The summer I remember – how learning Welsh brought me new friends and experiences

Bethan Davies, 56, from Leeds explains how a summer of learning transformed her life – bringing her closer to her heritage and broadening her social circle.

I can’t quite recall what first nudged me towards Welsh on a language-learning app during the Covid lockdowns of 2020. Perhaps it was something I saw online or, maybe subconsciously, the memory of my Welsh mam calling “amser gwely!” (“bedtime!”) during my childhood in Birmingham. That was probably one of the few Welsh phrases she knew.

My Welsh-speaking dad didn’t encourage me to speak the language because we weren’t living in Wales. Bilingualism was generally thought to be an educational disadvantage then. The language was already falling away in numbers by that time and it was before the kind of legal protections it has now.

Either way, in those odd days of early lockdown, when holidays, gigs and festivals vanished from the calendar, learning Welsh became something to do that wasn’t work – and something positive with small wins.

Previously I’d done a couple of terms of a Welsh for Beginners course during my first year at Cardiff University. But I learned barely enough to order a coffee and certainly nothing I’d ever dare try out on a native speaker (including my dad!).

Summer 2020 was the pivotal moment for me. I found a Learn Welsh Cymru class – government-subsidised, intensive, and all newly online because of lockdown. It seemed like the perfect time.

I signed up for the summer course and, while others soaked up the sun in their gardens or hiked up mountains, I spent the next six weeks sitting in my attic office.  

Soon I was getting to grips with mutations (altering the beginning of words to transform their meanings) and picking my way through untranslatable idioms. I realised that I’d stumbled across something quietly wonderful right on my doorstep – something that would open up opportunities.  

Following this intense summer of learning, I did evening classes and started having regular conversations with classmates from Leeds to North Wales and beyond. Some people in the US got up at 5am to join a class! I also encouraged my sister, well into her 60s, to sign up. Welsh, once an artefact of our parents’ childhood, became something we could experience together. 

As Covid restrictions were lifted, I discovered the Leeds Welsh Society. I went along and received a warm welcome. I was soon roped onto committees and then joined a real-life chat group in Boroughbridge, where we now meet fortnightly for coffee and Welsh practice. There are online meet-ups too, buoyed by retired learners (including one 93-year-old who turned out to be a friend of my mum’s from the 1940s). What started as a solitary experience on an app has occupied real-life corners of my diary.

I began to travel with a new purpose. Since 2021, I have been to Wales more than 10 times, holidaying deliberately in Welsh-speaking parts of the country, including Newport (Pembrokeshire), Lampeter and Aberystwyth. I’ve returned to North West Wales, to Caernarfon and Eryri, excited to use my “iaith newydd” (new language) in the wild. I’m able to listen to Radio Cymru or S4C, understanding most of it without any difficulty.

This summer marks another first. I’m packing my bag for the National Eisteddfod in Wrexham, where the local community has transformed fields on the edge of town into a huge summer festival that celebrates the Welsh language and its culture.

It’s all in Welsh – from brass bands and choirs through to the presentation of the silver bardic crown, awarded to the winner of a fiercely contested poetry contest in free verse. My sister trod the boards at last year's festival, singing with the only learners’ choir from outside Wales. I can't wait to get on the Maes (festival site)!

At 56, I find myself with a much wider circle of friends – people to email, chat and laugh with in Welsh, both online and face-to-face. My Welsh is far from perfect (my written work is somewhat lagging, thanks to homework avoidance). But, as a Bristol linguist friend tells me, my speaking is at least equivalent to that of a good first-year university language student. I can manage phone calls, emails and the essential social task of gossiping at length in a café. I gave two guys in a car park in Caernarfon advice on parking and they seemed to understand me. It wasn’t a conscious decision to speak to them in Welsh – when I heard them I naturally switched into it.

Most of all, I’ve been able to get to know a culture I once glimpsed only from the outside. And it all started with that summer.