What do you actually know about Wales?
Well, I surely didn’t know much – a country of Dylan Thomas, Manic Street
Preachers, Catherine Zeta-Jones and of course, the town with the longest name.
This (together with few scraps of Welsh history I remembered from Professor
Procházka‘s lecture in ‘Introduction to British and American Culture’) made me
think of Wales as quite a mysterious country and as it is always great to learn
something new – especially about other cultures – it really caught my attention
when I saw a poster at the faculty inviting for an evening presentation of
Welsh history and language given on the 6th of May by two Welsh Erasmus students
– William Francis Hannell and Elan Grug Muse.
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| photo credits: Ivana Herglova |
The first part presented by William was
dedicated to Welsh history and culture and gave us really in-depth overview of
the country’s history from the settlement of Wales till present – the modern
history concerning the political situation, creation of The Welsh Assembly etc.
was probably the most interesting part for most of us along with Welsh
literature and culture in general. But
the second part of the lecture presented by Elan was truly fascinating as it
was focused on Welsh language. I’m not going to lie, even the pronunciation of
the letters of Welsh alphabet wasn’t easy for us – and it’s probably time to
stop boasting about the Czech sound “ř” as it is nothing compared to some of
the Welsh sounds. But after we embarrased ourselves few times we could proceed
with some useful phrases like Rydw i’n
dod o’r Weriniaeth Tsiec (I come from Czech republic), Hwyl fawr (Goodbye) or Ga i
beint o gwrw os gwelwch yn dda? (Can I have a pint, please?).
We were also told some interesting
information about Welsh language system itself like consonant modifications (if
you’ve taken the Irish course, it would be quite familiar to you) and regional
differences in Welsh. After this crash course in Welsh we were completely
exhausted – but the reward was worth it as everyone got to taste ffroes, a typical Welsh pastry a bit similar to
pancakes.
Johana Lajdová
