Dw'i eisiau byw yn Gymraeg

Facebook reminded me this week that I went to Welsh Bootcamp three years ago.

Three years.

The last English-language status I wrote before bootcamp was about being nervous. I’d forgotten about that. I mean why wouldn't you just throw yourself into a holiday in the tiny seaside town of Tresaith with a dozen strangers who had all completed Cwrs 1 of the Say Something In Welsh online language lessons and who all had a perverse desire to speak only Welsh and definitely no English for a week and who were therefore, probably, a bit mad.

You guys, it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

There is nothing - nothing - like sitting in a tavern on the west coast of Cymru, drinking cwrw and watching the sun set and listening to a bar full of Cymry Cymraeg break into a folk song about, I believe, a small saucepan - because that is a thing Welsh-speaking Welsh-people actually do.

I got free hot chocolate because the bar tender was so impressed I’d come all the way from Australia and I spoke more Welsh than he did. (Showoff.)

We didn’t spend all our time in the tafarn, of course. Just most of it. The rest of the time we went about the Welsh countryside on excursions designed perfectly such that we would only encounter other Welsh-speakers: to the cheese factory and the wool museum; to learn about sailing in a cwrwgl and the history of some castle or other - I don’t remember the name of the castle but I do remember several of us looking at each other at that point and saying “wait, we understand the tour guide”; to eat pizza and listen to a Welsh folk duo from America in a tafarn; to partake in Welsh folk dancing and singing with a côr in, okay, fine, a tafarn.

I also experienced my first Noson Lawen on that trip. I didn’t really know what a Noson Lawen was, but when on Bootcamp, fake it until you make it. I got the gist that we all had to perform something, so I wrote and illustrated (I mean) a picture book called "Ble mae …?" ("Where is …?"), with each page dedicated to one of my fellow bootcampers. It was totally rubbish and a huge success, although I did pick up afterwards that reading a children’s book you’ve written in an afternoon was perhaps an unusual choice for a Noson Lawen - but whatever, I’m Australian, so. I wish I’d kept the book. I also remember the toffiest English bloke (who was actually lovely and drove a red Ferrari and had no clue most of the time and will never read this blog, I hope) got up to sing, and I was like "this guy" - and then he sung and I cried. He had the most beautiful voice.

My friend Elizabeth Corbett visited Wales recently to research her next book (about Owain Glyndwr’s wife - it sounds fascinating); and she was interviewed by the TV show Dal Ati. I watched the clip one day in the language centre in Kununurra and okay, I got teary-eyed (this is a bit of a theme, you guys), because three years after Bootcamp, with opportunities to speak Welsh few and far between, I still understood most of what they were saying.

Dw'i eisiau byw yn Gymraeg 

I’m not Welsh. There's no Welsh blood in my family. The redhair gets pretty good mileage in Cymru and I have friends I know mostly yn Gymraeg, but this is not my heritage; and yet nevertheless listening to and speaking a few words in Welsh reminds me of a time in my life and a part of my identity that makes me happy and that sometimes I forget about, and I would love to move to Wales for a few years and just live in a community of Welsh-speakers, who - like stubborn-ass mountain goats clinging to a vertical cliff - hang on.

But as I learnt on Bootcamp, spending even a week speaking only Welsh requires careful orchestration. In the Welshiest parts of Wales, Welsh-speakers still have to use English daily to interact with non-Welsh speakers. You cannot live solely in your Welsh-language identity.

There isn’t a single Indigenous group in Australia that has the numbers Welsh has. In many Aborignal Australian language communities, spending a day in language would be a dream. Most endangered Aboriginal Australian languages also don't have the same money, or political power, or resources, or time, and who knows what 'success' will look like for these communities. Maybe it’ll be a new generation of first language speakers. (I’m an aspirationalist, fight me.) Maybe it’ll be kids learning greetings and songs and animal names in school and knowing that a whole language exists in archives, somewhere, waiting for them when they’re ready to take it on. (In Kununurra, I got to see the language workers travel between daycare centres and schools each day to provide twenty-minute language lessons to kids age 3-7. Some of those kids are now as comfortable playing "Mr Potato Head" in Miriwoong as they are in English. It was really cool.) Maybe it’ll be Welcome to Country openings in language, and some bilingual signs.

Regardless. What I’ve seen in each of the three communities I’ve been to now is the same perverse stubborness of individuals to hang on to those parts of language and culture that allow us to inhabit identities that, despite the crushing press of English, we refuse to forget.

Notes from Kununurra, Week 2: What a Country

Right this second I am sitting in Cornerside Cafe, a properly hipster joint on the Kununurra main strip, complete with exposed lighting, fake plants, and a morning crowd of lycra-clad park runners getting their protein smoothie fix.

(I’m drinking the protein smoothie, actually. It has cherries, beetroot, raspberries, banana, protein powder, ginger, almond milk, and lemon juice in it, and it tastes a bit like dirt - but, like, healthy dirt.)

Cornerside does brunches like this:

I tried to recommend the cafe to a French backpacker. He started learning English eighteen months ago when he first arrived in Australia and so far he’s picked up a great collection of swear words and does a pretty good job of pretending to understand Aussie accents but somehow he’s not yet come across the concept of brunch.

“Brunch?”
“It’s like breakfast and lunch.”
“…”
"Smashed avos and poached eggs."
"..."
“Young people eat it.”
“…”
“You don’t have brunch in France?”
“No.”

A friend of a friend has a car so yesterday we drove out to Wyndham and saw the sights along the way. Given the number of Wyndham license plates in Kununurra I thought Wyndham was a major service town, but obviously that’s the wrong way round; Kununurra is the major service town in this area. Wyndham is the major crocodile town:

All these dogs were eaten by a big crocodile.

"What do you mean 'please do not climb the crocodile'?"

Can’t get over how freaking beautiful the country is out here, nor do I want to get over it. It reminds me of every Namatjira painting.

(I think this is by Oscar Namatjira, not Albert. Can someone help me out?)

Except obviously the Namatjiras were painting the country around central Australia and I'm not sure how different central Australia is to the east Kimberley, ecologically; but a lot of the colours are the same - red and purple hills, yellow spinifex, white trees with bright green leaves, blue sky.

On Friday afternoon after work, one of the language teachers (who, by the way, describes himself as mad), wanted to go on a bush “walk” in Mirima National Park; and by “walk” I mean crossing streams over upended signposts and rockclimbing up the side of a water hole.

“Yes,” I said doubtfully, looking at the rock face. “But how are we going to get down?”
“Nah, don’t worry about.”

Normally when people say “don’t worry about it” I worry about it even more, and I definitely worry when people (Mum stop reading this) carry beer instead of water for hydration, but somehow, even when we had to cross back over the stream after dark, using our mobile phones to light up the cane toads along the way, it really did turn out alright? Trip highlight.

Amongst all this traipsing around the countryside of course I’ve been having really interesting chats with the Aboriginal language workers at Mirima Dawang Woorlab-gerring - you know, project stuff (which I’m not really allowed to write about); and I've been trying to get my head around the Miriwoong verb system, which is legit complex. The fun challenge seems to be how to present two thousand verb forms without freaking people out. I tend to think that all languages are complex in some ways and simple in others, but I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite as complex as this. I’d love to do a little side project about how people teach - and learn - so called “difficult” languages. Post-doc one day, maybe.

The other constant in my life right now is backpackers.

Honesty, I’m warming to them. They’re like small children - small, drunk, stoned children. They’re loud and don’t clean up after themselves and they sleep weird hours and have ambivalent standards of hygiene and some of them don’t wear pants to breakfast and they need constant amusement or they get bored and fight each other.

On the plus side - well, on the plus side, they’re seriously entertaining.

That’s about the only plus side, but it’s kind of worth it.

All the Italian backpackers hang out together, and they drink proper stovetop coffee and bake cakes, because, of course they do. Similarly the Germans hang out with each other, as do the English. The Belgians and the Dutch claim a more general European identity, and hang out anywhere in the Eurozone.

Everyone loves Mumford and Sons, and knows all the words to the ‘Sigh No More’ album. They will bust out tracks from that album any chance they get. They also listen to a lot of Guns and Roses.

You can leave your phone/laptop/kindle/backpack/boots/wallet/passport anywhere and three days later it’ll be exactly where you left it; but leave a packet of cigarettes or cutlery out in the open and it’ll get nicked as soon as you turn your back.

They’re all incredibly tan, and don’t believe I’m Australian.

They read real books, made with real paper. One particularly tan English puppy was carrying five big paperbacks in his luggage, including the Count of Monte Cristo.

They stay up to 3am and drink Emu Bitter and sing 'Little Lion Man' like they mean it, but if you turn the dorm light off, they know that means “no talking”. It’s the one “no talking” sign in this place full of passive-aggressive, completely ineffective signs they actually respect.

So while I’m looking forward to getting back to my own place in Perth, and I won’t miss getting kicked in the face every time the girl in the top bunk gets out of bed, I still can’t believe I get to do this, this phd life.

Notes from Kununurra, Week 1: Are Boab Trees Even Real?

"Flight duration is three hours and ten minutes, and the expected arrival time is 3pm."
The man sitting next to me on the plane turned to me. "Three hours?"
"I know," I said, "I thought it would take longer to fly so far north."
"I thought it would only take an hour," he said.
I had to ask. "Where exactly do you think you’re going?"

Kununurra country in Warnka-nageny (cold season), after a particularly rainy Nyinggiyi-mageny (wet season), is fresh and green and bright and expansive; a cool breeze after a hot day; water after salt; air after smoke. Kununurra country in Warnka-nageny is the unbearable lightness of being.

First day, the dormitory door at the backpackers wouldn’t lock. Next morning, the door wouldn’t close. That night, they fixed the door so it can be both closed and locked. Luxury.

I don't have a car in Kununurra because car hire is expensive; also you don't want to get known as the person who has a car. I walk to the language centre each morning, past the bougainvilleas and the boab trees, wearing my three-dollar thongs, carrying thousands of dollars of computer equipment in my backpack, and holding my hat on top of my head (my head is too big and my hat too small to sit comfortably by itself). So here I am traipsing blithely around the top end, ready to ask a bunch of strangers to sit and talk with me about their languages, and I have to say (not for the first time) that linguists are an odd bunch - and maybe I am one of them.

Apparently in New Zealand, thongs are called 'jandals', and in South Africa they're called 'plakkies', which has to be the most South African thing I've ever heard.

At the backpackers I've had the opportunity to extend my German vocabulary to include such words as Gemütlich. Google Translate suggests gemütlich mean ‘pleasant and cheerful’ but it’s probably best understood as the experience of savouring a beer in good company on a chill night.

I drank my first ever VB (yes), with a "reclaim" Australian and an English veterinarian. That's the genuine Kunners backpacker experience right there. And it turns out I do have something in common with racists - namely, an appreciation of the Harry Potter movies. (I know, I'm confused too.)

This is my favourite vet story (but it's not made up, it's completely 100% true): a rich young couple go to the vet to get their new Rottweiler puppies vaccinated, and they're very excited to have gotten such a good deal on the Rottweilers - only $500 a puppy. So they put the puppies side by side on the vet's table, and the vet looks at the puppies, and looks at the couple, and looks at the puppies, and looks at the couple, and finally he says, "They're effing guinea pigs."

Bathroom trips interrupted by frogs in the toilet bowl: two.
"You just do your business and flush them down," advised the admin assistant at the language centre.
"I am not shitting on a tree frog."