About
🌐 EN - other translations coming soon / cyfieithiadau eraill yn dod yn fuan
I'm a 21-year-old, currently doing a bachelor's degree in Celtic Studies. I'm Welsh, and from a Cornish/Scottish/Irish family (and more distant English and Ulster Scots heritage). I'm very interested in comparative Celtic linguistics, preserving/revitalising minority languages, Celtic diasporas, Lowland/Ulster Scots diasporas, and in my family history. I'd possibly like to do a Celtic and Scandinavian Studies degree after I've finished my undergraduate degree.
Languages I've grown up around: English (C2, L1), Welsh (B2, L2)
Heritage languages: Irish (A2), Cornish (A1), Scots (A1?)
Other languages: Italian (A1), Breton (A1), Esperanto (A1)
English, C2
English is my first language, and as such I've grown up feeling very disconnected from Wales and the cultures of my family. The dialect of English I speak is Wenglish (South Walian English), with the occasional Cornish-English, Scottish-English, and Hiberno-English word and phrase thrown in. Although, my accent is fairly English-sounding.
Cymraeg (Welsh), B2
I've been learning Welsh in some capacity since I was three, although in the early days it was mostly only phrases like "bore da" and "diolch" in my nursery. I went to English-medium schools, so I didn't learn lots of Welsh and I didn't have a passion for it until I started studying it on my own outside of school hours. In high school, I realised that languages are taught awfully in school (both first-language English classes and 2nd-language Welsh/French/etc classes), so I started using Duolingo to improve my Welsh, in about 2017/2018 when I was starting to do GCSEs. This was my first time learning grammar and actual useful things I could use to construct my own sentences in Welsh, and not just the vocabulary lists and pre-made phrases they gave us in school. I really fell in love with learning Welsh thanks to Duolingo (although, most Duolingo courses, including the Welsh one, no longer have the grammar notes so I can't recommend it as a resource anymore), and I went on to do Welsh at A Levels, and then a Celtic Studies undergraduate degree at university. Despite the education system's efforts, I can speak Welsh quite well, and I've been having university classes through Welsh since 2022 and I use it to communicate every day at university. I would like to integrate the language more into my non-academic life too.
Gaeilge (Irish), A2
My maternal grandmother is from Ireland and learned some Irish as a second language, so I grew up knowing little bits of Irish from her and my mother. Irish was probably the heritage language I grew up knowing the least of, although I taught myself a bit in 2019. I started studying Irish at university in 2023 as part of my Celtic Studies degree.
Kernewek (Cornish), A1
My father is from Cornwall, and from a young age I was taught some Cornish words by him, but mostly by my paternal grandfather who was mostly just curious to see how they compared to Welsh words. I have no idea how fluent my grandfather was in Cornish, but I have a lot of Cornish resources that I inherited from him after he died. I have no idea who the last fluent Cornish speaker in the family was. I've been trying to get back into teaching myself Cornish over the last year or so. Unfortunately my university don't teach Cornish.
Scots, A1?
My mother is from Scotland, although she moved to Wales as a child, and I learned some Scots words and phrases from her and my maternal grandfather. I believe my maternal grandfather was fluent in Scots. I distinctly remember him teaching my Scots words and phrases when I was 10 for a school project I was doing on Scotland. I don't really know my CEFR level in Scots, because I can understand more than I can say due to picking up words as a child and the fact that Scots is the most closely-related language to English, an also because I've never sat down to learn the language. I always feel like there's a larger mental block preventing me from learning Scots than my other heritage languages, I think due to the fact that it's mostly perceived as a funny, uneducated dialect of English, and I'm afraid of coming across as mocking because I don't have a Scottish accent. My Scottish family also have Ulster Scots and (Ulster) Irish heritage, although I never really learned anything about Ulster Scots and Irish through my Scottish family members (fun fact: my Irish surname comes from my Scottish family due to their Irish heritage, rather than from my Irish family. Also interestingly, from what I can tell from their emigration records we have, the surname seems to have been Anglicised at least twice).
Brezhoneg (Breton), A1
I did a year of Breton in 2022/2023 in university as part of my Celtic Studies degree. It was the first time I'd learned a language through Welsh, and it really helped me with using my Welsh.
Italiano (Italian), A1
I tried teaching myself Italian in 2018 because I was really interested in opera, but it never clicked with me very well. In 2023/24 I did Italian alongside my Celtic Studies degree, and I learned a lot more than when I taught it to myself, but I still had problems with getting it to stick in my brain. When I studied French and Spanish at high school, I also had difficulties feeling like I could click with either of them, so I think I just have difficulties with Romance languages for some reason.
Esperanto, A1
I completed the Duolingo Esperanto course at the same time I started using Duolingo for Welsh, and I think I must have got to about a B1 level, but I don't remmeber most of my Esperanto now.
中文 (Chinese)
I am going to be doing a Chinese course at university this year, alongside my Celtic Studies degree. I've been interested in learning Chinese for years, and I remember they used to teach Mandarin at my high school but unfortunately they stopped in 2014; the literal year I joined! So I had to do French and Spanish as foreign languages instead.