I’ve always wanted to learn Welsh. It used to be the language my father spoke. It seemed to me he’d use it randomly. We’d go somewhere and somehow he’d come across someone he somehow knew could speak it and off they’d go. A secret language, I thought. And furthermore there must a secret code enabling each of them to know each other knew it. What was it? A look? A tap on the leg? A ‘funny’ handshake? Eventually I asked him and the answer was more mundane. He’d ask them, that’s all it was. In Welsh, of course, and if the answer was yes (or more correctly an affirmative since there is not one word for ‘yes’ in Welsh), of they would go.
Welsh was my father’s first language. Until the age of five it was all he knew, only encountering English when he went to school. It was a good form of Welsh too. Today I read that in the seventeenth century that the Welsh spoken in Cardigan was regarded as a superior version. The deeper into Wales you went – the more west or the more north – the purer the form. It was less bastardised by ‘other’ tongues, by which they meant English.
I used to love to listen to my father’s Welsh as he talked on the phone. I wondered why I didn’t know it, why I hadn’t grown up with it, but the answer was lay with my mother. Although just as Welsh, my mother spoke only English. She came from Swansea, unfortunately (linguistically) close to the Vale of Glamorgan and the Gower peninsular – that area of Wales anciently Norman and traditionally English. So, as a family, we spoke English with a strong Welsh accent. When I went to school that accent immediately replaced by one that is mildly northern English.
But my fascination with Welsh has remained. I have made several attempts to learn it. One summer I stayed for a fortnight in Lampeter on an intensive Welsh course and, although I learnt a lot, I quicklylost it. I tried to speak to speak to my father in Welsh as practice, but I think my mutilation of his language was painful to him because he didn’t encourage it. Also, by that time, I expect his Welsh was fairly rusty. I asked him once how easy he found it to convert from one language to another, and he admitted he needed to warm up a few minutes. Which is exactly what I am finding now with my Welsh Duolingo course. Every day I do a session or two and it does take me a few minutes to find what ‘ear’ I have and I am surprising myself. The Duolingo course is proving much more successful than my earlier attempts. It is fun. The Spouse is also in on the act now, which is a little upsetting in some ways because it is turning out that he is a lot better than me, and, well, it is my language! We’ve found simple online magazines in Welsh, and we sometimes watch ‘Pobol Y Cwm’, and one day soon maybe we will venture into a Welsh-speaking part of Wales again and try speaking it in the wild.
It’s this that’s been in my head today as I read the fifth chapter of this book on Early Modern Wales. It concentrated on the relationship between language and society. In 1536 there was an act of Union between Wales and England. It ordained that from then on all law and matters of government, should be conducted in English and until recently it had been thought that this was the start of the anglicisation of the Welsh gentry. But this turns out not to be true. The process of anglicisation was more protracted that was thought. Although the gentry incorporated English, and aspects of English custom into their way of life, they made sure they kept up their Welsh. In fact they made sure of it, some gentry the outskirts of Welsh Wales actually sending their sons further into the heartlands in order to learn it. Even then they recognised that a knowledge of Welsh was useful if not essential. It was the language of their servants and tenants, and if they could speak directly to them they would not be reliant on unscrupulous interpreters.
They could also serve more effectively in courts as magistrates, also part of their role as gentry. Because although all the business was meant to be conducted in English, it was wasn’t. The testimonies were often given in Welsh and transcribed into English for the records so bilingualism was useful there too. It was only in the higher courts, the ‘Great Sessions’ (equivalent of the English Assizes) where problems arose. The judges here, assigned by the central government, could speak only English, so testimonies told in Welsh had to be translated into English, after which they would be transcribed for the court record. Because of this these translated records retain a greater detail, colour and richness than those recorded and summarised using legal language in England.The detail was kept because the nuances of what had been said was important.
The act of union causing such a detrimental effect on the Welsh language is a myth then, and the reason for this myth lies in the mouths and pens of a group of people known as the bards. Which is such a fascinating topic I am leaving it for another blog.
Clare Dudman 