One non-event in Wales, but then a nice surprise in England | If SSIW is helping you, why not help us? Get DAILY lessons: Become an SSIW Member!

[MikeEllwood]

I briefly visited North Wales last week, but had no opportunity to attempt to speak ~Welsh, sadly, although I had fun reading road signs, etc. It was one of those family-related visits where the circumstances dictate that one doesn't have too much control over where one goes or what one does. I'm sure we've all had those on occasion.

However, today I had a nice surprise to find that a fellow member of a local club is a Welsh speaker, and used to be president of the Welsh Society at the university where he taught. He used to be a high-powered academic, but is now retired, not that academics of his seniority ever fully retired. Despite being high powered he is very nice and friendly, and kindly took my details and promised to keep me informed of Welsh-oriented social events, like a Welsh-speaking party that he organises at his house.

We exchanged a few words of Welsh. Needless to say, I had a certain amount of brain freeze, but I was able to come out with one or two complete sentences that SSiW learners would have recognised. Being an adademic, it's possible he speaks "posh Welsh" himself, but he was too well-mannered to look down on my version.

He said he was "Liverpool Welsh". Does that imply that what he spoke would be North Walian?

[Maynard]

Hi Mike, Glad you found a Welsh speaker nearer to you. Liverpool-Welsh is North Welsh yes. In the nineteenth century Liverpool had a large Welsh community, when I lived there in the 80's there were still a few Welsh speakers around.
this essay might be of interest
http://www.liverpool-welsh.co.uk/DISSERTATION.pdf

[RobertBruce]

It is said that there were first language welsh speakers in John Lennon's class at his primary school.

[RamblingJohn]

da iawn Mike, that's a brilliant result, look forward to hearing about how your future meetings go.

Cheers J.P.

[Bacsie]

The Liverpool Welsh get a nice section in the new museum on the Liverpool waterfront. I'd post the photos if I knew how.

[Tahl]

A first-language Welsh friend of mine from Llanrwst calls Liverpool 'the capital of North Wales.'

[MikeEllwood]

That interesting paper about the Liverpool Welsh talked about the Welsh Chapels in Liverpool, which reminded me that when my in-laws lived in North Staffordshire, they used to go to a Welsh Chapel in Hanley, Stoke on Trent.

I searched on google to see if it was still open, but apparently it has closed in relatively recent years.

I tried to post a link to a relevant article last night, but seem to have not posted it after all. I'll just summarise it and say that north Staffordshire used to have extensive coal mines and there was a large influx of Welsh miners there in the 19th century. I'd guess there was more than one Welsh chapel, but this article only mentioned one.