The Joy Formidable on keeping the Welsh language alive

The idea of home can become quite abstract when you spend a lot of time on the road, especially when there’s been little sign of you settling anywhere in between tours.

My heart has been drawn to various places in the last 10 years of The Joy Formidable. I’ve spent a lot of time in Utah, with its towering red cliffs, deep canyons and incredible sunsets, and sunrises and starry skies.

We’ve lingered in Maine, LA and Scotland but not unpacked the case for any substantial length of time. I don’t know if it’s coincidence or some celestial design but in the year that marks our 10th anniversary, I have felt more connected and loving to the place where I grew up which spawned this band.

Rhydian and I met in Mold/Yr Wyddgrug, North Wales over thirty years ago, both as infants at the local bilingual school Ysgol Glanrafon. Our backgrounds were a little different. He was from a Welsh-speaking family, where Welsh was the prominent language at home. I was learning Welsh for the first time aged 4, with parents who were supportive and championed becoming bilingual but who weren’t Welsh speakers themselves.

Recently, I had coffee in the Castle clad walls of Conwy on the North Walian coast and got chatting to the cafe owner about his 4 year old daughter. It turns out she’s just started at the local Welsh school and is set to be quadriligual. Her mother is Italian, her father speaks Arabic, she’s learning Welsh and they speak English at home. He lingered on the question: “Is four languages too much?”

I beamed and thought, no – it sounds fucking amazing.

In many regions of the world, learning several languages is the norm: a requirement of living in proximity to many regional languages. Science proves that young children have an amazing ability to absorb language. It would seem that in early childhood your brain can suck up words like a happy sponge and you don’t feel the same worry or shame of pronunciation that anxiety riddled adults do. It’s magic and to be much enjoyed. Imagine the money saved by not buying Rosetta Stone.

I’m very grateful that my parents sent me to a bilingual school and I think the preservation of endangered languages is incredibly important. When we lose a language, we lose a culture, we lose insight and knowledge. We lose poetry and song, philosophy and science.

I’m happy to hear that the number of Welsh language speakers is growing and that we’ve recently launched a plan to have one million Welsh Speakers by 2050.

Going back to when Rhydian and I were in school on the Welsh border, I often experienced negativity towards the language. Distant family members thought it was a waste of time – that I’d be better learning a more common language like German or French. I’ve had people complain about me speaking Welsh in public in Wales! Can you imagine that happening in other countries with a native tongue?

Looking back, I think that elements of the Welsh community reacted to that negativity; it heightened them being protective of their language, cautious of English being a language killer.

I was often rebuked in school for speaking English in class with friends, like Rhydian hilariously surmised in an interview once: “We were given shit for speaking English and we were given shit for speaking Welsh.” That’s a pretty fair impression of growing up.

I’m encouraged by the revival that the Welsh language is having and I’m optimistic about it coming from an open, welcoming place where people feel excited about the language, the country and the culture – whatever their roots.

That has certainly been my experience of thrusting Welsh on a small scale onto an outside stage. As I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, we’ve been touring overseas for nearly a decade now and the response to our Welsh Language tracks has always brought us a lot of happiness. We get messages in Welsh from overseas fans wanting to show their appreciation as well as requests for translations and requests for other Welsh music recommendations. I enjoy our small part at being language ambassadors.

And there is the inspiration for our 10 year anniversary release.

Y Falŵ​n Drom (the Welsh language version of our first EP A Balloon Called Moaning) is the result of wanting to celebrate our bilingualism. It also marks a bigger, more personal goal of feeling confident enough to sing and translate a fuller body of work.

I’ve always been a little shy of my Welsh language skills, hearing the less than perfect pronunciation and mutations of a rusty Welsh learner when I speak. I’ve thrown those inhibitions out for this release, I feel proud of our roots and what will make the Welsh revival successful Just a whole lot of doing, speaking, sharing and literally spreading the words that make this Britannic language so special.