Although I am Welsh, I am not a Welsh speaker and I was really proud when I became a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales (LSW). It reminded me of my Welsh roots (born in Cardiff, lived most of my life in a small village called Hen-Dy-Gwyn, educated for both degrees at Cardiff University - then the University of Wales). LSW is fully bilingual and it is slightly embarrassing to have to pop on the headphones for the English translation when my colleagues are speaking Welsh. This became even more apparent when I was elected to Vice President for STEMM subjects when I had more formal roles at events such as the Annual General Meeting. Again I was obliged to speak in English.
Nothing could be easily fixed but I determined that I would spend some time trying to learn my native mother tongue. I was brought up in an English speaking household and was obliged to give up Welsh to study biology- such were the choices at that time.
That choice was made over 65 years ago! It has taken me this long to make an effort to try to correct the fundamental wrongness of that choice – the Welsh language has been a political football for a very long time – look up the “Welsh Not” for example. When I mentioned this decision to Jane she very kindly offered to learn Welsh alongside me to give me “somebody to talk to”. We started by going to a six-week taster course at Chester University which we really enjoyed. Subsequently we signed up for the first year course, also at Chester, which gave us some foundations in the language. This course emphasised formal Welsh or “book Welsh” and gave us an excellent grounding in the language.
Despite both of us being very aware that we do not have natural language skills, the Chester courses stimulated sufficient interest that this autumn we are taking a further courses in conversational Welsh as well as the second year of our Chester University course. These are all evening classes. And, during the quiet learning period of summer we have met up with a few co-learners who have become good friends, when we revise, review and develop our skills, fuelled by home-made cake! As I discovered with secondary metabolism, there’s nothing like teaching a subject to feel it start to embed.
I’ll add to this blog as ideas and our learning develop, but for now ‘Dw i’n mwynhau dysgu fy iaith frodorol” (I am enjoying learning my native language).
(Eventually, I hope to be posting blog entries in Cymraeg as well as Saesneg)