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Lowri/Laura Thomas
I heard it coming out of the west. It struck at me in the names on coal-trucks; and drawing nearer, it flickered past on station-signs, a flash of strange spelling and a hint of a language old and yet alive; even in an adeiladwyd 1887, ill-cut on a stone-slab, it pierced my linguistic heart.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, author and linguist, described the beginnings of his fascination with his favorite language, Welsh, in the above words. When I read them recently, they made me think about my own initial contact with Welsh – the family Bibles and old books Grandpa would pull off the shelves by his chair when I visited him at the farm at Radnor as a child, the simple words on a tea towel that a relative had brought home to him from Wales, the inscriptions on the old stones in the part of Radnor cemetery where the immigrant ancestors are buried…it was fascinating to me, and I hoped for a chance to learn more about it someday, and to meet some people in that far off place who spoke that language every day; for whom it was not only a tie to the past, but a living thing.
I wished that those great-aunts I’d heard of, who spoke Welsh on the telephone party line in Radnor so the non-Welsh neighbors couldn’t understand them, had passed it on; my grandfather always wished that he could speak it, and that he could visit Wales.
So it is something special to have had, in the past year and a half, both the opportunity to travel to Wales and to study Welsh as a living, spoken language. To learn words like cyfrifiadur (computer) and to learn about how Wales is evolving today.
We in WSCO had a unique experience this summer and fall in our Saturday classes taught by Dr.Timothy Jilg, Director of the Madog Center at the University of Rio Grande. Tim’s experience living in Wales and his use of the Wlpan method of teaching introduced us to real spoken Welsh in a non-intimidating, enjoyable way. And sharing the classes with friends and family with similar interests magnified the fun so much.
As a teacher of English as a second language at Ohio State, I think about language learning a lot. Studying a new language myself is a great way to get into my students’ heads in my own lesson planning and teaching. The thing I appreciate about the Wlpan method is its emphasis on learning through the ears. This helps relieve the fear of speaking and listening, a consideration that I have always had in the work that I do, since my students are under so much pressure to quickly become functional in communicative English. The Wlpan method is meant to be a natural method of learning, not an analytical one, so even those who don’t feel that they have a particular gift for language can feel comfortable with this method.
To bring the learning even more into the 21st century, we now have the opportunity to study Welsh in an online course format, developed by Dr. Jilg and his colleague William Knox and offered through the University of Rio Grande. I have also enjoyed this method of learning, especially the availability of sound bites that I can listen to anytime I want and a weekly online discussion session with the teacher and other students from different parts of the country using Skype, an online connection.
My own learner goals right now are fairly modest: to hold simple conversations, to understand some of the news stories on BBC Wales, and to sing folksongs and hymns with a decent accent. I’d like to be able to read some books eventually and understand the way that Welsh is flourishing today. I believe the preservation of the Welsh language says something important about the Welsh character and perseverance. I’d like to continue to learn more about the culture.
As a linguist, I can’t imagine a more interesting language than Welsh to study. Aside from all of the dramatic sociolinguistic history, the structure of the language is intriguing. Most people with a passing knowledge of Welsh are aware of the mutation system. Although assimilations of sounds in speech are common phenomena, the concept of incorporating them to that extent into the formal spelling patterns of the language strikes me as amazing. But the regularity of the sound/symbol relationship in Welsh is simple compared to the irregularities fossilized into the English spelling system. Still most of all, like Tolkien, I simply believe that Welsh is beautiful.
Tapping into the vitality of a language both ancient and modern is an enriching experience that I would encourage anyone to try. And I think Grandpa would be pleased.
“Cwrs Cymraeg” means “Welsh Course” and is sponsored by Cymdeithas Madog - The Welsh Studies Institute in North America, Inc.
It is a weeklong, residential course, offered annually in July, and is held in a different city each year in the USA or Canada – it was held in Wales in 2000.
The 2007 event will be held at Sage College in Albany, New York, July 22 - 28. Monitor http://www.madog.org for news or email registrar[at]madog[dot]org.