"Home,
where English can sound like Arabic"
To a small and
diminishing band of people living in a secluded corner of the Llŷn
Peninsula of North Wales the English language is as foreign as Chinese or
Arabic. They are the last of the Welsh monoglots.
People like Mrs Mary
Roberts of Uwchmynydd, near Aberdaron, who after 91 years, is able to
speak only six words of English, and doesn’t want to learn any more.
In any other part of
Wales this could be an oddity and a handicap in life, but this part of the
narrow finger of Caernarvonshire owes little allegiance to the Queen’s
English.
The lack of what has never been needed is no
loss to them. And they do not feel inferior even when the strident English
accents of caravan and camping visitors to this delightful holiday area
drowns the native tones.
Forgotten.
No one knows how many
monoglots there are in the area, because of the very seclusion which has
made Welsh the only essential tongue in their long, happy and invariably
healthy lives.
Most are in their
eighties now and the last of their kind, a fascinating, and authentic
survival of the general pattern of the Welsh country life in the 19th
century.
Mrs Mary Roberts has
spent all her working life within three miles of her farm, and in 66 years
ventured in recent years only as far as Anglesey. Three years ago she
visited Harlech for the first time. Occasional trips to Pwllheli,
Caernarvon and Bangor had been her farthest journeys. The little English
she learned in her schooldays was soon forgotten, because it was never
needed around the farm. Until World War II and the holiday invasion which
came after it she heard almost no English, except on the radio. “No one
then stayed in the hotels or down in the village, so I heard no English
spoken from one year to the next”
Bad
Day.
She never really
thought about English after leaving school. English newspapers were
occasionally brought home from Pwllheli by one of the family. Mrs Roberts
is bright and cheerful, her eyesight good and her mind sharp, and
she has a quick sense of Welsh humour. She has come to terms with the
holidaymakers. If it rains she will tell the campers “Bad day” When the
sun shines she says, “Good day”. Her other greeting in English is “How are
you?” She became a hired farm servant at 13 and earned £7 10s a year. The
hard work kept her strong and healthy. She dislikes television and only
occasionally is persuaded to watch
a
Welsh programme. But she never misses the Sunday morning radio service and
hymn singing.
Mrs Jane Jones aged
88, lives three miles away at Bryn-y-Gloch farm in Llangwnadl and perhaps
an even rarer case of a perfectly happy monoglot. She also started life as
a hired servant on local farms, but has never slept away from home
for a night in more than 60 years she has been at the farm. She
occasionally visited Pwllheli, once had a day-trip to Caernarvon
and only once visited Aberdaron six miles away. English is completely
foreign to Mrs Jones, but she reckons she can detect the cultured English
visitor from others. She says she had not been through the farm gate to
the main road for the past three years. Others say it is probably more
than 10 years. She was born only a mile from her present home and has,
except for a brief excursions, spent all her life within a square mile.
“There was no end to the day’s work, from morning till night in the old
days,” she said. “But we did not find it hard, we took our time and were
always happy working. I never wanted to go anywhere, not even to the
village,” Her daughter and son-in-law, Mr and Mrs John Williams, who live
at the farm with her say she had pneumonia about 40 years ago, but has not
seen a doctor since.
Too
Late.
A few fields away at
Plas Morfa, lives her 90-year-old brother, Mr Ifan Roberts, he speaks no
English, but his wife had a good English education at Howell’s School,
Dendigh.
Near Nefyn lives
another elderly, once-monoglot Welsh man, who married a monoglot English
woman. Through necessity each learned the other’s tongue.
Jack Bryn y Gloch, Jane's son in law. |
Bryn y Gloch, Llangwnadl |
Mrs Jane Jones insists
that neither Mrs Helen Thomas, aged 87, of Yr Oerfa, nor Mrs Martha Evans,
aged 88, of Penclawdd, know or speak any English. Others that she and her
daughter confirm as monoglots are Miss Sarah Hughes, aged 86, of Bryn,
Llangwnadl, and Mrs Mary Jones, aged 88, of Gwyddel, Uwchmynydd. Mr Owen
Roberts, another octogenarian of Afan, and Miss Ann Williams, aged 80, of
Bryn Trefgraig, both of Llangwnadl, can speak no English. Mr William
Thomas, aged 88, of Y Fron, Aberdaron, reads an English paper every day,
but claims he does not speak the language. There are also Mrs Margaret
Williams, aged 88, of Glanrafon, Aberdaron, and Mrs Janet Parry who is 90,
and lives at Ty Anelog, Aberdaron.
These are the known
monoglots in the area, but it is almost certain there are many more
quietly living their lives in blissful seclusion. Good health, contented
minds and the sea-grit remoteness of this corner of Wales have combined to
naturally resist any of today’s English inroads on the Welsh language and
culture. The intrusion of cars, television and visitors on Llŷn’s good
roads have come too late to affect them. “Those in their seventies have
nearly all some rough knowledge at least of English, even if they don’t
use it, and this is true of many here, even in middle-age,” said the local
clergyman Rev Robert Williams. He says he is still a newcomer after 15
years in his parish.
A headmaster who has
carried out research into the monoglot population of the peninsula called
last night for an accurate record to be compiled before the last survivors
die. Mr John Morris, headmaster of Aberdaron Primary School, told me, “No
one really knows how many there are in these parts.” “So many of the old
people have had hardly any contact with English or with English people
that it is not easy to estimate, other than with the real monoglots, how
much English they know.
Dialects.
A team from St Fagans
Folk Museum has visited the monoglots of Llŷn and plan to go again,
furthering their studies in Welsh dialects. Headed by Mr Vincent H
Phillips, keeper of all Traditions and Dialects, they have compared the
monoglots’ dialects and taped them for their archives, taken details of
old folk songs and made a photographic record of old farmhouses. “The
stories they tell of farm life many years ago provide useful information
for the museum,” he said. “We hope to go to the area again, but we face
the problems of finance and finding enough researchers to investigate
before some of these very old people are lost to us.”
(Footnote) Mrs Jane
Jones, Bryn y Gloch, Llangwnadl, died in 1980 when she was 100 years old.
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