Family reunion in South Wales
Vee (known to her family as Vera) and I have spent much of this (wet) Bank Holiday weekend in South Wales and the highlight of the visit was a family reunion on Vee’s side.
The venue was “The Thomas Arms” in the town of Llanelli. The town’s name – which means in English “Church of St. Elli” – is often mispronounced by non-speakers of Welsh (which certainly includes me), particularly those from outside the UK. The “ll”s in the name are pronounced as something called “voiceless alveolar lateral fricatives”, a phoneme unfamiliar to most English-speakers. In England, where many people are aware that “ll” is not the same as “l” but are unable to pronounce it quite correctly, it is common to hear “Llanelli” approximated as “Clanethli”.
Now years ago, Llanelli – which is on the River Lliedi – had half a dozen docks when tin especially was brought from Cornwall to the town for processing. One of the pilots who guided the vessels into these docks was a man called Robert Richards who was Vee’s great grandfather on her mother’s side. The reunion was of descendants of Robert Richards and their relatives and amazingly almost 70 people gathered from South Wales, London, Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, Hampshire, West Sussex and Manchester. The youngest was 18 months old and and eldest was 88 years old.
We were all brought together through the wonderful organisational efforts of retired headteacher Roland Evans who still lives in Llanelli. After a two-course lunch, he opened up a series of personal recollections about family members – some sad, many amusing, and all interesting – delivered in the main with a wonderful Welsh lilt. Vee – who is not one for speaking in public – told the story of her Czech father who was a night fighter ace in the Second World War. The event was recorded with a photograph taken by the local newspaper the “Llanelli Star”.
May 27th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Oh, I really want to see Wales! I took a course on Celtic Literature in college, and our professor had studied in Aberystwyth. She loved Welsh mythology. She taught us how to say that “ll” sound — I remember her trick was to make it sound like “tl,” but it takes a lot of practice.
I heard somewhere that Prince Charles is the only Prince of Wales that has learned Welsh. Is this true? I know a little bit based on the course I took, but it’s hard!
May 28th, 2007 at 8:32 am
You’re probably right about Prince Charles, Dana, although I doubt that he speaks the language often or well.
You are a very rare American who knows any Welsh!