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#WritingPrompt: Navigating heritage through language loss
Generations
A memory of languages, a language of memories…
I warned my aunt that sometimes, when my grandfather woke, he woke in ‘Welsh mode’ — a child’s Cymraeg, from whatever boyhood memory he’d been dreaming of.
She was doing us the favour of staying with him for a few days — giving us a small break, some peace of mind. She lived near London, at the time, and only came back here, to Wales, a few times a year.
“You can answer in English,” I said, “he’ll understand. It just takes him a few moments to remember when he is. Just don’t panic if it happens, OK?”
“But dad doesn’t speak Welsh!” she replied.
“…Yes,” I said, bewildered, “he does.”
Author’s Note: My dad explained that grampa rarely spoke Welsh when they were growing up, so rarely that my aunt apparently didn’t know he could speak Cymraeg at all. (…The history of language politics and culture is complicated here.)
It would have been my grampa’s birthday earlier this week — a few days after mine; I miss him so much.
#WritingPrompt: a) Navigating heritage through language loss, and/or b) Chaos as a backdrop to connection, and/or c) Unexpected joy in…
