{"id":6140,"date":"2017-04-04T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-04T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-09-12T15:47:40","modified_gmt":"2020-09-12T19:47:40","slug":"so-your-character-is-from-wales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victoriagracehowell.com\/staging\/6258\/so-your-character-is-from-wales\/","title":{"rendered":"So Your Character is From Wales … Featuring Ester @ To Write or Not to Write & Tasha @ 365 Days, 365 Photos"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nIt’s time for this week’s So Your Character is … Post! This is a weekly segment where I interview lovely volunteers from around the world to give you a firsthand account of being a citizen of their respective country or having a disability. I’m hoping to encourage international diversity, break stereotypes, and give writers a crash course on how to write a character from these different places on our planet. If you haven’t checked out last week’s So Your Character is from the Midwest United States … be sure to hop on over there and give it a read!<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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I have Welsh blood and I’ve seen so many Doctor Who episodes set in Wales. That is the majority of my knowledge of the country, so I’m so happy that Ester and Tasha could be here to tell more!<\/span>
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Disclaimer: The content below may be culturally shocking to some. Each of these posts are as uncensored as possible to preserve the authenticity of the cultures of each of the interviewees.<\/span>
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Hi, I\u2019m Esther Lowery, a seventeen-year-old girl from North Wales in the United Kingdom. I live with my family and my dog, Sooty. And my sister\u2019s bajillion pets. I\u2019ve written from pretty young and most of the time I write some form of fantasy, occasionally dipping into sci-fi and dystopian. My reading habits are essentially if it\u2019s a book, I\u2019ll probably read it. I\u2019m currently halfway through my correspondence degree in English Literature. <\/span><\/span>
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Hi, I\u2019m Tasha! <\/span>I\u2019m nineteen and from the Brecon Beacons in Mid-Wales. Right now, I\u2019m working as a badminton player and coach whilst studying for my fourth year of a degree with the Open University (Earth sciences, so my educational background is not in writing!!) <\/span>
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\nI was brought up around literature. My mother has had stern words with me about dating anyone who has no obvious piles of books around their house. I\u2019m involved in the Hay Festival of Literature and Arts, and am usually found trying to persuade my alpacas to get out of the neighbors\u2019 garden. <\/span>
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\nWhat do you feel is unique to your country? Landmarks? Celebrations?<\/b><\/span>
\nEster:<\/b> Well, in terms of celebrations, we have St. David\u2019s Day (Dydd G\u0175yl Dewi in Welsh) which occurs on the 1st of March. On that day, we basically celebrate the patron saint of Wales, St. David, along with our culture and heritage and stuff. We eat traditionally Welsh food, wear daffodils (which is the national flower of Wales), and some people dress up in traditional Welsh clothes. Then there\u2019s the Eisteddfod, which is an artistic festival. There\u2019s a National Eisteddfod which runs during the first week of August and is entirely in Welsh. It\u2019s not the only one, there\u2019s a few others, but that\u2019s the most important one. <\/span>
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\nWe have loads of castles, quite of few of them dating back to Edward I. And we have a place called \u2018Llanfair\u00acpwllgwyngyll\u00acgogery\u00acchwyrn\u00acdrobwll\u00acllan\u00actysilio\u00acgogo\u00acgoch\u2019. I\u2019m not even kidding.<\/span>
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Tasha:<\/b> I moved into Wales from the Home Counties in England, and the first thing that struck me was how generous the people are. Wales is still very much centered around sheep farming, and as a result of that there are still the old communities which are incredibly tight. There\u2019s a village five minutes away from where I live, and every single house in it is owned by the same family. There are grandparents and great-aunts and cousins and step-siblings and it kind of blows my mind.<\/span>
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\nThe Welsh are very proud. Of anything. We\u2019re proud of our mountains, we\u2019re proud of our coastline, we\u2019re proud of Cardiff, we\u2019re proud of the red dragon on our flag, and we are very proud of our rugby. But we don\u2019t have big celebrations or festivals, which is a real pity! St. David\u2019s Day is celebrated on the 1st of March and is our patron saint\u2019s day, and Dydd Santes Dwynwen is, in the \u201cWelsher\u201d parts of Wales, celebrated on the 25th of January and is much like Valentine\u2019s Day.<\/span>
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\nThat\u2019s the other thing about Wales. We have this tongue-murdering language as well. <\/span>
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Tell me about your country’s environment. What are some of your favorite places?<\/b><\/span>
\nEster:<\/b> Rainy. Really rainy. Swansea is the wettest city in Britain. We have more rainfall than the rest of the UK. I\u2019m being completely serious. <\/span>It doesn\u2019t tend to get particularly hot, I don\u2019t think, but it doesn\u2019t get extremely cold either. It\u2019s ridiculously hilly. A running joke in my family is that you can\u2019t get anywhere in Wales without going up or down a hill at some point.  <\/span>My personal favourite places would be Llandudno (a seaside town), Moel Famau (a hill in the Clywdian Range), Llangollen (they have, or used to have, this steam train that you could go on), New Quay, Greenfield, Rhuddlan Castle and the surrounding town. <\/span>
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Tasha:<\/b> Here in the Beacons, there\u2019s a bit of a running joke. If you can\u2019t see the mountains, it\u2019s raining. If you can see the mountains, it\u2019s about to rain.  <\/span>That aside, it\u2019s absolutely gorgeous here. This photo was taken from my garden last week. In the summer, it\u2019s very lush. There\u2019s a lot of green, a lot of rivers and an awful lot of sheep. <\/span><\/p>\n

Wales is one of those places that varies dramatically. It\u2019s a country that used to be famous for it\u2019s mining, and that\u2019s left a mark on the country. I don\u2019t see it where I live, because the Beacons has been about farming since the dawn of time, but the south has a lot of old coal towns, and they look tired. So the country goes from stunning to worn in the blink of an eye. <\/span>
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\nIt\u2019s also worth noting that my land backs on to the ground used by the SAS to train, because it can be as extreme as Afghanistan. When it rains, it pours. When the wind blows, it howls. When it snows, we stay put for a month. <\/span>But it\u2019s actually very pleasant, I swear!<\/span>
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Tell me about your country’s food. What are some of your favorite dishes?<\/b><\/span>
\nEster: <\/b>We have Welsh Rarebit, which is basically melted cheese on toast with things such as ale, mustard, cayenne pepper and other spices mixed in. Then there\u2019s Welsh cakes, which are like weird little cakes made from flour with sultanas, raisins and currants mixed in, then fried and dipped in sugar. Cawl, which is a lamb stew. Welsh lamb, which is pretty much what it sounds like. Bara brith, which is a sweet loaf of bread (either with yeast or without) with various bits of dried fruit in it.  <\/span>My favourite is Welsh cakes, as they are really, really tasty. <\/span>
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Tasha:<\/b> Wales has a couple of traditional foods. There are the aptly named Welsh cakes, which are basically like American biscuits (I think!!) and are made from flour, raisins, and if we\u2019re feeling super wild then spices like nutmeg and cinnamon. So those are great, and don\u2019t taste too much like diabetes unless my neighbor makes them and then it\u2019s like a sugar fest.<\/span>
\nThen there is bara brith, which is another raisin-y deal. It\u2019s made with tea, dried fruit and raisins and walks the fine line between a fruitcake and bread. It\u2019s very lovable.<\/span>
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\nIt\u2019s also worth considering that the leek is our national vegetable. So there\u2019s a lot of leek-y things like cawl, Glamorgan sausages (vegetarian, no oinks were hurt) and cawl cennin. <\/span>
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\nBrecon is a barracks town as well, and the Welsh guards share with the Nepalese Gurkhas. I\u2019m not 100% sure why we have a Gurkha population in Mid-Wales, but we do and  they are fab and have normalized Nepalese food here. So you can tuck into your Glamorgan sausage with a side of Nepalese noodles. Which, if you ever get the opportunity, I would definitely recommend.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Tell me about any different speech patterns in your country. Slang? Idioms? Words for things such as \u201cbiscuits\u201d instead of \u201ccookies\u201d?<\/b><\/span>
\nEster:  <\/b>Well, we use \u2018biscuits\u2019 instead of \u2018cookies\u2019. That is one. Although if you speak Welsh, you might call them \u2018bisgedi\u2019 as that\u2019s Welsh for \u2018biscuits\u2019. We tend to be pretty similar to the English in which words are different to American. <\/span>
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\nA lot of our idioms are either the same as English ones (spanner in the works, fit as a fiddle, popped his clogs, kicked the bucket, easy peasy lemon squeezy, piece of cake), as most of the original ones are spoken in Welsh and so not normally used in English. There are some Welsh words that are widely known so they\u2019re sometimes used even by those who don\u2019t speak the language. Examples of that would be \u2018Bore da\u2019 meaning \u2018good morning\u2019 or \u2018Esgusodwch fi\u2019 meaning \u2018excuse me\u2019. We tend to use \u2018like\u2019 a lot in our speech. <\/span>
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\nOur slang is similar to English slang. We sometimes use \u2018cwtch\u2019 for hugs or cuddles. Again, much of it is Welsh. \u2018Pysgod wibbly wobbly\u2019 is one of these. It means jellyfish. Sort of. It actually means \u2018wibbly wobbly fish\u2019.<\/span>
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\nTasha: <\/b>English is primarily spoken in Wales. However, Welsh is spoken throughout the country and it\u2019s actually on the rise due to the Welsh government making it compulsory in schools. Signs and road markings are bilingual (So a \u201cSlow\u201d marking on the road will be \u201cSLOW\u201d with \u201cARAF\u201d just beneath it.) and while many of us still don\u2019t speak the language fluently, we know a bunch of words like slow, school, exit \u2013 repeated exposure is key, kids. <\/span>
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\nBut okay, we\u2019re going to crash course in Welsh because if I could do it \u2013 you definitely can. <\/span>Sneeze. <\/span>Then sneeze again, really fast.  <\/span>Great, you just introduced yourself and told me about your interests. Thank you so much.<\/span>
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\nIt\u2019s a really interesting language, and is mostly spoken in the North. Mid-Wales is a lot more cosmopolitan, so we don\u2019t speak it as much here. It\u2019s a Celtic language, and the sentence structure is back to front, the alphabet is almost the English alphabet but not quite \u2013 it\u2019s bit of a pig to learn.<\/span>
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\nCommon phrases here are \u201cI\u2019ll do it now in a minute\u201d, repeating \u201cyeah\u201d a couple of times, just for good measure, and saying \u201ccwtch\u201d which has no translation but basically means a cuddle.<\/span><\/p>\n

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