Euro 2025: Angharad James, the captain committed to the Welsh language

Angharad James' teammates, who are playing in their first Euro, will face the French team on Wednesday evening.

The first anthem sung on Saturday in a major international competition, against the Netherlands, undoubtedly had a special meaning for Angharad James. The Wales captain, who is playing in her first ever Euro this summer in Switzerland, is particularly attached to her country of birth, and especially to its language, which she tries to speak as much as possible in public and in interviews.

Born in Haverfordwest, in the southwest of the country, Angharad James learned to speak Welsh, a Celtic language belonging to the Brytonic branch (like Breton) and spoken in its modern form since the 16th century, like 27.7% of the population of Wales (at the last census in 2024). She practiced it in particular in her youth by going to a Welsh-medium school. "The Welsh language is a big part of me and I am so proud to be able to speak it," she assured in November 2024 in a message shared on Instagram. A few weeks earlier,when her captaincy was announced , she had been praised for "her passion and commitment to her country" by her Canadian coach Rhian Wilkinson.

For Angharad James, who has played for numerous clubs in England and the United States since her debut in 2011 (the year Welsh became an official language of the country alongside English), using the language has also become an asset on the pitch. With her former teammate Natasha Harding, whom she played alongside in the national team and at Reading for two seasons, she used to communicate in Welsh on the pitch. "If we're playing against an English-speaking country, like Northern Ireland, or against a team where a lot of players understand English, and we want to think tactically, we speak Welsh together," she explained in 2019 to Sport Wales , the national organization for the development and promotion of sport and sporting activity in Wales.

"I hope to inspire people to show that it doesn't have to be perfect, but we have to do our best to keep [our language] alive. I will continue to learn, speak, and promote it."

Angharad James, Wales captain

on Instagram

But while she knows the language well, using it to express herself publicly remains a challenge, having left Wales at 16 to finish her training in England at Arsenal, and who now wears the jersey of the American team Seattle, in the National Women's Super League. "Anyone who knows me knows how nervous I get before doing interviews in Welsh. Trying to be open and honest while finding the words in Welsh is sometimes tricky. Not speaking the language as often as I would like has its challenges when I want to elaborate on certain things," she also wrote in her November 2024 Instagram post.

Despite these difficulties, the midfielder, who in 2022 became the youngest Welsh international, male or female, to reach 100 caps (she now stands at 132), remains very committed to defending her language. "It's a shame there aren't more players in the team who speak Welsh. It's an extra weapon, it helps to speak the language," she lamented to Sport Wales in 2019. Today, the national team's social media accounts are expressed in a mixture of English and Welsh, and share some content around the players and the language.

This is another step towards developing the influence of Welsh in the national team, and ensuring that its use goes beyond just the "Hen Wlad fy Nhadau" ( Land of my Father ) sung before each match: "You can see it when we sing the anthem, that we all live it passionately. But I think we would feel it even more if we understood the words and the meaning."