{"id":8845,"date":"2023-03-14T13:37:37","date_gmt":"2023-03-14T13:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/?p=8845"},"modified":"2024-10-08T12:32:37","modified_gmt":"2024-10-08T12:32:37","slug":"what-the-eisteddfod-and-the-welsh-language-mean-to-me-for-alumni-by-alumni","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/2023\/03\/14\/what-the-eisteddfod-and-the-welsh-language-mean-to-me-for-alumni-by-alumni\/","title":{"rendered":"What the Eisteddfod and the Welsh language mean to me \u2013 For Alumni, By Alumni"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr Matt Jones (MA 2017) moved to Cardiff from Connecticut with a desire to immerse himself in Welsh culture and the Welsh language. During the 2018 National Eisteddfod held in Cardiff Bay, he was able to truly engage with this culture and see the language in full flow. In this article, using both English and Welsh, he speaks more about this and how he is looking forward to this year’s event.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re heading to the 2023 National Eisteddfod, come and connect with your fellow alumni at the Cardiff University Alumni Reception on Thursday 10 August. If you\u2019re interested in attending, or would like to volunteer as one of our event hosts, email alumni@cardiff.ac.uk<\/a> for further details.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The thing is, I could completely understand the reservations my Welsh friends had surrounding the 2018 National Eisteddfod. The Cardiff Bay location meant that it would have an urban feel and be, for the most part, quite porous, and consequently open and free to the public. Of course, its being free wasn\u2019t their concern. Rather, my Welsh friends, who had grown up with the National Eisteddfod being held in a more remote area that you would camp at, had apprehensions that a more porous urban setting was, to one degree or another, just incongruous next to what their Eisteddfodau had been.<\/p>\n

At the time, it was not for me to weigh in one way or another on this. And even five years later, I don\u2019t have a strong opinion.<\/p>\n

What I can say is that for me, and for what my own conceptions of Wales and the Eisteddfod were in 2018, Cardiff Bay was a perfect setting, and the only location that could have served as a fulcrum that turned me from facing the past into the present.<\/p>\n

I had moved from Connecticut to Cardiff in 2015 to enroll in Cardiff University\u2019s MA in Welsh & Celtic Studies, with the express intention of learning how to read Welsh well enough to continue my doctoral studies on 19th-century Welsh and English literatures, upon completion of the MA. I arrived in Wales with a fairly-formidable knowledge of 18th- and 19th-century Wales, including of the Eisteddfod\u2019s regeneration as part of a larger cultural revival. My goals were strictly academic: I wanted to be able to read the Welsh of Iolo Morganwg and Williams Pantycelyn (still very much a work in progress).<\/p>\n

Yet, as I learned Welsh, I experienced something completely new and, thus, wholly unexpected. I had been monolingual until that point of my life. And for the first time in my life, I felt like I could connect with people of another culture on and in their terms, and in an intimate way.<\/p>\n

And every step of the way this transformation was counterbalanced by what was perhaps the most garishly consistent phenomenon throughout my year of learning Welsh in Cardiff. This was the question of \u2018why.\u2019 This neutral yet incredulous \u2018why\u2019 came from non-Welsh friends who had come to Cardiff to study. And non-Welsh here means English friends, American friends, friends from all over. I never had an answer. If I went to France no one would ask me why I was learning French. I just didn\u2019t understand. And certainly nothing I would say would be satisfactory.<\/p>\n

This is what made the 2018 Cardiff National Eisteddfod special to me: it allowed the askers of \u2018why\u2019 to see an answer for themselves. Being in Cardiff Bay, they were confronted with the living language. It answered \u2018why\u2019 for them in ways that the Eisteddfod\u2019s typical removed location wouldn\u2019t have. Not least since they wouldn\u2019t have seen it.<\/p>\n

Er neis iawn oedd e i gwylio fy ffrindiau yn dod i gwerthferogi iaith a ddiwylliant Cymru yn well, wrth gwrs cafodd yr Eisteddfod effaith mwy arna fi na hynny yn bersonol. Swn i\u2019n gweud y roedd yr Eisteddfod y gyfle cyntaf y gallwn yn rili mynygi fy hun yn Gymraeg, ac actiweli yn cael sgwrs gyda pobl eraill (rhywbeth mwy cymhleth na fy hoff lliw neu anifail, a falle lai na pethau gwleidyddol neu crefyddol).<\/p>\n

Felly, tra roedd fy ffrindiau yn gallu gweld y Gymraeg yn byw am y tro cyntaf yn eu Caerdydd, ac eu Cymru (doedd dim rhaid iddo wedi bod y tro cyntaf, i bod yn glir), o\u2019n i\u2019n gallu defnyddio y Gymraeg am y tro cyntaf yn \u2018fy\u2019 Nghaerdydd, \u2018fy\u2019 Nghymru. Mwy na hwnna, gwelais y lleodd mwy cyfarwedd imi yn cael ei trawsnewid yn y dathliad mwya o\u2019r flwyddyn. Beth arall allai rhywun sydd wedi symud i Gaerdydd er mwyn dysgu Cymraeg yn cofyn am?<\/p>\n

Wrth gwrs, bydda i’n edrych ymlaen i gymryd bant i\u2019m eisteddfod nesa, a falle\u2019r un yr eleni ym Mhwllheli. Ond, o ran fy llinell amser yng Nghymru, fi\u2019n ffili helpu ond teimlo fel daeth yr Eisteddfod Caerdydd yr amser perffaith, imi ac i fy ffrindiau sydd wastad yn cofyn \u2018pam.\u2019<\/p>\n

Felly, beth yw\u2019r Eisteddfod imi? Am rhywun sydd wedi cael ei croesawu i Gymru a\u2019i iaith o tu mas, yn gwmws beth y ddylai. A bydda i’n diolchgar am byth am Gaerdydd yn bod fy brofiad eisteddfod cyntaf.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve introduced \u2018For Alumni, By Alumni\u2019, because who knows our alumni community better than\u2026you guessed it, you! We\u2019d love to hear from you<\/a> with ideas for articles or online events that you\u2019re interested in, you can give insight on, or maybe you ARE the story! Check out our full line-up of articles<\/a> and watch back our live events playlist<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr Matt Jones (MA 2017) moved to Cardiff from Connecticut with a desire to immerse himself in Welsh culture and the Welsh language. During the 2018 National Eisteddfod held in Cardiff Bay, he was able to truly engage with this culture and see the language in full flow.","protected":false},"author":904,"featured_media":8985,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[199,39,2048,201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-stories","category-cardiff-connect","category-eisteddfod","category-for-alumni-by-alumni"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/904"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8845"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10022,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8845\/revisions\/10022"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}