Why is it a good idea to learn Welsh?

Aran Jones Author, SaySomethingIn

It’s just occurred to me that I’ve been writing articles about how to learn Welsh, but that lots of Nation.cymru readers might not even be trying to learn Welsh (yet!).

I know. It was a shocking thought for me too.

Here’s why you should give it a go.

First up, simple neurological selfishness. Learning a language is one of the healthiest things you can do for your brain - some studies have shown that it can even help delay the onset of dementia, which is a pretty big win. Language learning triggers a LOT of neural rewiring, and the brain loves newness.

As a society, we think an enormous amount about how to keep our bodies healthy, but comparatively little about how to keep our brains healthy - until we suddenly realise (a bit too late) how important they are. My mother is currently experiencing the beginning of dementia, so this is all in very sharp focus for me at the moment.

Half an hour a week of learning a language should be as normal as making sure that you get some steps in.

That’s true for any language, though. You’d get the same benefits from learning Finnish as you would from learning Welsh (we’ve just launched a Finnish course, actually, and it’s got some brilliant words like vastataksen and harjoitella, so I thoroughly recommend that as well).

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A sense of connection

But why Welsh, in particular?

To begin with, it opens up an extra layer of Wales for you.

With over half a million Welsh speakers, there’s a lot of stuff going on. There are Welsh language bands, Welsh language books, Welsh language festivals, Welsh language thinkers and political analysts and comedians and TV shows and radio and all the colourful cultural variety that emerges naturally from hundreds of thousands of speakers.

It’s all strangely invisible when you don’t speak Welsh. I was living in Aberystwyth when the National Eisteddfod was held there in the early 90s, and I didn’t even notice (to be fair, I was getting ready to move to Zimbabwe, so I was a little distracted, but the principle holds true).

When you start learning Welsh, though, it all begins to pop suddenly into view, as if a new colour had just become real for you, and it’s interesting and different and fun.

That’s not all, though.

If you’re a Welsh person (or you have a family connection to Wales) it can be a startlingly powerful emotional experience. It doesn’t make you more Welsh - that’s silly, you either are or you aren’t (and you know which it is, no one else can tell you) - but it does open up more of Wales to you. It gives you a sense of connection that’s hard to measure but still really hits you in the gut. You feel connected to your own family, and the Welsh speakers in your family just a few generations ago, you feel connected to places, and it can give you a strong extra sense of belonging.

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Angles of thought

When I’d learnt enough Welsh to be able to hold a decent conversation, I went back to Cwm Cynllwyd, where my Nain and Taid used to live. Some of my earliest memories are from there - but faint, misty recollections - the angle of a field, the view of Ty’n Cae from the road - Nain and Taid must have left when I was about five, I think. I went back to Tŷ Mawr, the farm next door, and I met Liz Tŷ Mawr, who seemed implausibly familiar (I found out later that her hair had gone white in her 30s). She was very kind about my Welsh, and I had tea and then walked the tracks and pathways that I remembered so faintly. It felt like being woven back into place.

It was a small thing, really. Just a day out. It was also an immeasurably large thing which will always now be part of me.

So learning Welsh will keep your brain healthy, give you access to more of what’s going on in Wales, and heighten your sense of belonging. That’s a pretty strong set of reasons to learn Welsh right there.

But there’s one last one - and it’s my favourite.

Different languages give us access to different viewpoints, different angles of thought.

If you only speak English, you get an English view of the world. There’s still a fair amount of range in there - it’s quite a jump from Fox News to the Guardian - but neither Fox News nor the Guardian will ever give you the viewpoints or the lines of thought that come from news in French or Arabic or Chinese.

And they definitely won’t give you the lines of thought that belong to Wales.

This is about more than just cultural wealth. It has significant real world implications. In Gwynedd, where I live, the vote to remain in the EU in 2016 was almost 60%. If you were reading articles in Welsh, it was pretty clear that Brexit was going to be economically damaging for Wales. If you were reading articles in English - well, most of them didn’t even mention Wales.

The more viewpoints you’re aware of, the more informed your decisions will be.

We really all ought to speak three or four or five different languages, if we want to build the best possible societies. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t, if we got language teaching right in schools.

But for now, maybe just start with Welsh…

Find out more about SaySomethingIn here.