What it feels like to become a Welsh speaker (yes, you can)

Aran Jones Author, SaySomethingIn

Sometimes, I still feel very conscious of the fact that I’m a second language Welsh speaker.

I’ve been living my life through the medium of Welsh for over 20 years now, I’ve brought up two children through the medium of Welsh, we live just outside Caernarfon – I only ever need to use English for some conversations at work, and when we travel.

But despite all that, I know my accent will never belong to any particular place, I know that I have a narrower range of colloquialisms than a first language Welsh speaker, I know I’ll never have the dataset in Welsh that would give me the absolute control I have when I’m speaking English.

It’s okay, though. I’m still a Welsh speaker. I’m just the kind of Welsh speaker who didn’t get started properly until he was in his 30s.

If I’d known as a teenager that one day I’d speak this much Welsh, I’d have been absolutely delighted.

The joy of Welsh

So for those of you who are considering starting to learn, or who are already learning, I want to tell you about what a joyful experience it becomes.

I hope that will help keep you walking the path, because when it feels difficult (which is a lot of the time!) it can be very hard to imagine that one day it will be easy and delightful.

There were two moments that made me realise I’d genuinely become a Welsh speaker.

The first was in the Pier in Aberystwyth. I was with a Welsh speaking friend of mine (the first person I got to know through the medium of Welsh) and she introduced me to some other Welsh speakers – and then, when we’d said hello, she said ‘You’d never guess he’s a learner, would you?’

She was being kind, and their response was very kind (people almost always tell you that you’re better than you are when you’re learning a language) – and yet my main feeling was embarrassment.

Before then, I’d always been very quick to say that I was a learner, just as a little insurance – but suddenly, I didn’t want to be ‘very good for a learner’ any more, I wanted to put all that to one side and just speak Welsh.

The second moment was talking to Twm Morys, one of the most creative and powerful users of the Welsh language that we have.

I was always rather conscious that Twm was a Chaired Bard, and I always felt a bit more likely to mangle words in his company – but one day, he said very firmly that I had to stop calling myself a learner, because I was a Welsh speaker.

I didn’t really want to accept it – that’s my emotional buoyancy device you’re taking away from me! – but I definitely wasn’t going to disagree with Twm. He’s very convincing.

Rolling in the deep

Once I let go of being a learner, though, the water was much less cold than I’d feared.

Suddenly, I could swim to wherever I needed to get in the language – or, you might say, all these little islands of words in a sea of uncertainty had almost overnight turned into a landscape with lakes. I could go wherever I wanted in Welsh.It was magical.

Welsh-speaking Wales (which is the whole country, actually – you can always find a Welsh speaker if you try) is different to English-speaking Wales in some interesting ways, and starting to experience those differences felt like finding my way tentatively into a myth.

It’s also very similar in lots of other ways – Welsh speakers are just human beings trying to pay off their mortgages and figure out ways to make their lives meaningful – but even the mundane feels exciting when it reaches you through a new language.

I’d go into pubs, and hear people speaking Welsh, and understand them.

I’d watch S4C and listen to Radio Cymru, and it almost all made sense. I’d talk to people in shops, I’d talk to friends, and it felt like a permanent high.

I felt woven into my own family in a new way – if my grandfather and his brothers and sisters had still been alive, I would have been able to speak their language to them.

I know Nid in particular would have been delighted – she always used to encourage me to learn when I was a teenager, and I promised I would.

In tune

Okay, it turns out it’s pretty difficult to describe. For me, at any rate.

So maybe it won’t inspire you as much as I’d hoped. I wish I could make these words pop and fizz off the screen to give you more of a sense of it.

Everything I said in Welsh felt like wine in my mouth.

Everything I heard in Welsh (even stuff like ‘Could you carry those bags?’) felt like music.

I was walking the same streets, getting on the same buses, going to the same pubs, but now it all seemed to have extra colours.

If you’re learning, keep going.

All of this is just waiting for you to join in as well.

If you’re not learning yet – oh, please, for your own sake give it a go.

It might just turn out to be something that will change your life.

Find out more about SaySomethingIn here.