Went to jolly old Cardiff today- hadn’t been to Wales in ages. After reading some books by Nicolaus Ostler and Kenneth Katzner, I seemed to spend most of the time trying to read the Welsh signposts out loud. I’d forgotten how different Welsh is from English- such as pronoucing an ‘f’ as a ‘v’, a ‘dd’ as a ‘th’ and so on.
The language really fascinates me- it’s one of the few whose prefixes change rather than suffixes (so whilst Wales is Cymru, the name whilst used in welcoming someone to Wales becomes Gymru). I was pretty impressed with the attempts they’d made in Cardiff to put Welsh everywhere on the streets and in the adverts. And the fact that the language is growing is surely a clear sign that it’s working. Hooray for the Welsh language, I say. The fact that it’s managed to persevere in an area so close to England, whilst English has destroyed much larger languages in the Americas, can be seen- I think- as a sign that smaller languages still can survive.
Unlike a certain few Tories about the Polish signs in Cheshire the other day, who kicked up a bit of a fuss about the government wanting to save lives rather than be linguistically snobbish (http://www.cheshire.gov.uk/PR/2007/february07/74-07.htm). I mean, honestly. The Poles in the UK pay taxes, work damned hard and bring great Krakus Jam and Wiejska Sausage here with them. ‘Na Zdrowie!’/ Cheers!, I say to them. But that’s a different story altogether.
It’s also been said that once the language of an ethnic group goes, the culture begins to go as well. That’s why, teaching all the children in Wales the Welsh language is not a waste- it’s a reaffirming of Wales as a seperate cultural entity from England. Though perhaps there is less of an argument for the complusory study of Cornish and Manx some local seccessionists in those areas wish to implement.
Although it is often stated that travel guides overemphasise the cultural diversity of places, it’s very refreshing to find out that a place is just as diverse as they report it to be. I remember one time when I was walking down from an old ruined monastery at Vazelon in North Eastern Turkey, near Trabzon. This old woman in traditional dress with a flock of goats talked to me in some language which certainly wasn’t Turkish. Probably, it was Hemsin, Laz or Georgian. Turkey’s a bit of an oddball in the cultural diversity spectrum- Istanbul was around 60% Christian up until the population exchanges and anti-Greek riots of the 1920s and 1960s, but Turks are still prohibited from defining any organisation under an ethnic banner and are restricted from insulting ‘anti-Turkishness’ by the notorious Article 301 of their constitution. That’s why the new book, Ebru, which has caused quite a stir in Turkey, is such a godsend if Turkey wants to clear up its human rights.(http://www.metiskitap.com/Scripts/Catalog/MetisBooks/1997.asp).
I also had the interesting experience of attending a festival near Ventspils, in NW Latvia a few years back, where some of the only living Livonian speakers were. It’s sad to know that by the time anyone outside of Latvia has heard of the Livonians, their last native speakers will be dead. Languages do need to be preserved- think of how many idioms in English tell us about our heritage as a nation. If an entire language dies, so does its history. So go forth! Learn Komi, Yao, Papiamento, Wolof- or whatever. As they say in Wales, ‘Dyw un iaith byth yn ddigon’!
That’s all from me anyway. I’m off to see the Gemini meteor shower about which Patrick Moore waxed lyrical in his wonderfully strangulated accent this morning on BBC Radio 4.
