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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Note: this topic is from April 18, 2003. Blast from the Past. |
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Posted on 04/18/2003 4:39:52 PM PDT by blam
In the valleys of Patagonia, the talk is of an astonishing revival of the Welsh language
By Marcus Tanner in Gaiman
19 April 2003
In a red-brick farmhouse in the Patagonian village of Gaiman, Eluned Gonzalez is making jam, and masses of it. As her tiny home-help, a native woman with a long pigtail, sweeps the floor aimlessly, Eluned and her family prepare a multitude of jars that will store enough preserves for many winters.
It is a quintessentially Welsh scene, and as the vats of fruit bubble, the conversation flows in Welsh, the language in which Eluned and her sister Tegai were brought up, and which her son, Fabio, 30, also speaks fluently. Many people of Eluned's generation in Gaiman village speak Welsh, which took root in this distant corner of Argentina, more than 1,200 miles from Buenos Aires, after a group of Welsh colonists arrived in 1865.
Welsh speakers of Fabio's age are much rarer, but not as unusual as they were because, without fanfare, a Welsh revival has taken hold in Patagonia. Over the past decade, hundreds of local people have re-learned the language their parents and grandparents spurned to fit in with Juan Peron's Latin Argentina.
"It was in decline until 1965," says Professor Fernando Coronato, of the Patagonian Institute in Puerto Madryn, the port where the settlers landed. "But the centenary celebrations started a revival and since then it's grown."
The professor is living proof of his own words. With not a drop of Welsh blood in his veins, he speaks with a fluency that would shame much of Cardiff, as does his colleague, Marcello. The revival has touched men such as David Williams, a fresh-faced doctor in his early 30s. He has Welsh blood on both sides but grew up knowing only Spanish. "There used to be a kind of shame about Welsh," he said. "The Welsh were teased for talking differently so my parents did not speak it."
But he feels no shame, and learned Welsh two years ago. After his first child was born 14 months ago he proudly named him Eric Thomas, in homage to the distant mother country.
Welsh language and culture flourished in the Chubut valley of Patagonia until the First World War. The colonists dotted the valley, which they named the Gwladfa ("the colony") with chapels that reminded them of the ones at home, named Seion, Moriah, Bethel or Nazareth. Their rural settlements, Trelew, Bryn Crwn and Dolavon, recall their dream of creating a new Wales in South America.
But the dream crumbled after the war. The Argentinian government increased pressure on them to assimilate into the Spanish-speaking mainstream and flooded the valley with Spanish and Italian immigrants. As people increasingly "married out", they forgot their roots.
The centenary celebrations in 1965 led to a modest revival but the fashion for all things Welsh took off only in the late 1990s, after the British Council and the new Welsh Assembly set up a scheme to send Welsh teachers to Patagonia. The interest they won galvanised Sara Lewis, of Aberdare, who is now working in Gaiman with the project. "One couple I teach has no Welsh roots at all," she says. "He is Australian and she is Argentinian but they feel learning Welsh makes them part of the community."
Her colleague Nesta Davies, working 400 miles west in Trevelin, has been equally impressed. "I just marvel at how the language survived here for generations," she says.
The Chubu valley's Welsh minister, Mair Davies, says the teachers have worked a minor miracle. "They've done such a great job," she says. "If it wasn't for them, my generation would be the last to speak Welsh. As things are, hopefully, it will go on."
But Professor Coronato warns against false hopes that the fad for attending Welsh classes and eating torta galesa ("Welsh cakes") will restore Welsh culture to the place it occupied in Patagonia 80 years ago. "It will never be the language of the streets again," he said. "What we are seeing is a search for identity." This is a point Ms Davies, at Trelew's Tabernacle chapel, endorses. "The new Welsh speakers don't come to the chapel," she says.
With Spanish names and backgrounds, the new Celts belong to a different world from that in which Eluned Gonzalez and her sisters were raised. In their youth, Welsh was the language of hearth and home, honed by daily prayers and weekly sermons. When I went to Gaiman's Bethel chapel on a Sunday, the congregation was no more than 40, and most were elderly.
Now the keepers of the Welsh flame in Patagonia fear the Welsh Assembly will pull the plug on the teachers' scheme, just as it has borne fruit. Interest in Welsh shown by the Assembly's English-speaking Labour majority is fitful and there are doubts whether the two teachers now in Patagonia will be replaced.
"Without help from Wales, it won't survive," says Elvey Macdonald, who took part in setting up the project. With only about 2,000 speakers left in Patagonia, he says, the number is too small to be self-sustaining.
But like many Welsh Patagonians, he is proud this little sliver of the Celtic people has held out for so long, and so far from home. "I remember a man from the BBC coming to Patagonia and saying it would all be dead within 30 years," he said. "That was more than 50 years ago."
Speaking of things Welsh, let's give a nod to Dylan Thomas, and "How Green Was My Valley".
So is "Gaiman" a Welsh name? I admire the comic book writings and horror novels of the British author Neil Gaiman ("Sandman"). I wondered about his name, whether he made it up because maybe it was a hidden joke that he was gay. Not that I know anything (or care) about his sexual preference. I was just afraid to say his name to people, that I read Neil Gaiman, because they might think it was a gay novel.
The leader singer from Plethyn, Linda Healy, just released a new CD in March 2003. I just spotted the announcement on the Sain site. Linda sings and speaks in the mid-valleys dialect that was spoken by my family before them emigrated to the U.S.
Let's not forget that legendary Argentine of Irish and Basque heritage Ernesto Guevara LYNCH.
Welsh geneology that goes back further than 1754 becomes challenging. It was in that year that the English forced the Welsh to take surnames. Prior to that time, you needed about 4 generations of patronymic association and typically the name of the house where the family resided.
Welsh is totally phonetic. What you see is what you say. The rules are very simple. The single most difficult sound for native English speakers to master is the "ll" in Welsh. The closest approximation is to run together the sounds of "th" in "think" followed by the letter "L". Pronounce "llan" as "thlan" with a strong aspiration. The Welsh letter "NG" is pronounced just as in the trailing letters of the English word "song". It is nasal. It also makes for interesting search in the dictionary collating order. The Welsh letter "ch" is pronounced in a more gutteral fashion than the German or Scottish (Bach or loch). English speakers get tripped up on words that begin with "ch" as in "chimod". It's pretty easy on a trailing syllable.
Good luck in your linguistic travels.
Another Welsh video that's available in the states: Ioan Gruffudd's "Solomon and Gaenor", which was nominated for best foreign film at the Oscars several years ago. It was also shown at a number of Jewish film festivals across the US. (I followed all this on some of the Ioan sites on the Net.)
Also, I'm looking forward to seeing the two new Horatio Hornblower films (four hours total) on A&E sometime this year.
Interesting. Perhaps everyone who came from Kidwelly was named Kidwell...? The name showed up on passenger list of boat that left in 1621.
Thanks for the language lesson and links. I hope to have time to explore at depth.
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Note: this topic is from April 18, 2003. Blast from the Past. |
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Wow... What a fascinating thread. What’s the relationship between Welsh and the other Celtic or Gaelic languages? Similar? Derivative?
I have a small, brass, door knocker that pictures a woman in traditional Welsh costume (tall hat, long skirt) and says “Bettws-y-coed” across the top and “Wales” across the bottom. Can anybody translate?
Thank you! So it’s a PLACE! I’ve been asking Brits (including those of Welsh descent) for a translation for over 25 years. I bought that door knocker in an antique store about 30 years ago. I can’t remember where, but it could have been in Canada. I used to collect door knockers until I ran out of doors.
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