AUGUST PROGRAM
The August program for the Welsh Society of Fredericksburg will be our annual picnic. The picnic will begin at 5 PM at Alum Springs Park in Fredericksburg. A map is available on the society’s web site at: www.welshfred.com The Society will provide the hamburgers, hot dogs and condiments. Members are asked to provide a covered dish, salad, dessert, drinks and your families. We will string entry "Feed the Dragon" tags for the festival.
LOSS OF MEMBERS
It is with great sadness that we announce the deaths of two of our members. Col Walbrook Davis Swank passed on 4 May and his wife Frances Powell Swank passed on 8 July. Both had Welsh ancestry and had visited Wales on a number of times. Col Swank was a retired Air Force officer and World War II veteran and a prolific writer on Civil War topics. Our sympathies to their families. Contributions can be made to Episcopal Church of the Incarnation, Box 307, Mineral, Va. 23117; or to any rescue squad or fire department.
DYLAN THOMAS MOVIE
According to the americymru website a new film on Dylan Thomas is to be released in the UK in November. The Edge of Love will star Cillian Murphey, Kiera Knightley, Sienna Miller, and Matthew Rhys.
WELSH FESTIVAL MEETING
There will be one more planning meeting to wrap up the details for the Welsh Festival 2008. Welsh Festival Chair Dave Rich will conduct the meeting on Sat, 6 September at 9:30 AM at the Rappahannock Library on Caroline St in Fredericksburg.
We can use everyone's help.
NEWS FROM WALES
6.8 MILLION BOOST FOR WELSH LANGUAGE LEARNING
from( NewsWales 5/8/2008)
Deputy Minister for skills, John Griffiths, announced 6.8 million pound funding during a visit to the National Eisteddfod at Cardiff, where he also officially opened Maes D, the learner's pavilion.The funding will be split between the six Welsh for adults centre and will help improve the quality of provision, provide more training for tutors and increase the number of adults reaching fluency.John Griffiths said: "Events such as the National Eisteddfod have an important role to play in encouraging people to practice their Welsh, and in attracting new learners. Maes D provides opportunities for people to learn the language and undertake activities through the medium of Welsh on the Eisteddfod field."As a Welsh learner I know how learning the language can open doors to a number of new experiences. It can enhance your work and personal life and is a challenge, as many Welsh learners will testify."The six Welsh for Adults centres have done a tremendous job in ensuring that a full programme of Welsh for Adults courses is available in all parts of Wales. They have exceeded their targets for this academic year and have set a firm basis for the future. I am sure the funding I have announced will help the centres continue to meet the needs of learners and help them encourage others to learn the language."
EU SAYS YES TO WELSH LANGUAGE
From: Jul 17 2008 by David Williamson, Western Mail
PERMISSION has been granted for the limited use of the Welsh language in several European Union institutions.Welsh may be used in speeches at the Council of Ministers if translators are available, and may be spoken in the Committee of the Regions if the UK Government makes a request seven weeks in advance.European legislation, which has been adopted, will also be translated into Welsh. But all costs will be met by the Assembly Government.People wanting to correspond with major EU bodies in Welsh can write to the Welsh Language Board who will arrange for the original letter and the reply to be translated.Heritage Minister Rhodri Glyn Thomas said: “This is another important milestone for the Welsh language and a very welcome recognition from the EU’s most powerful institution.“I look forward now to seeing other European Union institutions following the Council’s lead to facilitate a wider use of Welsh.”
INVISIBLE HOMELAND
Aug 6th 2008
Extract From: Economist.com
“YOU’RE not Welsh,” a stranger sitting next to me on the train insisted when I mentioned that I was heading back to Wales, where I grew up.My homeland, which has a population of less than 3m, is bilingual. There, my accent is considered to be BBC—people think I’m English when they first hear me speak. But if they listen closely, they’ll hear the South Wales in my voice.It might be the way I say “yur” rather than “year”, or how I told my family, when they phoned me on the train to Cardiff, that “I'll be there, now, in a minute”.The dialect I speak is Wenglish—a hybrid of Welsh and English. It is especially prevalent in South Wales, but how to define it?Well, it has a lilt, with a rise in intonation at the end of a sentence that can sometimes be as screechy as a train putting on its brakes. Vowels are pronounced generously, as though there is a valley to bridge when the voice moves from the consonants before and after them.It has similarities to the Californian valley girl accent (which I acquired easily while living opposite a sorority in Berkeley, California). Wenglish, though, has a deeper, less shrill, tone.Word order differs too from English, with the most important word placed first. For example, “You're reading at the moment” becomes “Reading, you are”. If you wanted to speak in an even more Wenglish way, you would say: “Reading, I am, right now”—the phrase “right now” appears as frequently in Wenglish as sheep do on Welsh hillsides.The more words, the merrier. Sentences, like one sometimes used to mock the Welsh, are soaked with synonyms: “Whose coat is that jacket?”Then there are the words themselves – terms I have to explain in London. Ach y fi expresses disgust. Mitching means truanting. A cwtch is a hug. When a Welsh couple married in 2004, they pledged “to have and to cwtch” rather than “to have and to hold”.Twp, meaning “stupid”, is a Welsh adjective that has become a favourite in Wenglish too, its clipped sound echoing the manner in which someone might tell a person off for doing something foolish.The Welsh language act of 1993 made it compulsory for pupils in Wales to learn Welsh until the age of 16, with the legislation giving the language equal footing to English in the public sector, meaning all signs in Wales are bilingual.When back in Wales, I avoid speaking Welsh, even though it is a language I love. The last time I did, the person I was with launched into a stream of Welsh back, and I had to explain: “Dim siarad Cymraeg (I don't speak Welsh), but I'm Welsh.”SINCE moving from Wales to London four years ago, I’ve sometimes found myself expected to be an authority on all things Welsh.Wales is 13 times the size of London—there’s a lot to it, and much I can't know. The nickname for a person from Cardiff—Taffy—also comes from the river, (to pronounce it, think of an American from the Midwest saying “toffee”). From the road you can’t see the Taff; your eye instead is drawn to the Millennium Stadium, which looms over the city and wouldn't look out of place in Legoland.At the peak of coal production in 1913, more than 10m tonnes were exported from Cardiff's docks. Mining once defined Wales, but the last mine in South Wales, Tower Colliery, closed in January after a struggle to run it privately.Land regeneration in Wales has created around 30 new lakes. I was young when my father was working on his biggest project—Ebbw Vale’s Garden Festival. The area was once home to Europe’s largest steelworks, which closed in the 1970s.When I was last home, he took me to see The Works, a project intended to regenerate the rest of what was once the Ebbw Vale steel works and tinplate. With investment of £25m ($49.2m), it is among Wales’s costliest regeneration schemes.It would be negligent not to mention the Aberfan tragedy when considering land reclamation in Wales. In October 1966, a tip collapsed onto a school, killing 144 people. A generation of the town’s children were wiped out.Before the disaster, government-supported land reclamation in Wales had regenerated a handful of small sites. An area the size of Cardiff has since been reclaimed.There’s a line in the Welsh national anthem that can be translated as “Wales – a pure, dear land”. It’s a country known for its lakes, hills and green fields, but some of what you see is not what it was originally given. And I find myself wondering if, when I visit my homeland in decades to come, I will recognise it.