My mom called me the other day, just completely bored, restless. Her and my father are going into week three of their quarantine and she’s someone who thrives off of movement and energy and being outdoors. We have always enjoyed doing activities together: we try new crafts every time I visit, we read books together, we have been creating an outdoor table for the past five years that is going to be an amazing culmination of stories…whenever we finish it.

Something she has always wanted was to connect deeper with her heritage. She knew her grandmother, who was from Wales, and a great uncle, from Portugal, but my mom spent the majority of her childhood in and out of foster homes, so she didn’t have the opportunity to really connect with either. On my dad’s side of the family I know my heritage really well and have even met distant relatives in Russia. There was, of course, always more to be learned, but it was never lacking. I didn’t have those opportunities for connection on my mom’s side, and she always wanted to fill that hole — for herself, and for her daughter.

There’s a famous word in Welsh — one of those words you often see on the likes of ‘22 words that are not in English!’ — that is typically translated as ‘homesickness’. Yet hireath (pronounced as “here-eyeth”, with the trilled ‘r’) means so much more than that.

When the Romans arrived in Wales they encountered many Celtic tribes, all referred to as ‘Britons’. The Romans left in the 5th century, creating opportunity for the Anglo-Saxon invasion. Thereafter, the Brittonic groups splintered into the cultures and languages of the Welsh, Cornish, and the Bretons. After the Romans departed, prior to colonization by the English, a number of kingdoms were formed; however, none of them were able to unite the area for long periods. Due to internal struggles and external pressure, England slowly gained more control, and in 1282, when the last Prince of Wales died (Llywelyn ap Gruffudd), the King Edward I of England claimed control of the Principality of Wales, making it the first colony of England.

Wales is actually Cymru, meaning the land of the Cymry, one’s fellow countrymen. Due to the dominance of the British Empire around the world, native and Indigenous names for places they took control of are often overlooked (if you’re wondering, North America was originally named Turtle Island). The English, the colonizers, bestowed Cymru with an Anglicized name, Wales, which means “Place of the Others,” or “Place of the Romanized Foreigners”. Making the Cymry foreigners in their own homeland. The Welsh launched several revolts against English rule, the last significant one led by Owain Glyndŵr in the early 15th century.

This is a lot of history to explain one word, but it’s necessary to show how deep this feeling goes. To fully understand hireath, there is folklore one must be aware of: in the legends, Arthur (yes, that King Arthur! A [postulated] 5th-century warrior chief who fought the Saxon invaders), Llywelyn, and Glyndŵr never really died. They are all resting, until fate requires them to return and restore Cymru. They are biding their time, until they can protest their home’s colonization.

Hireath, when looking at it from the Cymry perspective, is positioned as a protest of that unattainable longing. It’s a homesickness that is marred with a deep-rooted feeling of incompleteness, yet a feeling of familiarity. It’s an unattainable longing — rather that be for a place, a person, or even a national history. Although my mom has never been to Wales, and only learned bits and pieces from her grandmother, I think she has always been weighed down with hireath, for Wales, for Portugal, for her history, for her family.

Being locked down in our respective homes for the foreseeable future, plus looking for fun ways to bond across an ocean, creates a great opportunity for connecting with your heritage. Mom and I decided, it’s now or never — it’s time to learn Welsh. Thankfully, my mom didn’t know much about the language before agreeing to this with me, or she might have been a bit daunted by the voiced alveolar trill (the trilled ‘r’ is still on her bucket list) and the length of words (an exploration for another day: why I always pick languages to learn that have an average word length 2x my native tongue!).

Welsh, referred to endomatically as y Gymraeg, is a Western Brittonic language of the larger Celtic family within the Indo-European languages. Some of the other Celtic languages you might be familiar with (not of the Brittonic branch) are Irish, Scottish, and Manx. The Celtic languages all have a rich literary tradition, with Welsh specifically dating back to the 6th century CE.

The Late Modern Welsh Period — the one we are in now — dates roughly from the 16th century. This also aligns with Henry VIII’s Act of Union, in 1536, which largely banned the use of Welsh and removed its official status. The language of Wales had now become English; the suppression of the language extended to education, too. Parliamentary reports from the time, known as The Blue Books, stated that “the Welsh language is a vast drawback to Wales, and a manifold barrier to the moral progress and commercial prosperity of the people. It is not easy to overestimate its evil effects… It dissevers the people from intercourse which would greatly advance their civilisation, and bars the access of improving knowledge to their minds”.

The Industrial Revolution saw a large migration of English speakers into Wales, gradually making English the default language. Further measures discouraged speakers of Welsh: most notably, the ‘Welsh Not’, an infamous tool used again children at schools. ‘The Not’ was a piece of wood, such as a ruler, often inscribed with the letters WN. Each day, the teacher would give it to the first student heard speaking Welsh. When another child was caught speaking, The Not was passed on to them. The students were encouraged to pass it on and snitch on each other because at the end of the day, the child in possession of it would be subjected to corporal punishment or another equal penalty. This method of fear and discrimination remained in place from the 18th until the 20th century, instilling mistrust and fear for their fellow classmates and for their language itself.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the number of Welsh speakers hovered at half the population, and by 1911 it was under fifty percent for the first time ever, according to census records. In 1961, around one-fourth of the population reported having knowledge of Welsh. These last census numbers prompted Sanders Lewis, a beloved Welsh political activist, historian, and poet (also, a Welsh nationalist) to give a radio speech titled Tynged yr iaith (The Fate of the Language). Lewis predicted the extinction of Welsh, unless direct action was taken. His words led to the formation of the Welsh Language Society and pressure began to mount on the United Kingdom.

In 1967 they passed the Welsh Language Act, giving some legal protection for the use of Welsh in official government business. A hunger strike in the 80s, which began after the UK rescinded a promise, led to the establishment of the first Welsh-language television channel, Welsh Fourth Channel (S4C). At last, in 1993, another act was passed giving Welsh equal status with English within the public sector.

Since 2000, the teaching of Welsh has been compulsory in all schools up to sixteen years old; this has created a new generation of speakers and has had a strong effect on stabilizing the language. In 2011 Welsh became an officially recognised language. Today twenty-two percent of the population speaks it, including a burgeoning segment of young professionals who have helped create digitized spaces within Gweplyfr (Facebook) and Twitr (Twitter). Recently an ambitious target was announced: to double the number of Welsh speakers to one million by 2050.

Although we aren’t Welsh by any large percentage, our Welsh ancestry is something that we have always been proud of, thankful that we know of it and can share it together. A couple of weeks ago we started the Welsh course on Duolingo — we haven’t gotten very far yet, but we do say Bore da! every morning through WhatsApp voice messages when we wake up. Hopefully we can help contribute to that one million goal…thankfully through, we have until 2050 — we might need all the years we can get!

Honoring Hireath

Til The Cows Come Home: Also Known as a Darn Long Post About Appalachian English*

Answering your most common questions about sign languages