Where did it begin?

It began a long, long time ago, in North London, where I was born, and grew up.

My grandmother lived with us.  She was Welsh, from the South Wales valleys, and she was disabled.  She had caught polio when she was two, and lived all her life on crutches, or later, in a wheelchair.

Gran was Welsh, proudly Welsh.  She didn't speak Welsh - that was being stamped out in the South Welsh Valleys when she was growing up in the early years of the 20th Century.  It had probably largely gone by the time that she was born, the youngest of eight.  Her mother was from the Radnor area, but her father was from over the border in Hereford anyway.  She didn't talk about what it was like growing up, I wish that I had asked.  There were just a few stories that I used to hear.  

I assume that because she had got polio before school age it didn't affect her schooling much.  She was far from stupid, but not highly educated.  Her older sister had trained as a nurse, and spent six years learning Turkish (with the intention of going to Turkey as a missionary - but she married instead), but I couldn't tell you when Gran left school.

However, she was proudly Welsh, and instilled in me the feeling that I was really Welsh, it was a mere accident of birth that I was born in London.  Gran taught me the few Welsh phrases that she could remember - although she understood more.  I remember the Welsh programmes that would fill gaps in the TV programming very occasionally.  Gran would sometimes tell me what someone had said, so she did understand a bit.

I first tried to learn Welsh seriously in 1968 or there abouts, when I was 14.  I went to North Finchley Library and borrowed a Welsh Grammar.  I didn't know at the time that the Welsh that it described was a very formal, literary form.  I didn't know how to learn languages, either, but I sat and wrote out the rules and phrases into a note book.  I learned a few words, I didn't learn much Welsh.  

I can remember borrowing another Welsh Grammar when I was supposedly studying for science A levels in Barnet, and some Welsh poetry with translations, but the grammar was the same, formal literary Welsh.  I didn't learn Welsh then either.

Over the years it was the same.  Trying to learn some Welsh, not knowing how to learn languages, getting a little way, then life taking over and I didn't learn.  I tried again in my mid twenties.  That may have been a factor in my acceptance to University to study Linguistics.  I didn't speak any languages, I was a computer programmer who had two fairly mediocre A levels that I had got studying in the evening, but somehow I got accepted to study Linguistics.

Starting my degree was a major shock, everyone else had A levels in languages - they knew how languages worked, they understood the grammatical terms.  I had to do a very great deal of catching up, very fast - but I loved it.  I was fascinated by it, I still am.

We had to study 'the Structure of English' as well as the structure of another language as part of the course.  Each year the language changed, and was taught by a different tutor.  My year was Hindi, two years ahead of us was French (I bet that was a doddle for many people), the year ahead of me was Welsh - so I attended their classes as well as my own.  I used to go to the London Welsh Club, and for a while my Welsh began to reach some kind of useable level.

Then exams took over, then teaching qualifications, then beginning a teaching career, and promotion, and finally getting married and having children. Then, back to work again.

I got fed up with having a linguistics degree and speaking no languages, so in the 1990s I took a GCSE in French - self study - at work.  Then I did some OU French courses, then I joined an advanced conversation class.  I got fluent in French.  In the late 'noughties' I got offered a free Spanish evening class at work - so I learned Spanish and took a GCSE.

Over the years I picked up the Welsh books again from time to time.  Worked on them for a few weeks, or a few months, then life got in the way.

In the early 'noughties' I took some free on-line Welsh courses - and began to consider taking an on-line qualification.  But life again...

I'm now retired, nearly fifty years on from the first borrowed book from North Finchley Library, and I'm fed up with not speaking Welsh.  I don't even know why I want to speak it, I don't live in Wales, I don't have the opportunity to go to Wales very often, but despite it all I feel that 'hiraeth', the longing, the pull of Wales and Welsh.

There are now good ways of learning Welsh on-line - often without much initial outlay, so I've started again.

I've been doing Duolingo for 57 days now - very variable amounts each day, but consistently each day.  I need to start listening to Say Something In Welsh again, although it's often difficult to find the time to listen without disturbing someone else around the house.  I have lots of books, I have the time, the inclination, and most importantly, I now know about languages, and how I learn them best.

I've actually got a lot of Welsh knowledge already given my background, but it isn't very structured, and there are gaps.  I often know that a grammatical rule exists, but I don't know the details of how it works - the actual use of that structure.

This blog is my record of progress, and a structure, somewhere to think about goals, strategies, record my thoughts and work out how to achieve my goal, at last.