Status Updates From The Phenomenon of Welshness

Cardiff is the battle-ground of two historiographies.

The true radicalism of their confusing success was the NORMALITY of thei content: deaths, marriages, newborns , a photo of the winning local darts team …

community papers — papurau bro — originally distributed in “locations where Welsh-speakers congregated like exiles, but in their own capital!”

Arty and political — “In the Newspeak of mass-culture, which it helped foster and which has now devoured it, ‘international’ means SANS national. ‘Multinational’ means to sing in one language, not many.”

And then political (always political, of course): “In the nineteenth century we invested our energies into building chapels instead of creating a civi Welsh identity. Wee wasted the twentieth believing that the choice was either to eradicate TB or to save the Welsh language.”

Serendipitous timing to read St Dwynwen’s Day in January 25th! Great writing — from the proper anonymity of tradition to the would-be Welsh degree in “Cultural Enterprise” to the Welsh language combination of “love for a person and love for a country” to, finally, a retort about Dwynwen vs. the commercialized Valentine’s Day.

Contemplating the role — possibly negative — of Welsh religious identity (Nonconformist) on the “national consciousness” of another “stateless nation”

Funny reading this immediately after Speak Not. Similar comparisons to Hebrew renaissance and Welsh. This second chapter has quite the criticism of bilingual schools as ineffective compromises and quite the praise for wholly Welsh-medium schools. (And great translation of ysgol fonedd— “gentry school” for fees-paying school.

Finished Speak Not, stated this: “like the Tibetans, many Welsh people feel the melancholy of being internal exiles”