Learning to belong in two languages

Vibagar Loganathan 

On a Monday morning in Cardiff, the sky is grey, the pavements are wet, and the Number 27 bus is slowly filling up at the new bus interchange. Students in oversized hoodies and headphones shuffle on, swipe their cards and collapse into seats, half awake and already scrolling. As the bus pulls out, the screen above the driver calmly switches from “Cardiff Bus Interchange” to “Thornhill”, and the announcement rolls out in two languages: Welsh first, English second. For a new international student, it can feel like the city is narrating your life in a code you haven’t learned yet.

Every year, thousands of international students arrive in Cardiff with a vague picture in their heads: rain, rugby, and BBC accents. Fewer expect to be greeted by a whole other language that no teacher warned them about. Welsh appears everywhere – on bus stops, buildings, shop fronts, emails, bin lorries, but it doesn’t come with a handy glossary. Whether that feels like a warm “croeso” or a closed door can shape how at home they feel in Wales’s capital.

For some, the language is part of the city’s magic. For others, it’s an extra layer of confusion on top of visas, rent, and figuring out how to pronounce “Caerphilly”. For many, it’s both at once: fascinating and intimidating, beautiful and baffling.

“Wait… this isn’t just fancy English?”

For a lot of international students, the first serious encounter with Welsh isn’t in a classroom or a pub, but in their inbox. It’s Week 1, 08:03. A university email arrives with a subject line full of double Ls and unfamiliar vowels, followed by the English translation underneath. Inside, the Welsh version sits at the top, the English tucked neatly below. Instinct takes over: panic scroll to the bit you can actually read.

On campus, bilingualism is built into the architecture. Lecture theatres carry Welsh names, corridor signs list “Llyfrgell” above “Library”, and official PowerPoints double up their titles. The campus map, the recycling posters, the student support leaflets, all of them speak in two voices! At first, lots of international students treat the Welsh half like decorative wallpaper: they know it’s important, but it’s clearly not meant for them… right?

Others are more amused than anxious. Screenshots of particularly intimidating words go straight into family group chats with captions like, “New language unlocked, send help.” The double L becomes a running joke. People try to say place names out loud and end up sounding like they’re choking politely.

Then, slowly, curiosity sneaks in. Students from multilingual countries recognise what’s happening: this is how a place tells you “We are more than one thing.” They’re used to seeing two or three languages on signs. The twist here is that Welsh doesn’t look like anything they already know. It’s not a cousin of English or French you can cheat with. It’s different enough to demand respect and a bit of effort.

But there’s also the reality: many international students are already studying in their second or third language. Their brains are doing translations all day in lectures and seminars. When they open yet another email and see more text they can’t understand, it can feel less like cultural beauty and more like extra brain load.

Campus as a language maze

On paper, bilingual university policies are about rights and fairness. In daily life, they can feel like a maze you’re trying to run while juggling deadlines and a part-time job.

Your timetable is in English. The sign above the room is in Welsh first. The PowerPoint heading is in both. Your WhatsApp groups are a mix of English, your home language, and whatever slang you picked up in first term. Walking through campus is like a live word search: spot the English, admire the Welsh, hope you end up in the right place.

Some students jump into Welsh with both feet. They sign up for “Welsh for beginners” tasters during Welcome Week, grab free phrase sheets, and practice “bore da” on anyone who will tolerate it. Being able to say “diolch” instead of “thanks” becomes a little victory. Learning how to pronounce “Cymru” without hurting your throat feels like levelling up.

For Cerys, who has lived in Cardiff all her life and is learning Welsh herself, the visible changes on campus matter. She feels the university is “doing better than they have done in the past,” pointing to “more opportunities for Welsh teaching, and the bilingual signage and newsletters” as small but important signals that the language belongs in daily student life.

Others really want to learn, but time says no. They see posters for free Welsh classes, look at their overloaded calendar, and realise that adding another weekly commitment might be the thing that breaks them. It is not a lack of interest, it is a lack of hours.

Then there are the awkward mid-points. An event opens with a short speech in Welsh and a joke that gets a big laugh from half the room. The rest smile politely and wait for English to arrive so they can join in. A lecturer sprinkles a Welsh phrase into a slide without explaining it. A corridor chat flips into Welsh when someone new walks in. Nobody is deliberately trying to exclude anyone, but for the person who doesn’t understand, it can feel like standing behind a glass wall.

Welsh-speaking students feel this tension too. They are proud of their language and want to use it, not just store it away for special occasions. At the same time, they don’t want international friends to feel lost or suspicious. Switching between Welsh and English becomes a quiet daily dance: one step for identity, one step for inclusion, always trying to keep the rhythm.

Megan, another Cardiff-born student who speaks English and is trying to learn Welsh, says her own use of the language is still small but meaningful. She drops it into everyday life “incidentally ‘diolch’ instead of thank you- where I can, but I’m an English speaker, so I use English almost all of the time.” For her, international students who pick up even a few words can help “spread the word about the language” and challenge the idea that Welsh is just a quirky extra.

Era, an MA Digital Media and Society student from Albania who has lived in Cardiff since 2022, says the first Welsh word she noticed was “Croeso”, because she saw it “everywhere in entrances of places”. She assumed it meant welcome, and the English translation confirmed it. For her, the bilingual landscape is “great” because it shows the city is “making sure to preserve Welsh despite the increasing usage of English.”

“Can I have… what?” behind the bar at the stadium

If campus is where international students see Welsh, the Principality Stadium is where they really hear it.

On match days, the whole city seems to vibrate. The streets fill with red shirts and dragon flags. The word “Cymru” is everywhere: on scarves, on banners, painted on faces. Inside the stadium, the noise is a mix of songs, chants and ordering chaos at the food and drink stands.

Working a shift there turns the language from something on a sign into something shouted directly at you.

Behind the counter, you’re trying to serve as fast as you can. People step up, the contactless machines are beeping, and then a customer leans in and confidently asks for a drink… in Welsh. Not a single word of English. No pointing. No brand names you recognise. Just a clear sentence in a language your brain does not speak, yet.

So you smile. You ask them to repeat. Once, twice, three, four, five times. They look at you, you look at them, both of you trying your best. It takes several attempts before they realise you genuinely don’t understand, and finally switch to English. Only then do you find out they wanted the third drink on the board behind you all along.

It’s a slightly chaotic moment, stressful in real time, funny in hindsight. But it says a lot. For the customer, speaking Welsh at the bar is completely normal, especially on a big match day. For the international student behind the till, it’s like being hit with a pop quiz in a subject they’ve never studied.

No one is wrong in that moment. The fan is using their language in their national stadium. You’re doing your job as best you can in a second language already. But between the two of you, there’s a gap  and that gap is exactly where the future of bilingual Wales will either open up or close down.

The city that talks in two voices

Away from the stadium, Cardiff keeps talking in two languages, just a bit more quietly.

On the walk from Maindy Stadium back towards town, street signs double up. Council posters tell you to “Keep Cardiff Tidy” and “Cadwch Gaerdydd yn Daclus.” Cafés chalk “croeso” on their boards. Corner shops advertise “hufen iâ” alongside ice cream freezers. Once you know that “Maindy” is “Maendy” in Welsh and that “stadium” is pretty much “stadiwm”, the route from the bus stop to home starts to feel like a language lesson you take with your eyes.

For international students, these small details slowly build a sense of place. This isn’t just “the UK” in general; it’s Wales specifically, with its own look and sound. Recognising a word on a poster or understanding a chant at a match flips a switch. The city stops being a backdrop and starts feeling like a character in their story.

Of course, there are still awkward moments. Standing at a shop counter while staff chat in Welsh can leave you wondering if you’ve walked into someone’s living room by mistake. Hearing a quick burst of laughter after a sentence you didn’t understand can sting, even if you know logically it’s probably not about you. Language lives in the gut as much as in the dictionary.

Era says that although she sometimes feels confused because she does not understand Welsh, the experience still feels welcoming overall. She sees it as a sign of “the university’s commitment to inclusivity and dedication to the local Welsh community.” She also says that seeing Welsh translations of signs reminds her that “this is a nation that fought for their autonomy and language,” and that makes her proud of Wales in the same way she feels pride in struggles from her own country.

On the feed, off the radar

If the streets of Cardiff whisper in Welsh, the internet mostly yells in English.

Open an international student’s phone and you’ll find group chats in home languages, Instagram posts in English, YouTube playlists in whatever they grew up with. Welsh is around, but it has to work hard to push through the algorithm.

The university and student union post bilingual graphics about exams, events and support services. Politicians and public bodies mix Welsh and English on social media. Welsh-language musicians, comedians and TikTokers are out there, making content that jumps between languages in funny, creative ways.

If you follow them, your feed starts to look and sound more like the city outside your window. You see captions with “shwmae” instead of “hi”, subtitles that flip between languages, jokes that only land if you’ve picked up a couple of words. The language stops being just “that thing on the wall” and becomes part of the chaos you enjoy every day.

If you don’t, Welsh can stay stuck in the formal corners of your screen, official posts, serious announcements, carefully designed infographics. Offline, the language can be messy, emotional, playful. Online, it sometimes looks like it’s turned up in its best suit and forgotten how to relax.

For Welsh-speaking creators, deciding how much English to use is a constant balancing act. Translate everything and risk turning every post into homework. Translate nothing and risk losing a big chunk of your potential audience. Mix languages and hope people can follow along. The choices they make shape how included  or excluded, international viewers feel.

So… who is bilingual Wales actually for?

Step back from the buses, bars and Instagram feeds, and Cardiff starts to look like a live experiment.

On one side, you have a small nation that wants more Welsh speakers and a truly bilingual public life. On the other, universities and cities that rely on people from all over the world — and want them to feel welcome enough to stay, study and maybe come back later.

Those two ambitions bump into each other every day: in lecture halls where slides are bilingual but discussion is mostly English; in stadiums where orders are shouted in Welsh at staff who’ve arrived from India, Nigeria or China, in WhatsApp groups where emojis and in-jokes do most of the translation.

When it works, it’s brilliant. A Welsh-speaking student teaches their flatmate how to say “Cymru am byth” and suddenly they’re both screaming it at a match. A group chat develops its own tiny dictionary of shared Welsh, English and home-language words. A “Welsh for beginners” class is full of people laughing at their own accents rather than hiding their mistakes.

When it doesn’t, it looks like unread emails, polite smiles and people quietly feeling like the language on the wall isn’t meant for them.

Most international students are not asking to leave Cardiff fluent in Welsh. They are asking for something simpler and more human:

• Tell us clearly why everything is bilingual, so it feels meaningful, not random.

• Give us chances to try Welsh without feeling stupid.

• Show us the rules of the room so we don’t have to guess.

Cerys believes the simplest way to welcome international students into Welsh is to make it an ordinary part of the day rather than an occasional performance. “Seeing it more day to day helps,” she says, adding that “opportunities to learn about Welsh history and heritage also helps to encourage curiosity in the country and the language by extension.” In her view, understanding the stories behind the language makes it feel less like a strange extra and more like a doorway into Wales itself.

Megan agrees that universities need to prioritise Welsh without forgetting the people who arrive with no background in it. “There should be options for both English and Welsh teaching,” she says. “It’s important we protect our heritage and encourage the growth of the Welsh language, but also that we cater to international students and those who don’t speak Welsh.”

Era says she feels invited to Welsh culture and encouraged to learn the language, even if she has not done so formally. She says, “Croeso! I will always remember how welcoming the Welsh language and Welsh people are.” For her, Welsh is not a barrier but a sign that Cardiff is proud of itself.

Small things can open big doors. Saying which language an event will be in and how others will be included takes away a lot of anxiety. Offering short, low-pressure tasters instead of long, intense courses makes it easier to say yes. Creating spaces where “bad Welsh” is welcomed as part of the journey, not mocked, tells people: this language isn’t a closed club.

Welsh-speaking communities have power here too. Translating a joke after telling it in Welsh, explaining a word on a group chat, or gently correcting pronunciation at the bar turns potential embarrassment into connection. At the same time, Welsh needs room to exist without constant translation to stay alive as a real language, not just a tourist attraction. Balancing those needs is the tricky, interesting part.

Finding your own way of belonging

Back on the Number 27, months after that first confusing ride from Cardiff Bus Interchange to Maindy Stadium, the bilingual announcement sounds different. The words are still unfamiliar, but they’re no longer scary. You recognise the rhythm. You know which stop is yours in both languages. You might not be able to spell “Maindy” the Welsh way, but you can hear it coming.

You still remember that night at the Principality Stadium, desperately trying to understand a drinks order in Welsh while the queue grew behind the customer. At the time, it was stressful. Now, it’s one of your favourite stories: the moment you realised that for many people here, Welsh isn’t decoration, it’s simply how they talk, even when they’re ordering a pint.

By the time you leave Cardiff, you might only have a small Welsh phrasebook in your head: “bore da”, “diolch”, “Cymru”, “cwtch”. You might still stumble over the double L. That’s okay. What matters is that, while you were here, the language felt real and at least a little bit yours — not just something printed above your head on the bus.

As Cerys, Megan and Era all point out in different ways, Welsh is not dying out but a real language with a long history that matters to Welsh culture  and it grows every time a new arrival decides it’s worth a little effort.

For Wales, that might be one of the quiet tests of its bilingual future. Not just whether Welsh survives in policy documents and government targets, but whether the people who pass through bringing their own languages and stories feel invited to share in it, even briefly.

If international students can find their own way of belonging in two languages, even imperfectly, then bilingual Cardiff isn’t just a backdrop for their student years. It becomes part of the story they tell later: about the bus that spoke in two voices, the stadium where someone ordered a drink in a language they didn’t know, and the day they finally answered back with a small, slightly hesitant, but very real “diolch”.