Reclaiming your own land: Why learning Welsh is harder for Welsh people

Aran Jones Author, SaySomethingIn

It’s not fair! Learning Welsh is more difficult for Welsh people (but that turns out to be a good thing)

You grow up without the language – it’s just a postcode lottery, it’s not your fault at all. Maybe you feel bad about it, maybe you don’t really notice it all that much. Either way, you’re Welsh, you belong to Wales (and Wales belongs to you) as much as any other Welsh person, but you don’t speak the language.

Perhaps it starts to get on your nerves a bit over the years – you meet people in other countries and they say ‘Oh, you’re from Wales? Say something in Welsh then!’ or you hear people speaking Welsh when you’re back home, and you feel a bit left out. It’s still not your fault, but now you’re starting to feel a bit bad about it. As though part of you is missing.

It used to be there in your family – your grandparents or your great-grandparents spoke Welsh, but now it’s been taken away from you.

So one day, you take the plunge. You start trying to learn Welsh.

And you find out immediately that – adding insult to injury – it’s much harder for Welsh people to learn Welsh than for anyone else.

Maybe you’re in an evening class, or part of a forum learning online. There’s someone from Patagonia, there are people from England, there are Americans, even people from the Far East.

They all crack on with it, learning words, learning how to fit them together, learning how to start saying things. They make mistakes, they laugh them off, they carry on.

Deep cuts

Laughing mistakes off. Yes, that’s a thing. Not so much for Welsh people – not when they’re learning the language.

Every mistake is like something sharp digging into exactly the spot where you’d just fallen over and cut yourself.

Raw skin, maybe even a little blood, and every wrong word hurts. It’s hard to get away from – it matters so much more to you.

It’s not just an interesting language in a new place, something you want to learn because it sounds a bit like Lord of the Rings or because you read a Susan Cooper book one time.

It’s the language that is woven through your family, your country, the language that should have been yours by right.

Every time you’re reminded that you can’t speak it fluently, not yet, it brings up all the difficult things you feel about it.

You might gradually realise that you’re unhappy that the language was taken away from you. You might start to notice the wider political patterns that took the language away from you, and feel angry about them.

If you’re like some learners, you might find yourself wanting (a few hundred years too late) to grab a scythe or a pitchfork and go and join Glyndŵr.

Here’s the good news, though.

Although you’re going to face much more difficult emotions than Welsh learners from other countries, you’re also much more likely to become a fluent speaker.

For the same reason, really. It matters much more to you. The journey is going to be more painful, but you’re going to be more determined. When you feel like giving up, there’ll be something pushing you on. For you, it’s personal.

I’ve often watched it become tough going for other Welsh people learning the language. Every time I do, it reminds me of my own journey – growing up without the language, and working my guts out to win it back in my thirties.

I always find myself wanting to say the same thing – so the next time you’re struggling with learning Welsh, please remember this.

Fierce joy

There are two different ways to join this battle.

You can carry it as a responsibility – a heavy load, a duty, a burden. You can force yourself onwards because you have a sense that you’re letting your country down if you stop.

You can take every step through gritted teeth – as R S Thomas put it, you can be ‘conscious at dusk of the spilled blood that went into the making of the wild sky’.

Or – and this is the path I would urge you to take – you can carry it like a fierce joy. Paint yourself with woad (perhaps not literally) and abandon yourself to the thrill of battle.

Let each new word feel like a step forwards to reclaim your own land. Hear the raging music of it, and throw yourself into the dance.

And remember that every single time you open your mouth and speak even a single word in Welsh, you’re shoulder to shoulder with everyone keeping our old and beloved language alive.

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