Before the Roman invasion, the Britons spoke a language called Brythonic. Those Britons who became ‘Romanised’ learned to speak and write in Latin. However, unlike other places in the Roman Empire, Latin did not replace the native language in Wales. Latin did however remain as the language of the Church.

Some 450 memorial stones survive from the period AD 450-1100. Many record the titles and ancestry of those they commemorate and are therefore symbols of power as well as of faith. Those with Latin inscriptions refer to professions such as consuls, doctors and magistrates, princes and priests. By 800 the monks of St David’s monastery were writing contemporary Latin annals which became the foundation documents for the history of Wales.

Another kind of writing found in Wales and Ireland from the 5th-7th centuries is ogham (pronounced ‘ohm’) which developed in Ireland in the 4th century. Ogham is linear which makes it relatively easy to carve in wood and stone. By the middle of the 6th century a language was evolving from Brythonic which borrowed many words from Latin and later developed into the Welsh language of today. In early medieval times Welsh became the language of heroic verse, folk tales and aristocratic pedigrees.