Why I'm learning Welsh: Caecilius est in horto and other great language hits
So, I have started learning Welsh. And as with so much of what I do, it’s because of a book.
I’m about to start working on something for Calon Books, the new non-fiction imprint of the University of Wales Press. The elevator pitch is “an exploration of Wales - for both the author and the reader - through its literature and its writers, providing a platform for a variety of voices beyond Dylan Thomas and Ivor the Engine to speak for the nation”. This boils down to me reading a mountain of books about the country and spending the next 12 months learning Welsh. I’m under no illusions about how proficient I’ll be by July 2023, but I think it’s important to have a go. And, as they so often say in annoying clickbaity headlines, here’s why.
In an age when English is the planet’s lingua franca, there is less of a necessity to learn another language and every encouragement to give in to the laziness of allowing the rest of the planet to try their luck in English rather than make the effort in their tongue. So why bother?
The truth is that if you really want to get to grips with a different culture, you need to speak its language (at least a bit) because language shapes how we think. Also, it’s a chance to reinvent, or at least redefine yourself, an opportunity that rarely occurs away from the hairdresser. It’s a reminder that identity is not set in stone at birth but accumulated throughout your life. Stripping away the gathered layers of habit and prejudice can be invigorating.
Obviously the best way of learning a language is to go and live in the country in question. In this case, that’s out of the question (unless the publishers unexpectedly ramp up my advance substantially) so I’m falling back on an online language learning course, Duolingo. It’s obviously pretty early days, but I can now reasonably confidently say ‘Good evening, dragon’, ‘My name is Alex, I am a boy’, and ‘Goodbye, Emlyn and Celyn’. A lot of the lessons are along the ‘ecoutez y repetez’ lines I remember from school days and there’s thankfully far fewer prose translations and essays about Flaubert, but there’s one element that – so far – is sadly missing.
There’s no family.
For me, this has been the very bedrock of my language learning. My first famille as Longman helped me to amble gradually towards O level French in 1985 was the Marsaud collective who lived in Amboise in the Loire. Other readers may remember the spectacularly monotonous lives of the three children Jean-Claude (mostly dans le jardin), Pierre, and Claudette as well as their parents (Mum mostly dans la cusine), and Bruno le chien, always after a decent bone.
Far more exciting was the Cambridge Latin Course which I started when I was 13. This hurtled us back to the reign of Tiberius in the early ADs. It featured banker about town Caecilius and his family – plus the Laurel and Hardy-ish slaves Grumio and Clemens – who enjoyed a carefree life in Pompeii, right up to the moment when, well, you know what. Then it hurtled into a full on Boys Own adventure with a cast of thousands, Caecilius’s son Quintus (huzzah, he escaped!) getting caught up in a plot in Roman Britain against the fabulously-named King Cogidubnus, before the action moves to Rome and the evil machinations of Salvius (boo! hiss!). Such was the family’s fame that their characters appear in the David Tennant Doctor Who episode ‘The Fires of Pompeii’ (with Peter Capaldi no less playing Caecilius).
Even as an adult there were families. I learnt Spanish when I moved to Madrid in the late 1990s. The city was bursting with kioscos, ubiquitous pavement newsagents in pagoda-type shacks, staggering under a daily avalanche of magazines and newspapers. They also sold ‘collectables’, small objects encased in plastic and mounted on the hugest sheets of unbendable cardboard imaginable. If I’d wanted to amass a zoo of miniature models of dogs on a weekly basis or had been desperate to have 150 porcelain dolls in their typical national dress, I could have fulfilled that dream. I could even have created my own museum. ‘Make a space for Tutankhamen’s tomb on your mantlepiece,’ urged one come-on. Every month, the national newspaper El Pais seemed to have a new daily series of informative cards – with special jigsaw on Sundays – to treasure forever in specially designed ringbinders.
Photo: Jacinta Lluch Valero
Naturally the series I found particularly intriguing was El Pais’ step-by-step guide to learning English. After years at school following the fascinating daily lifestyles of non-Anglo-Saxon families who spent their free time buying every conceivable vegetable at the market, fretting about the exact change from the stationmaster, or being buried alive in ash, I was now able to pick up tips about life back in Blighty. The saga was set squarely in middle England and its stars were the Barratt family, Mum (Carol), Dad (Peter), and their two troublesome teens Rory and Alice. Sadly, “they don’t go out to eat very often because it is extremely expensive for a family.” However, they did manage to hoard up enough to celebrate Carol and Peter’s 20th wedding anniversary at the local high class bistro (“Can I have hamburger with chips?” “Don’t be silly, Rory. This is a posh restaurant.”). The evening seemed to go well. Alice was hungry because “she lost her appetite and found a donkey’s” (??), even though “in restaurants they microwave the vegetables.”
Back at home, Peter and Carol (“their life is full of obligations and responsibilities”, poor dears) had plenty to keep them occupied. Over the weekend, Peter had to clean the car and mow the lawn, and during the week he had to take the rubbish out. Meanwhile Carol looked after the family finances (“Peter is hopeless at money matters and his credit card is over the limit”). Rory was a bit of a wild child. He made up answers to his homework (“It’s too difficult and I’m tired”). On the other hand, Alice, a couple of years older, had many talents (“She can swim, she can speak French, she can run very fast, she can make a shirt, she can memorise poems”. However, she “can’t understand physics, she can’t surf, she can’t make bread.”). And this being an English family, enormous sections were given over to explaining the many and varied ways of saying ‘It’s quite good’ and ‘I’m sorry’.
So, I wait in hope, bidding Owen and Gareth a Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Good Evening, and Good Night and hoping it turns out that they’re brothers and their dad knows the way to the town hall.
What I read last week: Oliver Darkshire’s debut, Once Upon A Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller – it’s not out until the autumn but will be of interest to anyone interested in books and rare bookselling. Imagine Shaun Bythell’s The Diary of a Bookseller written by Terry Pratchett.
What I’m reading this week: I’m hopping around The Emergency Poet: An Anti-Stress Poetry Anthology edited by Deborah Alma (bought partly to support her excellent Physic Garden project)
What I’m planning to read next week: Jenny Uglow’s Words and Pictures: Writers, Artists and a Peculiarly British Tradition has been bumped twice now but third time’s the charm.