While she was "processing the transaction" as they say these days, she remarked that her mum spoke quite a lot of Welsh. That's not at all uncommon in my experience ... I'd say that about 1 in 5 people know somebody who speaks some Welsh, sometimes a parent or grandparent, sometimes a friend. I don't quite know how you could translate this figure into anything meaningful, but it's more than you would think.
[ What has never happened, however, is for someone to say that they know somebody who is learning Welsh. Aha ! This could be for a variety of reasons ... maybe there aren't many people learning Welsh, and/or maybe people keep quiet about it! ]
And what about Welsh speakers outside Wales .... as far as I am aware only estimates exist for Welsh speakers in the UK outside of Wales .... here's an estimate I found for the English ones.....
According to the 2001 UK census, 582,000 people in Wales claim to be able to speak Welsh. These represent 20.8% of the total population.
Several surveys commissioned by S4C, the Welsh television channel, suggest that there are more than 200,000 Welsh speakers in England.
That's from a total English population of around 54 million ... that's about 1 in 270 of the English population. That sits quite nicely with my "anecdotal" figure ... if, say, everybody has around 50 people they know well enough to know if they speak any Welsh, which seems reasonable, and I reckon that about 1 in 5 does know a Welsh speaker, then that's roughly around 1 in 250 .. Suspiciously accurate!
Mind you, what do "they" define as a "Welsh speaker?" Tricky! A lot depends on how the question is worded .... there's all sorts of possibilities, each probably leading to wildly different results ...
[a] Are you a fluent Welsh speaker ?
[b] Is Welsh your first language ?
[c] Is Welsh your 2nd language?
[d] Do you speak Welsh ?
[e] Can you speak Welsh ?
[f] Do you use Welsh frequently ?
[g] Do you use Welsh in your everyday life?
[h] Do you know some Welsh ?
[i] Do you watch and understand S4C programmes ?
[j] Do you understand Welsh-language news programmes ?
[k] Did you attend a Welsh-medium school?
There's plenty of other questions .... all giving different percentages. How would you describe yourself ?
Music later gwerin annwyl .. it's Scrabble Time at Tyrau LWi88Y.
Yn ddiweddarach .... Scrabbling done ... so the music is the smashing Eirin Peryglus with "Anial Dir "