O bydded i'r heniaith barhau!

 

Dan Fox's taid, outside Tal-y-Braich Uchaf, Eryri (Snowdonia), c 1965.

Photograph: Courtesy of Dewi Jones

There was a lovely article on the author's experience of the Welsh Language in The Grauniad recently. This reminded me of a phrase I have sung often in the chorus of our anthem, but only recently understood "O bydded i'r heniaith barhau".

I have often regretted not being able to speak Welsh, and blame my grandmother for not passing it down to me. It seems like Dan Fox had a similar story. Some snippets below:-

There is a Welsh saying I learned only recently: Cenedl heb iaith, cenedl heb galon. A nation without language, a nation without heart.

Welsh has a reputation for difficulty. A cartoon that sometimes does the rounds on social media shows a man returning a Welsh Scrabble set to a store with the complaint that half the vowels are missing*. There is a YouTube clip of the standup comic Rhod Gilbert, an anglophone Welshman, describing the fate of his classmates in a 30-person Welsh course: “One passed, three failed and 26 dead.”

I have thought of learning my native tongue, but been put off by the realisation that I'd have no-one to practice it with. Also, I am bone idle.

* Welsh has more vowels than English. Its alphabet uses 29 letters but no j, k, q, v, x, or z. Instead, it has ch, dd, ff, ng, ll, ph, rh and th, all treated as separate letters. What are commonly considered consonants in English have open vowel sounds in Welsh: W is often used for “oo”. The letter y can be “ee” or “uh”. Ch is like the “ch” in “loch”. Dd makes a firm “th”, as in “these”. One of my favourite Welsh words is smwddio. Here the w is “oo”, and dd is “th”, making it “smoothio”. It means “ironing”.