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To answer the original question, yes there is an area in England where Welsh is spoken by the local population, and that is the area around Oswestry, or Croesoswallt in the Welsh.
Also in the 19th century Welsh was spoken in many areas such as Herefordshire near the border.
Of corse in the early Dark ages Brythoneg and early Welsh was spoken extensively in the ares not yet conquored by the Saxons ie the north and the west. There are 2000 place names within England that originated whole or in part from Brythoneg or early Welsh. For example, in Derbyshire: Crich, Pentrich, Mam Tor, Ecclesbourne, the Chevin (a hill near Derby) rivers Derwent, Dove, Wye and Trent.
Generally the closer you get to wales the more of them but there are examples in the East as well such as Dover from dyfr meaning water.Despite its distractors Welsh is a living vibrant language, and in terms of numbers it is growing with 80,000 more speakers registering at the most recent census compared with the previous one.
Hir oes i’r Gymraeg, bydded i’r hen iaith barhau!
Jon SaisPerhaps the furthest east that a Welsh place name survives is Kings’ Lynn in Norfolk (llyn = lake in Welsh) Of course, the Iceni tribe of East Anglia, Boudicca’s people, were ancient Britons (or celts) who would have spoken the Brithonic language, from which Welsh came.
cumbria sounds very welsh
That is because the word shares the sme root origin as Cymru which is Welsh for Wales and whose original meaning is something like land of brothers or land of comrades. @tictax wrote:
cumbria sounds very welsh
Cumria was part of the Hen Ogledd (Old North) Welsh kingdoms existed in the Strathcylde area and from the area around Glasgow across to Edinburgh and on the Western side of the British isles down through the area s now know as the lake district Lancashire and Cheshire. The kingdom encompassing Cumria as ruled by the Welsh until the death of King Rheged. Edinburgh was the area of the Gododdin tribe made famous by Anerin in his epic war poem
The Gododdin
‘Gwyr a aeth Gatraeth oedd ffraeth eu llu;
Glasfedd eu hancwyn , a gwenwyn fu’.See The Oxford Bok of Welsh Verse Edited by Thomas Parry.
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