A CANADIAN living in Gwynedd who is learning Welsh is launching a new initiative to help others pick up the language.
Heather Broster, of Tywyn, runs the website We Learn Welsh, a platform dedicated to sharing the Welsh language with learners like herself.
They are launching a free Welsh Word of the Day email newsletter on 10 February.
The project is led by Heather along with a team of four native speakers: language enthusiast and writer Nia Bolland, Welsh tutor Gwen Rees, and musicians Liam and Siôn Rickard of the band Lo-Fi Jones.
Heather said: “Subscribers will receive the word of the day every Monday to Friday, complete with audio pronunciation, example sentences, tips for using the word in context, related terms, etymology, and more.
“The beauty of the Word of the Day concept is its simplicity—it allows you to practise your Welsh for just five minutes a day over a coffee, without feeling pressured to memorise more than the word itself.
“Of course, for those feeling more ambitious, each article offers additional information and insights to explore.”
She added: “Although my experience with the Welsh language is fairly recent, my love affair with this part of the world began many years ago, when I was a child on holiday in the nearby fishing village of Aberdyfi.
“While the rest of my friends back in Canada would fly down to hot and sunny Florida for their summer holidays, most of my summers were spent on the Welsh coast, fishing for crabs on the jetty, paddling in the cold sea, and eating fish and chips in a rental car with steamed-up windows.
“My brother and I often joked about leaving Canada behind and buying our own bungalow in the area. I never imagined that that dream would one day become a reality.”
Heather has had a keen interest in learning new languages from a young age.
She explained: “Admittedly Welsh wasn’t the first language to capture my imagination.
“In my teenage years, I spent two years in Hiroshima and Gunma studying Japanese at the university level, and six years in Italy made me fairly fluent in Italian.
“In both cases, I became conversant in the language fairly quickly because it was a matter of survival. And this is where my experience with Welsh has been quite different.
“Unlike Japanese in Japan and Italian in Italy, Welsh isn’t the dominant language of Wales.
“Despite legally having equal status to English, you don’t have to be able to speak the language to survive unless you plan to apply for certain jobs.
“According to the 2011 census, only around 19% of the population claims to be able to speak Welsh, most of whom live in the north and west of the country.
“And Tywyn is one of the towns in Gwynedd where Welsh is spoken the least. This makes it very challenging to practise one’s Welsh on a daily basis!”
She went on: “Recently the Welsh Government announced plans to raise the number of speakers to a million by 2050. Whether they succeed depends greatly on how effectively they manage to improve the social use of the language in all spheres, from government to education to day-to-day life.
“This is perhaps the main driving force behind We Speak Welsh. Although I’m a dysgwraig (learner) myself, I hope that by documenting my language learning journey, I’ll be able help others interested in learning this beautiful and ancient language that, after a turbulent history, so deserves to flourish.”
You can subscribe to the newsletter here.