The Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion

Promoting the language, literature, arts and science of Wales

BILINGUALISMS AND MULTILINGUALISMS IN MEDIEVAL WALES – EVIDENCE AND INFERENCE

Evidence for bilingualism and multilingualism in medieval Wales is very patchy and scattered. This paper makes the case for using recent work on the methodologies of language contact in the ancient and early medieval worlds as a way to fill in the gaps in the evidence. Different approaches are discussed and evaluated. The paper ends with a brief case-study using the English plural marker s in Welsh as an example of how matters might not always turn out to be as clear as we might think.