Learn How to Speak Welsh in a Historic Village
Stay and Study at Wales' National Centre for Language and Culture
Oct 22, 2009
Since 1978, more than 25,000 students from all over the world have studied at the center in northwest Wales, traditional bastion of the ancient language. It is the only residential center to provide Welsh language courses throughout the year.
Learn to Speak Welsh in 19th-Century Miners’ Cottages
Wales’ National Centre for Language and Culture Centre is in a once-abandoned quarrying and fishing village in Nant Gwrtheyrn (pronounced Nant Goor theirn). The granite buildings, renovated by volunteers in the 1970s, hover on the edge of the Irish Sea.
Adult language students book in for a week-long course, living in newly refurbished miners’ houses.
They eat together in the dining room, Caffi Meinir, one of the most authentic places in Wales to enjoy Welsh griddle cakes. The dining room looks out to the sea and Carreg Y Llam, one of original quarries.
Granite Cobblestones from Nant Gwrtheyrn Paved Britain
Work began in 1851, and the local quarries quickly became famous for their cobblestones. They paved most of Liverpool and Manchester.
Nant Gwrtheyrn hit its heyday in the 1880s, when 2,000 men worked the rock face. The last quarry closed in the 1940s, and the last person moved out in 1959. Hippie squatters damaged the village's historic buildings in the ’60s and ’70s.
Dr. Carl Iwan Clowes arrived in the area from Manchester in 1978 and had an idea to transform the shuttered settlement into a cultural center for Wales.
Volunteers repaired the derelict buildings, and the first courses in Welsh began in 1982.
Welsh Language is Celtic Cousin to England's Cornish and France’s Breton
Welsh is an ancient Celtic language, related to Breton and Cornish. Today, about a half-million people speak Welsh, according to David Hedley Williams, the full-time teacher at the National Centre.
About 20 percent of the population of Wales speaks the language, a slight increase over the past 10 years.
“While there is a decrease in the number of Welsh-speaking homes,” Williams said, “there is an increase in the number of people who’ve learned the language.”
Williams himself moved to Wales at age 40 and learned Welsh then.
“There is an increased enthusiasm," Williams said, "for parents to have their children taught in Wales."
Welsh Language's Oral Tradition Goes Back More than 1,500 Years
"The Welsh language was created about the time the Romans left Britain, about 400-500 A.D.,” Williams said. It was finally written down about 600 A.D.
“It was a language,” Williams said, “that had to be experienced in the ear and mouth.” He teaches Welsh as a spoken language, asking students questions and having them respond in Welsh.
Astonishingly, Welsh spelling was standardized only about 10 to 15 years ago.
Learn to Speak Welsh by Mastering the Seven Vowels
Some of the hallmarks of the Welsh language:
Welsh has seven vowels, more than English. The pronunciations are:
A: short as in “ham,” long as in “hard”;
E: short as in “then,” long as in “then” with a southern drawl;
I: short as in “sit”, long as in the “ee” of “seen”:
O: short as in “gone,” long as in “more”;
U: short as in “sit,” long as in “seen”;
W: short as in “look,” long as in “fool”
Y: short as in “sit” or “gun”, long as in “seen.”
There is no k, q, v, x, z in modern Welsh.
J is used in borrowed words, such as jam, jeli, garej.
Welsh Language Has Digraphs, Two Letters Creating One Sound
Digraphs are considered single letters in their own right:
ch as in Scottish “loch:’
dd “th” as in “the”
ff as in “off”;
ng as in “long”;
ll, an aspirated “l” sounded by placing the tongue so as to say “l” and hissing out one side of the mouth;’
ph, an aspirated “p” as in “graph”:
rh, an aspirated “r”
and th, as in “thin.”
The accent in Welsh is always on the penultimate syllable.
Travelers’ Aid in Reading the Welsh Language Along the Way
Some common syllables pop up on maps and sign posts:
Dol is a meadow.
Caer is a castle.
Glyn is a glen or valley.
Rhyd is a ford.
Pont is a bridge.
Llan is a place of holy ground, often with a church.
Aber is a place where one body of water runs into a larger body of water.
To Learn to Speak Welsh at the National Centre for Language and Culture
The National Centre for Language and Culture (Tel 01758 750334) has information about the residential Welsh language course.
Visit Wales has more information about the country and culture of Wales.
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