Who knew!

 

 

Who knew the country right next door to England, Wales, right on the same island, would have a different language?  But all of England is not a very big island, so it’s not going to be very different, right?  Maybe more like a dialect.  Wrong.  Completely wrong.  I looked up Welsh on Duolingo, the language program.  It’s crazy.  It seems mostly consonants, very stingy with the vowels, and a lot of two and three letter words.  My best description is that it brings to mind a Monty Python skit where they’re just making up silly words.

 

The street we live on is named Allt-Yr-Yn Crescent.  Prynhawn da means good morning.  Merch dw i  means I am a woman.  Bachgen a dyn, a boy and a man.  Noswaith dda, Good evening.  Nothing like English.  Why would they make up a language that is so different from the one that is right next door?

 

That’s because Welsh is more like the original languages here.  A completely different root.  English is a mishmash of the Latin, Germanic, Norwegian, and French languages of the waves of conquerors and invaders.  Welsh is the language that survived.  It all works out though, because even though all the street signs are in Welsh, everybody here just speaks English.