I think what you’re describing is akin to ‘Civic Nationalism’;
‘Nationalism’ is a very broad term, and it’s meaning has changed with time.
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I’d tend to disagree here. I have honestly never met any Welsh speaker who has not been 100% positive, encouraging and inclusive about the language. So while it sounds like malumovis has had some bad experiences, I’m saying that that is not a universal experience.
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Then you are either very lucky or rather younger than me. One of the reasons it’s taken me so long to become a fluent speaker is that when I was first learning (in the mid-70s) many native Welsh speakers were ambivalent (to put it kindly) about people learning the language. There were many reasons for this, one of which is that Welsh was not taught well back then, learners did not have good accents and people didn’t like to hear their beautiful language mangled. Their view seemed to be that if you couldn’t speak Welsh well enough to compete at the Eisteddfod, then you shouldn’t be speaking it at all. Then there were the people who felt that the ability to speak Welsh was a literal shibboleth to keep out outsiders.
However…
That was then and now things are amazingly different. I felt the shift at the beginning of the 21st century and soon after that, I started learning via the Llanllawen method (similar to SSiW though not quite the same). It wasn’t just in the Welsh learner community either. Young Welsh people were taking Welsh out of the stuffy Welsh establishment and into the rest of the world. Welsh music took off and gained a wider appeal. People started writing Welsh online in the same way they spoke it, ditching all the literary forms. It’s actually similar to what happened to English in the 1960s, but which came to Welsh rather later.
Welsh gained confidence and became not a secret language to mark out a select tribe, but a modern European language, proud of its heritage but not afraid to move with the times and welcoming to anyone who wants to make the effort to learn it.
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Thanks @margarethall for sharing that. I often feel lucky about lots of things! But I was born in the late 80s, so perhaps I am a bit younger than you too.
It’s interesting to hear how your experience has changed over time. I often wonder as people appear to change whether it is them changing, me changing, or a bit of both. People I knew as a child, and thought to be fierce, as an adult I believe them to be kind wonderful people. Did they change? Did I change? Maybe we both changed.
Thanks again.
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Well having said my bit… I then slipped and read your link 
As I read I was thinking “not quite where I’m at” but I knew, without reading it, that the “Ethnic Nationalism” was not going to suit either (!) then I saw the link to the other option. “Cultural Nationalism” seems to preserve much of importance alongside an inclusive attitude (and would seem to include the encouraging attitude I have noticed on certain S4C programmes and on SSiW of course). Perhaps worth posting this link also? It is interesting to read these and have verbal tools such as these terms for alternative types of nationalism; something to pull out of a bag when confronted by the ‘Nationalists’ that give the rest of us a bad name (even though I am sure there are issues with all such labels in our far from ideal world). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_nationalism
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There are going to be as many different types of nationalism as there are types of nation or people that feel comfortable as part of a nation - at the end of the day nationalist is a term used to describe both nation builders and people who either conform to or promote national ideals. A soviet style socialist is no less a nationalist than a unionist or a free market capitalist. People just envisage different types of nations - some people also want a world of no nations, but that is simply envisaging one single world nation and that situation has never existed and I doubt it ever will and probably never should? .
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Thank you for this post, Margaret, which explains the shift very clearly - I’ve been aware of it and experienced it, but never seen it identified or explained quite so succinctly.
My own experience growing up in Caerdydd in the 60s, as between Welsh speakers and non-Welsh speakers, was that never the twain shall meet. Looking back, I feel that both sides were about as negative as each other. If any kid at school showed any interest in the Welsh language or culture, for instance, the other kids would laugh at them. Fast forward 50 years and the presence of the Mochyn Du/Bragdy a Chegin pub five minutes from where I was born would have been inconceivable then, as would the ‘tradition’ of the Mari Lwyd parading in that same area - the majority of residents then wouldn’t even have heard of the Mari Lwyd!
The change in attitude that you identify is tangible. When, since retiring, I applied to do my (distance-learning) MA in Celtic Studies at Lampeter, there was a welcoming attitude from the off. You were encouraged to take a Welsh language module but not forced to do so (I chose not to - ‘gormod gramadeg’ at that stage, but kept SSIW ticking away in the background). When it came to doing research for my dissertation on Welsh harvest traditions at the (little-known) library at Amgueddfa Werin Cymru/Welsh Folk Museum at St Fagans, I received a very warm welcome from all the staff, despite my beginner’s Welsh, and one of the leading ex-scholars there couldn’t do enough to help. When I attended an all-Welsh conference on another of the museum’s former folklore scholars, they even laid on a simultaneous translation service, just for me! And ultimately of course it was necessary for me to get professional translations for some of the old Welsh texts in dialects such as Builth!
On visits to various parts of Wales and trying out one’s Welsh, I have found for the most part native Welsh speakers are delighted to meet with anyone taking the trouble to learn the language - I think most feel that we are all helping to keep the language alive and take it to the next stage. Yes one comes across the exceptions but then there are exceptions in all walks of life, one only has to step outside the front door some days to meet with negative outlooks. But the point is that there has been a sea-change in attitudes towards Welsh, both by native speakers, learners, and non-speakers. All of which is reflected, of course, in this exceptional SSIW community.
On periodic visits to Caerdydd I still occasionally encounter some of the old attitudes - a close relative recently asked: “What you bothering to learn that for? You’d be better off learning Chinese!” But such attitudes now seem totally out-of-date. And just by way of an amusing anecdote, I’m still in touch with an old school mate who was the only one of our year back in the 60s to take A-Level Welsh. He still lives in Penarth near Cardiff, whereas I have lived in Southern England for the last 48 years. He tells me that I am now a more proficient Welsh speaker than he is - something I never would have expected to hear in my wildest imagination!
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as in Llanfair ym Muallt [where I grew up]? That is surely a fairly old text, what is it like?
This is interesting. I wonder if this is where all my fear of Welsh came from originally. The Welsh speaking community is so friendly and encouraging it has seemed a little strange. In Builth there is still a bit of this fearful negative attitude towards Welsh speakers in the older generation, which was forgotten when they come into town to spend money! I was genuinely afraid at the Llanelwedd National Eisteddfod that if I muttered a ‘Shw mae’, that I would be severely reprimanded for not being a fluent speaker.
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I have to say that I can’t think of many more pleasant things to be doing than researching Welsh harvest traditions at the Amguedffa Werin Cymru! On my one visit there over a decade ago I muttered a few words in Welsh to the lady I purchased a book from - apologizing for my bad Welsh (and feeling such a fake for buying a book of recipes all in Welsh!). However she was most encouraging (Also I suspect somewhat pleased that I was learning the dialect of her North Welsh home ).
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Cymru Evan Jones : Detholiad o Bapurau Evan Jones, Ty’n-y-pant, Llanwrtyd, edited by Herbert Hughes (Gwasg Gomer, 2009). Having just checked, it’s still available quite cheaply on amazon.
The text comprises the selected papers of Evan Jones, ‘Ieuan Builth’ (1850–1928) - though he actually lived at Llanwrtyd. He recorded the everyday lives of the local community from the early 19th century, and often uses old terminology for agricultural processes long forgotten, thereby causing a few problems even to a professional translator!
His memories of old harvest traditions are summarised in 2 or 3 pages in my dissertation ‘Welsh Harvest Traditions’, which has been online as a PDF on the Forum for some while now - search for that title.
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[Still can’t manage to do two replies in one post!] Yes this material hadn’t been gathered together before, and it wasn’t even clear at the start that there was enough for a dissertation. In the event, I couldn’t use everything I found, and am still hoping to publish an expanded version, with illustrations, as a small volume.
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Pob lwc! Please let us know here when you do!
Well, we were doing okay, and then this…
Please bear in mind - we don’t speak like this about people - whether they’re on the forum or not - because personal attacks never lead anywhere good.
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