you should learn Welsh

‘Yes, I’m staying for a few days only. What would you recommend I should do? It’s my first time here and I haven’t read much about the city...’

‘Well, there’s St Fagans, you should definitely go to St Fagans. It’s my favourite place and it’s very popular with tourists as well…’

So, the following day or the other, there I am, at St Fagans National History Museum in Cardiff, Wales. Its website does a much better job at advertising it than I could ever do - well, I’m actually taking cold tablets, so I’m having more trouble than usual concentrating, sorry (if this post sounds weirder than average). Where was I? At St Fagans, yes. Cheating from said website (have a look at its amazing photographs, though):

‘St Fagans is one of Europe's leading open-air museums and Wales's most popular heritage attraction and admission is free!’ - open-air, heritage attraction, free! Great keywords.

‘Open to the public since 1 November 1948, the museum stands in the grounds of the magnificent St Fagans Castle and gardens, a late 16th-century manor house donated to the people of Wales by the Earl of Plymouth.’ - an impressive manor house with lovely gardens, yes, not exactly a castle, I believe?...

‘Since 1948 over forty original buildings from different historical periods have been re-erected [yes, stone by stone, brick by brick!] in the 100-acre parkland, among them houses, a farm, a school, a chapel and a splendid Workmen's Institute.’ - it’s huge, I knew it! And, even though the idea of preserving historical buildings this way may be challenged, I do like the fact that they’re being well looked-after instead of simply forgotten?...

‘Traditional crafts and activities bring St Fagans alive, in workshops where craftsmen still demonstrate their traditional skills. Their produce is usually on sale. Native breeds of livestock can be seen in the fields and farmyards, and demonstrations of farming tasks take place daily. Visitors gain an insight into the rich heritage and culture of Wales, and the Welsh language can be heard in daily use amongst craftsmen and interpreters.’ - I remember watching a blacksmith working, flour being milled, someone talking about cooking with wild plants, I think, and I remember petting a black sheep. :D

What I remember best, however, is building number 44, a farmhouse which was home to a family called Rhys\Rees from 1678 to 1936  (and I had to cheat again, of course: I did take photographs of both the house and the sign that stands by it this year). It is interesting on its own, especially if you’re lucky enough to visit it when there’s a museum worker there who’s willing to tell you more about it. Two years ago, when I set foot in it for the first time before leaving the museum in a hurry (it closes at five, but the last bus sets out a bit earlier than that, if I’m not mistaken), I was welcomed by this gentleman with white hair and a nice smile on his red face. :D He gladly showed me around the place, including a room, the bedroom, which was apparently closed to visitors then - and it was then that I learnt why houses from that time had such little doors, windows and, last but not least, beds: according to him, people used to sleep leaning against the headboard so that death would think they were still awake and would therefore leave them alone! It obviously didn’t work all the time, and so there were quite a few birth and death dates carved on that bed’s headboard… Well.

‘So you’re from Brazil!’

‘Yes.’

‘And you came to the UK while the World Cup was happening in your country?’

‘Yes, lol.’

‘Well, you’ve brought the sunshine with you! So please come again next year.’

‘I’d certainly like to. It’d be a pleasure.’

‘And you already speak English, so now you should learn Welsh!’

‘Maybe I should, yes, why not? I’ve seen the signs all over the city, it’s so different from English!...’

‘Let me teach you a few things, then.’

And so he taught me how to say very basic things, like Bore da!\Good morning! and Diolch!\Thank you., which had vanished from my mind by the time I got onto the bus back to the city centre. His kindness remains with me to this day, as you can see, and it was what made me check out the BBC website for Welsh learning tools once I got back home (I gave up trying to study on my own after a couple of days, though). It was also what made me pick Welsh instead of French, German or Danish for this little 2016 summer course trip of mine. I decided to try to learn Welsh simply because a friendly Welsh stranger told me to, lol - here’s my answer to the big ‘why Welsh’ question, finally. I’m probably not making much sense, but that’s the story, the real one (I might make up another, more sensible, one the next time I visit the country, though, and spare myself the puzzled looks and laughter - I’m a linguist researching minority languages? My great great great great grandmother was Welsh?...).

The truth is that I’ve always loved languages. Ever since I was a little child and was exposed to English by listening to the radio in the 80s (I don't think this choice of video\song is suitable for children, though, lol - 'Enjoy the silence' wasn't released until 1990, source: Google). I hadn’t yet been taught how to read and write in Portuguese when I started pestering my parents to enrol me on an English course, which I had to wait for up to when I was 9 to 10 years old. But this is another story - going back to Wales, how could I not want to learn its language when it was love at first sight between its capital city and me?... I can still see it all in my mind’s eye, in detail, going on the journey from London to Cardiff by coach, arriving in the city which was to be the final stop on my 40-sth-day-long holiday trip, getting off the coach and walking towards a pretty little garden where I sat down to have a sandwich for lunch, reading the ad on the sandwich box for a project about volunteers having meals with elderly people so they wouldn’t be always alone, taking photos of the colourful flowers, looking up at the blue sky, feeling the sun on my face… I definitely had a warm welcome in Cardiff (if you’ll pardon the pun).

My friend Charles, whom I met on the course, has a simpler explanation: I’m a romantic, lol. One ‘who studies Welsh out of a subjective sense of love for a place, reads Portuguese poetry in parks and eats crepes with spoons. Then [...] takes a leave to study for another month and now is writing gorgeously literate blogs about it.’ - well, I try... And you shall be reading about poetry and crepes in Cardiff here soon (it’s the second time I’ve mentioned them, I know!). I just thought I should write about my main experience of kindness from a Welsh speaker after having addressed that infamous article about the rude Welsh and their secret language in my previous post. My second visit to St Fagans’ building number 44 wasn’t that memorable, mind you - but this, too, will be the subject of another post. Hang in there and thanks for reading this (diolch am ddarllen… hwn? Hwn, says Google Translate, lol)!