Speaking In Tongues

Out on a walk above the upper Dovey valley

Although I am living only about eighty miles from where I was born in Cheshire I am surrounded by people who speak a completely unknown (to me) tongue as their first language. This is the real heartland of Wales where some go through life barely encountering the English language – they speak Welsh at home, Welsh at work, Welsh with their friends, watch Welsh TV channels.  Often I enter my local shop to hear a conversation in Welsh between the staff and a customer. The programme booklet for the annual village Sioe (or fete) was predominantly in Welsh and only portions of it translated into English – and not the contents page, rather unhelpfully.

A Crown Prince squash crushes my scales

I like the sound of spoken Welsh, the lilting cadences, the guttural rasps effortlessly combined into a stream of what must be sentences packed with meaning, if only I could decipher them. I like too the fact that it exists as a real language here in the UK despite attempts by the English throughout history to kill it off. And similar to its more widely spoken neighbour, it too has regional accents: North Walian and South Walian having many differences, but also I am told that someone from Machynlleth can tell someone from Dolgellau (15 miles away) from the way they utter their Welsh.

Before moving here I downloaded the first series of 'Say Something in Welsh' to my iPod and spent a while diligently listening and repeating back the phrases. The idea is that you learn better how to pronounce it if you aren't distracted by how it's written, which might work well for most people but it seems my brain prefers to know how things are written – I was finding myself imagining (no doubt wrongly) how the phrases were actually spelled, which will confuse things when I do begin to learn written Welsh.

Chopped into portions along with my butternut squash

That was all last year and I'm afraid not much has stuck, partly due to the lack of actually trying it on anyone. So when I was invited to join a local Welsh class for total beginners there was no hesitation – I was keen to try learning with others. It's held in a new community space in Dinas Mawddwy called The Old Shop (because it was the old shop), and so far there have been two sessions, both totally focused on pronunciation. Quite helpfully, Welsh is a phonetic language so once you realise that 'w' is pronounced 'oo', 'y' is pronounced 'uh' (or 'ee' when in the last syllable),  'f' is pronounced 'v' etc, you can read aloud any bit of Welsh you see! Understanding it is totally another matter, of course.

My last stall of the year was last Sunday - sold about 2/3 of it

Many of the non-Welsh people I've met who live around here have tried learning at some point but given up before becoming in any way fluent. Some are still persevering. Welsh is a tough language to learn, and you stand a chance only if you're get to practice speaking it regularly with a native speaker with barrel-loads of patience. As I live alone in my bog, even my English is getting rusty so I'm not sure what chance of success I have with Welsh.

Anyway the next session is tomorrow evening, I'm looking forward to it. I might never be fluent but at least I'm giving it a go, and getting to know more locals while I'm at it.  Gweld chi wythnos nesaf!