Joio byw!

Languages always borrow words from other languages. This is simply what happens in a globalised world in which we can hear and see other languages. English has borrowed an awful lot of words from other languages (from the word moped nicked from Swedish, to Hindi giving us the words shampoo and bungalow, to Dutch’s gifts of aloof, bluff, dam, yacht, smelt, snack, to the pronoun they form Icelandic and the thousands of French loanwords) as well as stealing lots of phrases (e.g. de facto, en route). Now that English is a behemoth linguistic force majeure, it’s other languages that are borrowing things from English and not the other way round. It shouldn’t really come as a surprise that a minority language like Welsh is adopting words from the super-dominant language in the British Isles. English speakers are seemingly fascinated by phrases and words from their language that get co-opted into other languages. Radio Sweden, a national English-medium broadcast service in Sweden, recently did a feature of the phenomenon of the importing of English swear words into Swedish.

Whilst lots of my adult learners laugh at words like smocio (ysmygu, to smoke) or smwddio (to iron), I’ve never encountered a learner who’s irritated at the use of “Wenglish” (which I’m now going to put in quotation marks from now on). This learner on Twitter was irritated. His call for linguistic purism criticised first language speakers for using “Wenglish” over Welsh words. It sparked a small Cymric Twitter storm as well as this article on the BBC’s Welsh language service, BBC Cymru Fyw.

The complaining learner on Twitter prefers to use what he calls “actual Welsh words”. The response from lots of native speakers has been that when they say dreifio instead of gyrru they are in fact using a Welsh word. It’s not just that fluent speakers see these words as actually being Welsh ones- rather, it’s that they are linguistically adapted when they are imported into Welsh. Siario is a linguistically Welsh word. These words aren’t just imported unchanged into Welsh. They are adapted to suit Welsh orthographic conventions (e.g. using f for “v”) and are pronounced according to the phonological rules of Welsh. This means they are said in a way that, for example, obeys Welsh’s stress placement rule. For example, proffesiynol (professional) has stress on the penultimate syllable, whereas the word in English has stress on the second syllable. Welsh doesn’t have a vowel reduction rule in unstressed syllables like most British varieties of English. This rule in English means we say “problem” as “problum” and not “problemme” and “Adam” as “Adum”. The vowel in the unstressed syllable is called schwa and is the most common sound in the English language. But in Welsh we keep the vowels’ original quality even in unstressed syllables, meaning that problem is pronounced as “problemme”. Welsh also has a tendency for word-final voicing. Lots of sounds can be put into pairs in which the only thing distinguishing the two sounds is whether it’s voiced or voiceless, compare “v” with “f” or “d” with “t” in English. Welsh’s preference for word-final voicing means that words like “cricket” and “basket” are rendered in Welsh with voiced consonants at the end: criced, basged.

When verbs are imported into Welsh, they also take Welsh inflexions (aka word-endings). It’s very common in North Wales for people to say licio for to like. -io is a common verbal ending in Welsh. The word like hasn’t just been wholesale imported into the language. Dw i’n like dancing isn’t a permissible sentence in Welsh: dw i’n licio dawnsio is though. The verb licio would also change its ending when we convert it into the conditional tense: Liciet ti goffi? (Would you like coffee?). Last year I was at a wedding in south east England and someone in response to my saying I was a Welsh tutor said “dim parcio!” and started laughing. Perhaps he’d just availed himself too readily of the free booze, but he seemed to genuinely find that phrase entertaining. A have a friend who finds cwstard funny (even though the English word is actually pilfered from the French word croustade) It’s a strange kind of mentality this. But it’s not too far removed from the way the Twitter learner calls out “Wenglish”. Both mentalities seem to think that Welsh should have its own words or different words from English. Welsh is somehow lessened by importing words from English. It becomes less of a language in these people’s eyes and more of a “patois” or dialect of English.

It’s not just about defending the use of these words by fluent speakers, or indeed by anyone who chooses consciously or otherwise to use them. There’s perhaps also a pedagogical consideration. Should we also be using these words more in Welsh second language education in schools, universities and adult courses? Are tutors guilty of presenting “pure Welsh” vocabulary when learners may not hear these words so frequently outside of the classroom environment? Are tutors linguistic hypocrites for teaching gyrru and hoffi, but then saying sa i’n licio dreifio i Aberystwyth (I don’t like driving to Aberystwyth) instead of the more standard dw i ddim yn hoffi gyrru i Aberystwyth? Perhaps the word hoffi is actually on the way out and we should just teach people licio instead? Whatever we decide, it seems tutors might also be guilty of the same kind of linguistic snobbery displayed by the Twitter learner.

No-one is bothered about the hundreds of thousands of loanwords in English, probably because most of them were borrowed hundreds of years ago. Welsh’s taking words from English is just an inevitability. It’s just what languages do. It’s not to do with the laziness of native speakers and it’s not about choosing non-Welsh words over linguistically indigenous ones. These loanwords’ gradual incorporation into Welsh is an example of Linguistic change happening in real time. It should be interesting to observe and, if we want, participate in it.

Perhaps we need to present “Wenglish” words as Welsh words and through guiding our learners through correct pronunciation offer them an insight into how these loanwords have become part of modern spoken Welsh.

There’s definitely no point in despairing of these words. They exist. Jyst relacswch!