lies across the river in another, much larger administrative area, and cannot be included in these language statistics.
- D. Williams, A History of Modern Wales (London: John Murray, 1950).
- The tape recorded interviews from which the oral evidence in this paper is drawn were conducted in Welsh. All the quotations are therefore my translations of the original Welsh.
- This is the earliest date for which language statistics at parish level are available.
- All statistics regarding the population of Pont-rhyd-y-fen’s schools are taken from their admission registers, which cover the period from 1870 onwards.
- See L. Milroy, Language and Social Networks (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980).
- Board of Education, Welsh in Education and Life (London: HMSO, 1927).
- A fuller account of the distribution of these two variables can be found in B. Thomas, ‘Differences of Sex, and Sects: Linguistic Variation, and Social Networks in a Welsh Mining Community’ in J. Coates and D. Cameron (eds), Women in their Speech Communities: New Perspectives on Language and Sex (London: Longman, 1989).