Y Llinell

 

"If tired, servile and scared First Minister Carwyn Jones represents what Wales currently is.

Then this is what we should aspire to be – an unstoppable force running like a nutter through the streets of Aberystwyth to the sound of Genod Droog."

(http://www.welshnot.com/culture/music/genod-droog-breuddwyd-oer/)

Why Welsh III

Iawn te. Wedais i oedd mwy o resymau pam dw i'n dysgu Cymraeg, felly dyma ni.

Right then. I said there were more reasons why I'm learning Welsh, so here we are.

(Straight away I feel I should apologise profusely and point out that I don't regularly write yn Gymraeg so I think this is how I would write the above sentence; but possibly also how I would say the above sentence is wrong too.)

One of my curiously favourite things about Welsh which also sounds quite sadistic/patronising is that it's very much one of those minority languages the linguists are always going on about; and being (or having been) one of "the linguists", I'm all over that like a cat on a fly screen door.

According to UNESCO, who rate endagered languages from "vulnerable" to "critically endagered" based on the transfer of the language intergenerationally, Welsh is considered "vulnerable". This means that while lots of kids speak the language they don't do it across all areas of life. There are other figures out there of course, about the number or percentage of Welsh speakers in Wales and globally, but in the end if children don't speak the language then it will die out in a couple of generations.

Language revitalisation: one stinky, baked-beany, book-eating kid at a time (image: www.walesonline.co.uk)

This isn't a morbid fascination I have with a dying language though - it's a giddily optimistic eagerness to see a language kick ass and take names, and as a Welsh language learner I get to see this not just as a passing spectator but ever ever so slightly from the inside. I have something invested in this.

I think partly my interest comes from being a bit of a sap - I cry (bawl) when the ugly person on a talent show has the best voice, or the soldier's dog goes crazy over its owner's arrival at the airport, or the overworked single mum of five comes home from work one day to find Oprah has renovated her entire house and also here's a new car and a holiday. You know, that sort of thing. GO LITTLE LANGUAGE GO.

But I also have a slight but weird political bent (I'm sure I get this from my dad), in the sense of being interested in policies and people.

I love the idea that government has the potential to create policies that will have a positive impact on people's lives. For example, the Welsh Government/Llwyodraeth Cymru has its "Welsh Language Strategy 2012 - 2017" (which you can read here as a 53 page pdf). I think there is unfortunately already some backpedalling on this about whether certain targets will be met by 2017 and who's responsible for it, but that's part of the political game. (Even though it sucks. Which it does. But it makes victory sweeter, right?)

Following the Welsh political/language scene also throws a very interesting light onto the upcoming vote for independence in Scotland. Maybe it won't happen this referendum; it may happen the next. I'm guessing Scotland will have to do it before Wales does, and then what a game changer for Wales if when they become independent.

Of course rising to meet the challenge of the apparent hopelessness of the Welsh government to create any kind of positive language change (that may be hyperbole; I don't know. I write because I'm ignorant, innit) are the "grassroots organisations", by which I mean people.

People like the folk at Say Something In Welsh, the Welsh language course I'm doing (and a reason in itself to stick with the language), and FfrinDiaith (hosted at the SSiW website), who help language learners to link up with language speakers. I believe very strongly in what these people are doing and they give me a lot of hope for the future of Welsh.

So I'm very much looking forward to see how all these things interact and keep on interacting and growing to essentially rework the future of a language (and a nation?); I don't for a second believe that as a twenty-something year old living in Australia I can positively influence that change but nevertheless by learning Welsh I get to see that change as something that influences me and that's pretty cool.

Why Welsh II

Yesterday I wrote briefly about my reasons for starting to learn Welsh - I like learning languages, and also I wanted to go to Wales for a holiday.

(By the way, I thought I would write less frequent, longer posts, but I think I might have a go at writing more frequent, shorter posts. Not that it matters to my readership of one (my mother). So we'll see how this goes.)

But as people have objected - "they speak English in Wales, don't they?"

This is true; I think you'd be hard pressed nowadays to find a single speaker of Welsh in Wales who didn't also speak English. Of course if you went to the Welsh settlement of Y Wladfa in Patagonia, Argentina, you may find Welsh speakers who do not in fact also speak English, but Spanish. Ha! So in that instance, if you didn't speak Spanish but you did speak Welsh, you would be thinking "what a useful language this is".

"What a pretty flag this is" - Y Wladfa flag

But yes - primarily Welsh speakers in Wales also speak English, so what's the point?

The point is that both English and Welsh are - officially - the national languages of Wales, and that Wales is its own country. It's not actually England. I mean, duh, but although Wales and England have been very much intertwined after centuries of British colonisation and post-colonisation, in perfect theoretical and ideological terms Welsh is absolutely as important as English.

Learning tipyn bach o Gymraeg before going on holidays to Wales is a way of recognising that Welsh is an official language of the country. To me, it's a socio-political statement. It's a sign of respect.

I realise that may sound incredibly patronising for reasons I can't quite put my finger on and to be honest, I didn't get to speak that much Welsh in Wales (other than meeting up with other learners), so my respect doesn't count for tiddly beans. But I made an effort to start most of my interactions with shw mae and end them with diolch and on a couple of occasions the person definitely did a double take before answering croeso, and I feel like in that tiny way I had been able to also say, you know what, this language matters. Your language matters.

Because obviously that's what this is all about, me feeling good about making you feel good - oh, there it is, that's what makes this patronising. Oh well.

Guess what? That's not even the last good reason I have for learning Welsh! There's more!

So, what do you think? How important would it be to you to learn a minority language in a bilingual country? How do you see minority languages in bilingual nations? How about Welsh national independence, huh? Ooh, now there's a can of worms...