English and Welsh

The basic pleasure in the phonetic elements of a language and in the style of their patterns, and then in a higher dimension, pleasure in the association of these word-forms with meanings, is of fundamental importance. This pleasure is quite distinct from the practical knowledge of a language, and not the same as an analytic understanding of its structure. It is simpler, deeper-rooted, and yet more immediate than the enjoyment of literature. Though it may be allied to some of the elements in the appreciation of verse, it does not need any poets, other than the nameless artists who composed the language. It can be strongly felt in the simple contemplation of a vocabulary, or even in a string of names.

If I were to say ' Language is related to our total psycho-physical make-up', I might seem to a

My chief point here is to emphasize the difference between the first-learned language, the language of custom, and an individual's native language, his inherent linguistic predilections: not to deny that he will share many of these with others of his community. He will share them, no doubt, in proportion as he shares other elements in his make-up. [30]

Most English-speaking people, for instance, will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful', especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful. Well then, in Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant.

The nature of this pleasure is difficult, perhaps impossible, to analyse. It ca

But these predilections are not the product of second-learned languages; though they may be modified by them: experience must affect the practice or appreciation of any art. My cradle-tongue was English (with a dash of Afrikaans). French and Latin together were my first experience of second-learned language. Latin – to express now sensations that are still vivid in memory though inexpressible when received – seemed so normal that pleasure or distaste was equally inapplicable. French [31] has given to me less of this pleasure than any other language with which I have sufficient acquaintance for this judgement. The fluidity of Greek, punctuated by hardness, and with its surface glitter, captivated me, even when I met it first only in Greek names, of history or mythology, and I tried to invent a language that would embody the Greekness of Greek (so far as it came through that garbled form); but part of the attraction was antiquity and alien remoteness (from me): it did not touch home. Spanish came my way by chance and greatly attracted me. It gave me strong pleasure, and still does – far more than any other Romance language. But incipient 'philology' was, I think, an adulterant: the preservation in spite of change of so great a measure of the linguistic feeling and style of Latin was certainly an ingredient in my pleasure, an historical and not purely aesthetic element.

Gothic was the first to take me by storm, to move my heart. It was the first of the old Germanic languages that I ever met. I have since mourned the loss of Gothic literature. I did not then. The contemplation of the vocabulary in A Primer of the Gothic Language was enough: a sensation at least as full of delight as first looking into Chapman's Homer. Though I did not write a so

I have, in this peculiar sense, studied ('tasted' would be better) other languages since. Of all save one among them the most overwhelming pleasure was provided by Fi

But all the time there had been another call – bound to win in the end, though long baulked by sheer lack of opportunity. I heard it coming out of the west. It struck at me in the names on coal-trucks; and drawing nearer, it flickered past on station-signs, a flash of strange spelling and a hint of a language old and yet alive; even in an adeiladwyd 1887, ill-cut on a stone-slab, it pierced my linguistic heart. 'Late Modern Welsh' (bad Welsh to some). Nothing more than an 'it was built', though it marked the end of a long story from daub and wattle in some archaic village to a sombre chapel under the dark hills. Not that I knew that then. It was easier to find books to instruct one in any far alien tongue of Africa or India than in the language that still clung to the western mountains and the shores that look out to Iwerddon. Easier at any rate for an English boy being drilled in the study of languages that (whatever Joseph Wright may have thought of Celtic) offered more hope of profit.

But it was different in Oxford. There one can find books, and not only those one's tutor recommends. My college, I know, and the shade of Walter Skeat, I surmise, was shocked when the only prize I ever won (there was only one other competitor), the Skeat Prize for English at Exeter College, was spent on Welsh.

Under severe pressure to enlarge my apprentice knowledge of Latin and Greek, I studied the old Germanic languages; when generously allowed to use for this barbaric purpose emoluments intended for the classics, I turned at last to Medieval Welsh. It would not be of much use if I tried to illustrate by examples the pleasure that I got there. For, of course, the pleasure is not solely concerned with any word, any 'sound-pattern + meaning', by itself, but with its fitness also to a whole style. Even single notes of a large music may please in their place, but one ca

Perhaps I might say just this – for it is not an analysis of Welsh, or of myself, that I am attempting, but an assertion of a feeling of pleasure, and of satisfaction (as of a want fulfilled) – it is the ordinary words for ordinary things that in Welsh I find so pleasing. Nef may be no better than heaven, but wybren is more pleasing than sky. Beyond that what can one do? For a passage of good Welsh, even if read by a Welshman, is for this purpose useless. Those who understand him must already have experienced this pleasure, or have missed it for ever. Those who do not ca

30

A difficult proportion to discover without knowing his ancestral history through indefinite generations. Children of the same two parents may differ markedly in this respect.

31

I refer to Modern French; and I am speaking primarily of word-forms, and those in relation to meaning, especially in basic words. Incomprehensibility and its like are only art forms in a diluted degree in any language, hardly at all in English.

32

Each, of course, with immediately following* sense*.