Old Welsh

Old Welsh (Hen Gymraeg) is the label attached to the Welsh language from the time it developed from the Brythonic language, generally thought to be in the period between the middle of the 6th century and the middle of the 7th century, until the early 12th century when it developed into Middle Welsh.

Many poems and some prose has been preserved from this period, although some are in later manuscripts, for example the text of Y Gododdin. The oldest surviving text entirely in Old Welsh is probably that on a gravestone now in Tywyn church, thought to date from the early 8th century. A text in the Book of St. Chad is thought to have been written in the late 8th or the 9th century but may be a copy of a text from the 6th or 7th centuries.

Old Welsh is only intelligible to a modern-day Welsh speaker with the aid of extensive notes.