This week, in an exciting new development, we welcome a guest blogger: Harry Campbell, a freelance lexicographer and author, and an enthusiast for the Welsh language. He writes:
This is Eisteddfod week in Wales. At its heart the Eisteddfod is a week-long competitive festival of the performing arts, from poetry to dance to classical music, along with some picturesque but highly fanciful "druidic" costumes and ceremonies invented a century or two ago, but more generally it's a celebration of the Welsh identity, a kind of gathering of the clans. From its origins as a testing-ground for bards perhaps a thousand years ago, via a revival at the height of the Romantic imagination at the end of the eighteenth century, the National Eisteddfod has developed into a huge cultural, political and commercial jamboree housed in a sort of tented city, clocking up something like 200,000 visits over the course of the week and hogging the radio and TV schedules.
But outside Wales you rarely hear it mentioned, mainly because everything -- performances, announcements, signage, advertising, everything -- is conducted in the Welsh language. This Celtic tongue has declined steadily in numbers over the centuries, but still boasts around half a million speakers, a number which according to the last census has now started to increase. Fifty years ago if you spoke Welsh it was almost certainly because you had been brought up to it; then some time in the sixties people woke up the fact that their ancient tongue would soon be ancient history if nothing was done to keep it alive, and they set to work. Now, with the advent of pro-Welsh-language legislation and the general feeling that minority languages should be protected rather than helped to die out, the Welsh-learning industry is very big business.
For Welsh learners, many of whom live outside the heartland of the language or even in England or America, the Eisteddfod can be exhilarating. What an amazing experience to wander round and hear nothing but Welsh spoken, to be free to try out your halting phrases on anyone you choose. But then it's back to the grindstone in Cardiff or Liverpool or London, and as the summer fades many fall by the wayside.
And so to the title of this posting. The grindstone, did I say? There's a useful expression in Welsh which learners quote encouragingly to each other: "dyfal donc a dyr y garreg", pronounced roughly "dove Al donk ah deer uh gah regg". It means "a steady tapping breaks the stone". I'm not sure what a good English translation would be, possibly something to do with the hare and the tortoise, but it's a great mental image. Just picture the Egyptians or the Mayans or any of those ancient civilisations which, without the aid of metal tools or even the wheel, managed to build those great stone monuments that still take our breath away. They did it by sheer patience and persistence, tapping away at one stone with another one.
Now as a language learner you won't have a slave driver standing over you with a whip (at least, not literally, though some gentle but firm encouragement from your friends and family certainly does no harm!), so what can you do to maintain that momentum on your own? The answer is to build your language learning into your daily life. This is where Caroline's ten words a week come in. Keep them with you at all times and practise them in any odd moment you have: waiting for the train, sitting on the bus, standing in a queue, brushing your teeth, whatever, a little and often. Ten words may not seem much, but if you get into the habit of learning even one word or phrase or grammar point every day you will be making the kind of slow but steady progress that really pays off.
Keep on tapping!
Why not check out Harry's book on places that have changed their names
http://www.whateverhappenedtotanganyika.com
Whatever Happened to Tanganyika? (published by Portico, isbn 978-1906032050) is available from all good bookshops, and plenty of so-so ones as well.
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