OMFG!! Finding a sound key to learn to pronounce words was (and still kind of is) next to impossible! There are plenty of well meaning helpful people out there who want to encourage you to learn Welsh. They provide you a sound key and say "it's English equivalent is *insert sound here*."
On first glance, you breathe a collective sigh of relief and you thank the good Lord above for guiding you here. Then you think about that for a moment. Go ahead. Think! Did you come up with the problem that I did? The question becomes "what English?"
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Why learn Welsh?
Hello everyone! This is a blog, probably a short blog, about my experience in learning Welsh. I cannot say that I won't give up, because I may. I may get so frustrated that I'll just throw my books into the burn barrel one day. Kidding! .... sort of.
Probably the first thing to discuss is 'why Welsh?' Well the simple answer to that is, why not Welsh? The thing is that though I love English and its evolution, I've never branched out into multi-languages. Decisions, decisions! It's not like I've not wanted to, but then the question becomes which one? French is beautiful, Spanish is somewhat necessary in certain parts of the US (only certain parts, despite what some say), Italian is fun, German is helpful as is a variety of other so-called Indo-European languages. The problem is that they're all so common.
Again, in certain parts of the country you are surrounded my Mexicans that don't speak English (there is nothing wrong with calling them Mexican, because they are; I'm an American and they are Mexicans living in America), when you get into large cities such as New York, you run into a global swath of languages but still, you'll hear the same one again and again, like German or Japanese.
The point is that there are some languages that you run across often. There are a lot of Chinese and Japanese, some Korean, lots of any of the European countries, the South American languages of Spanish and Portuguese and so on. Yet how many times standing in front of the Empire State Building, do you hear Welsh, Manx, Cornish or Gaelic (yes, I know there are more than a single dialect, but English has a TON of dialects and yet we call it English as a whole)? Probably few if ever.
I wanted something that was tied to my roots, in a sense. So far, as a genealogist who has traced her family back to the 1500s, those are actually three languages. My mother's maiden name is German, though our German ancestor goes back to 1730 in America and his son (also my ancestor) was a patriot (yes, he was old when he had him). The other two are, one from England and a group from Scotland. That's it. So that left me with Scottish Gaelic, German and English.
Probably the first thing to discuss is 'why Welsh?' Well the simple answer to that is, why not Welsh? The thing is that though I love English and its evolution, I've never branched out into multi-languages. Decisions, decisions! It's not like I've not wanted to, but then the question becomes which one? French is beautiful, Spanish is somewhat necessary in certain parts of the US (only certain parts, despite what some say), Italian is fun, German is helpful as is a variety of other so-called Indo-European languages. The problem is that they're all so common.
Again, in certain parts of the country you are surrounded my Mexicans that don't speak English (there is nothing wrong with calling them Mexican, because they are; I'm an American and they are Mexicans living in America), when you get into large cities such as New York, you run into a global swath of languages but still, you'll hear the same one again and again, like German or Japanese.
The point is that there are some languages that you run across often. There are a lot of Chinese and Japanese, some Korean, lots of any of the European countries, the South American languages of Spanish and Portuguese and so on. Yet how many times standing in front of the Empire State Building, do you hear Welsh, Manx, Cornish or Gaelic (yes, I know there are more than a single dialect, but English has a TON of dialects and yet we call it English as a whole)? Probably few if ever.
I wanted something that was tied to my roots, in a sense. So far, as a genealogist who has traced her family back to the 1500s, those are actually three languages. My mother's maiden name is German, though our German ancestor goes back to 1730 in America and his son (also my ancestor) was a patriot (yes, he was old when he had him). The other two are, one from England and a group from Scotland. That's it. So that left me with Scottish Gaelic, German and English.
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