A decade after a B at GCSE, I'm learning Welsh again—and finding a new potential for the language

The first thing to point out is that the Welsh word for microwave isn’t “popty ping”. As nice as it is to think that’s the case, unfortunately, the actual word is “meicrodon”. However, this little bit of apocrypha is many people’s first point of access to the Welsh language, and so colours their opinion. It doesn’t have to be “popty ping”—it could be trying to recite the longest town name in the world, or loaned English words punctuating Welsh sentences. The result is always the same—Welsh is rendered as a joke, and the idea of learning it similarly funny.

But learning Welsh isn’t unusual. All children in Wales must learn the language up until GCSE, and 32 per cent of all schools in Wales are Welsh-medium, with many of the non-Welsh-medium schools offering a Welsh medium stream. It’s true that over the past decade, 62 of these Welsh medium schools have closed, accounting for nearly half of all school closures in that time, the majority of them in traditional Welsh-speaking areas. However, latest figures show the number of children in Welsh medium primary schools is actually up to around 66,000, compared to 62,000 in 2012.

There are many contradictory statements floating around to determine the current state of Welsh, but what it all boils down to is something like this: the Welsh government are very focused on supporting, preserving, and encouraging Welsh to be spoken; but there’s a bit of confusion as to whether this is actually working, or even what the end result should be.

Full disclosure: I am not one of these statistics. There’s no Welsh language spoken on my mother’s side of the family going back to the early 19th, possibly even late 18th century. The town of Builth Wells, where I’m from, has been majority English-speaking since its growth as a market town in the 1800s; by 1891, less than 20 per cent of the population were able to converse in Welsh. Further back, our roots are in Radnorshire, close to the English border, in industrial employment. Though there are many reasons for the erosion of Welsh—not least its enforced suppression by the English—the migration from England during the industrial revolution, coupled with no formal need to learn the language, was a killer.

Recently, however, I’ve started to develop a bit of an interest in Welsh. This is something I’ve noticed among a few English-speaking Welsh people of around my age. Lord knows I didn’t care at school: a B at GCSE and a faultless memory of the Welsh version of “head, shoulders, knees and toes” is all I’ve got to show for my eleven years of compulsory education. Add to that my lack of a full-on Gavin & Stacey­-style accent and some people question whether I am Welsh at all (a strange thing to have to prove to people).

Maybe my new-found interest is because I haven’t lived in Wales permanently for a decade; maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder. But maybe it’s more than that. Language is a lens with which to view culture. When I was first given that lens, all I could see—perhaps all I chose to see, although statistics would suggest I wasn’t in the minority—were road signs, and the jokes I mentioned before. The Welsh culture I related to or got excited about was exclusively spoken in English, or not spoken at all: Dylan Thomas, Cool Cymru, that Scott Gibbs try at Wembley.

Now though, it seems more things are coming into view. Take literature, for example. Welsh language novels and poetry enjoyed a sales increase of 42 per cent between 2011/12 and 2015/16, spearheaded by young authors writing contemporary fiction. On TV, Hinterland—Y Gwyll in Welsh, meaning Dusk—transported the popularity of brooding, Scandi crime-fiction to the wilds of West Wales. Goop (!) shared it in a list of foreign TV shows to binge watch now. The actual Gwyneth Paltrow endorsing a Welsh language, S4C-produced drama—Gwynfor Evans’ hunger strike finally worth it after all these years! It is brilliant, by the way. If you take nothing else away from this article then I would strongly suggest you watch Hinterland.

What we really need to be given is a map, a compass, some directions. If language restoration, or preservation, is seen as a bureaucratic, box-ticking exercise; a laboured attempt to right the wrongs of the past, then not only can it extinguish any interest in language at the age when kids are most adept to learning it, but it can create an odd feeling of isolation or shame from those whose communities have been without that language for over a century. Despite my monoglot roots, I've never felt Wales lacks culture or identity, and am able to see that culture spoken through the English language. The Welsh language should seek to build upon that, rather than jostle for position. Poetry, music, good TV: when language is framed through these things, it can inspire, from a young age, it will people a journey to go on. Maybe then all those road signs will start to make sense.