English isn’t the only language spoken in the UK and a team of youths from Wales, in the UK, had dropped by to the city recently to share their language and culture with Indians.
The United Kingdom comprises England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales and 12 young Welsh ladies stayed at The Sonnet hotel (where they enjoyed their idli and dosa for breakfast) and the rest of the day visited NGOs across the state for the exchange.
“Like in India, schools in Wales are either English medium, Welsh medium or both. Welsh people speak Welsh among themselves but if there’s an English person in the group we switch to English,” said Lliwen Williams, taking care to explain that her name is pronounced “Huen” in her tongue. “Incidentally, Indians pronounce my name much better than native English speakers,” she laughed.
Their target is to have a million Welsh speakers worldwide by 2050 and given the latest statistics, they need 4 lakh more speakers. “For this, there is much funding and grants from our country to go out and spread our culture,” said Lliwen, who works as an international officer at Urdd Gobaith Cymru, the largest youth organisation in Wales.
A Welsh lady points to her country on the globe
One of the ways the women tried to introduce Welsh was through games. “We’re teaching them games that are popular back home and saying the starting “one, two, three” in Welsh (un, dau, tri). We’re singing and doing actions to the popular children’s rhyme Head, shoulders, knees but in Welsh so they learn the words,” said Jo Jones, the sports instructor, at Ek Tara community centre in Topsia.
“I’ve visited places like New Zealand, Dublin, and Brussles on similar trips and find that games are the most fun way to teach language. The entire dictionary cannot be learnt in hours, but we want Indians to get a feel of it and if they like, they can enrol for online courses like Duolingo to learn more,” Jones said.
Music and lyrics
Ffion Roberts conducted a collage-making project asking local girls to depict items that represent India, while she herself used colours and symbols from their national flag — red for blood, white for peace, green for the land, and the dragon that is their most prominent icon. “I’m making them create postcards too that we’ll take home for Welsh children. We hope to encourage them to become pen pals,” Roberts smiled.
The trip was organised by Her Future Coalition, that runs a co-working space for groups working for the upliftment of women in Sovabazar, and had a dose of music and dance too. Elinor Roderick played the fiddle and the Indians were taught a group dance to go with it. “We perform this at weddings,” smiled Roderick, in between playing.
“I’ve had great fun with these Welsh didis,” gushed Rebekea Khatun of Class X at Ek Tara. “I did not know anything of Wales before this but now can sing, dance and even speak some of their words. I’ll return home with fun memories.”
For those like Talat Naz, the most enjoyable segment was cooking. “The didis taught us Welsh cake and we taught them Rasmalai,” she smiled. And how did they like it? “The didis said ‘darun’ and we said ‘da iawn,’ she laughed.
