‘Use the Welsh you’ve got’ (but maybe take this Irish speaker’s advice)

Stephen Price

An unwritten rule in anything Welsh language-related is you do not come at the Welsh learner.

The line is always ‘use what you’ve got’, don’t criticise Wenglish use, and any use of Welsh words – a smattering here and there, a switched word in an English sentence – is all part of the bigger fight for normalising Welsh in everyday use.

Many a learner has thrown in the towel after being mocked (or let’s face it, used it a handy excuse) – and speaking is much, much harder than comprehending as anyone who’s tried to learn a language will attest.

For us ‘new speakers’ or second language Welsh speakers in old money, it often started young – ‘yma’ during the morning register, a Welsh folk song or a poem during the Eisteddfod (Yes, I still sing Mae gen i dipyn o dŷ bach twt daily) or extensive lists of vocabulary and suchlike in Welsh lessons.

For others, it begins with the Croeso i Gymru sign. And again, any use is, if not praise-worthy, to be normalised and a win.

One thing struck me the other day, however (not from the safe house I’ll be in when this is published) was a reel from an Irish speaker who – free from the worry of the YOU CAN’T SAY THAT mob back home in Cymru – gave a little lesson in the pronunciation of the letter R.

I’ve sat on this one a while, but one thing time and time again that hurts my ears just a little (as a new speaker even – we’ll let the comment sections speak for the old speakers!) is when the letter R is pronounced (can I say incorrectly?) more like most English first language speakers might – by mostly second language Welsh speakers and, increasingly, the young ‘uns who have, unlike me, had the benefit of a Welsh-medium education.

‘Darán teaches Irish’ is an online educational project from Darán Ó Dochartaigh, an accredited Irish-language teacher, translator, and researcher from Northern Ireland who helps people learn the Irish language (Gaeilge) with a strong focus on the Ulster dialect

In the video of his that landed on my feed this week, he gives a brief overview of how to pronounce R in Irish, that is (naturally) similar to the way the Welsh R is (meant to be) sounded in Welsh.

An easy way to think of it is not the exaggerated Rrrrrrr of the blown tongue, but a subtle trill – a blown R – making the Grwyne reservoir sound soft, and not as though it’s Groin reservoir *shudder*.

Pryd (when) becomes an almost whistled R, not an outright, drone-like ‘Preed’.

This one subtle switch moves a speaker from sounding like they’re reading Welsh for the first time, bored and emotionless – drone-like and doing their teachers a favour – into something gentler, smoother, with room for the Welsh accent’s oft-missing melody.

The learn Welsh Podcast has also acknowledged that “There are certains letters in the Welsh Alphabet that many Welsh Learners have problems pronouncing and one of those is the letter ‘R’.”

In their video below, they “show you how to pronounce that tricky rolling ‘R’ sound.”

More subtle than the roll, however, is the simple breathy softened r at odds with the English sounds of ‘Red’, ‘Richard’, ‘Triangle’ and the like.. Think ‘Troed’ – almost a continuation of or a letting go of the T into a blown, not vocalised, R.

It’s perhaps not something we can learn from reading online – a Reddit thread tries with the rolling – but it’s no substitute for getting into a class or making a fool of yourself with some Welsh speaking friends – it’s meant to be fun, to be played with, and hopefully over time, perfected.

I know red-penning isn’t the done thing any more in schools, but would it not hurt Welsh classes, Welsh schools even, to dedicate a few minutes here and there to pronunciation? Just that one letter, nothing else, come on!

But… writing from my safe house… I’m noticing more and more young Welsh speakers and Welsh teachers, let alone learners, adopt a half-hearted pronunciation just as in ‘Red’, ‘Richard’ and ‘Triangle’.

Again, no one wants to be or back the ‘language police’ – but if I go around calling left right, and right left, I’m quite happy being told to pull myself together.

Welsh truly is one of the most beautiful, poetic languages.

Malleable, rhythmic, melodic in a way we should all take pride in. And one of its most beautiful features is its very difference to so many others out there.

The soft or rolled letter ‘R’ is one of Cymraeg’s essential building blocks and rhythmic tools, and its abandonment for a rhotic or hard English ‘R’ sounds worse than nails on a chalkboard.

Seeing Yes Differently

I love me an aside and a detour from the conversation at hand, and another wonderful thing from Ireland landed on my feed this week, reflecting another pet peeve of mine (yes, there are many) – the idea that Welsh is somehow ‘backward’ for not having simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ like English.

A Facebook account named Born of Ireland put it simply, and much like the Welsh way: “Irish has no word for yes and no word for no. It is not a gap in the language and it was never a problem. Irish answers a question by giving back the verb.

“Did you go? I went. Is it raining? It is not. Are you tired? I am.

“The answer always carries the verb, in the right tense, positive or negative, which means you cannot reply at all without having paid close attention to exactly what was asked.

“This is why Irish people so often answer an English question with I did, or I am, or she does not, rather than a flat yes or no. That is not vagueness and it is not evasion.

“It is Irish grammar still running underneath, in families that may not have spoken a word of the language in four generations.”

So, ‘do you?’ gives you ‘I do’ and so on and so forth – a mirroring of the verb.

We Learn Welsh write: “In English, we have things pretty easy. If you want to confirm a statement, you say “Yes!” and if you want to negate a statement, you say “No!” It doesn’t get much more straightforward than that!

“In Welsh, however, the type of yes or no you need to use ultimately depends on the tense of the question. Thankfully choosing the right yes/no is often just a matter of repeating back the relevant verb.”

An exacting, expressive and wonderful thing, brimming with rhythm and warmth.

We most definitely must use the Welsh we have – but its uniqueness and its Celtic ways are some of its most essential and exquisite charms.

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