What are the most common languages spoken in the world today

Britain’s Languages

The Celtic peoples who gave way to the Anglo-Saxons did not disappear – they moved north and west, and their descendants live today in Scotland, Ireland, Wales, the Isle of Man and Cornwall. They went on speaking their Celtic languages, but of course shared the islands with a very dominant majority culture. From the 17^th century onwards, the English imposed their language on huge areas of the world, from the north of Canada to the south of New Zealand, so the chances of the Celtic language surviving in Wales were pretty slim.

In fact, it is the Welsh who have preserved their linguistic identity more than any of the other Celtic peoples. The last native speaker of Cornish died in 1777 and of Manx (the language of the Isle of Man) in 1974. Gaelic in Scotland is spoken by no more than 80,000 people, mostly in the islands off the north-west coast; the only monolingual speakers are young children who have not yet been exposed to English. Irish Gaelic has about 100,000 speakers confined to small areas on the west coast. The Welsh language, by contrast, has a solid heartland in the north-west of the country and is spoken by half a million people: there is a TV channel and a lot of radio in Welsh, it is taught in schools and used by the nationalist political party, Plaid Cymru.
It is hard to find evidence that the English actually tried to kill off the Celtic languages in a systematic way – to commit linguicide. Their decline has been more a result of indifference from London, and a lack of will to preserve them on the part of the Celtic speakers themselves. But there have been abuses. In the 19^th century, the English education system was imposed, and children were not allowed to speak Welsh at school: if they did, they were forced to wear a wooden board across their shoulders. Echoing this, a Welsh nationalist wrote: ”Dy iaitb ar ein bysgwyddau megis pwn” (“Your language is like a burden on our shoulders”).

28. 
    Read the text carefully, identify key points. Express your opinion on the problem in English or in Russian when being tested on your progress in independent reading.