Welsh is safe from dying out, scientists have concluded, after modelling how vulnerable languages are to extinction.

More than a third of the world’s languages are currently classified as endangered and more than half are expected to go extinct by 2100.

Researchers at Canterbury University in New Zealand, looked at the trajectory of two vulnerable languages - Welsh and Maori - to see if they could predict which would survive.

They divided the population into categories of basic, independent, and proficient in households in Wales, and worked out how the language would progress in the next few hundred years.

Recent statistics show that around 30 per cent of the population are Welsh speakers and 11 per cent are fluent, and 45 per cent of children have at least one Welsh speaking parent. The modelling showed that even with just six per cent fluent speakers, the language was safe.