Belonging

I've lived in Merthyr for coming up on 13 years now. Ten in a village on the outskirts, and the last three within spitting distance of the town centre. But it's only been in the last year or so that I've started to feel like I belong here, to feel at home.

It's a weird thing, belonging.  And I don't mean it in the sense people use in this town, to say being related to someone.  It's something that comes from deep inside.  I felt I belonged almost straight away when I lived in Yorkshire, but it's taken me much longer here.  I'm quite a private person, and that goes against the Valleys (especially the villages) ethos of everybody knowing everybody's business.  I guess maybe if I wasn't shy, I'd've fitted in much faster, because people actually are really welcoming, and knowing every last detail about you is their way of accepting you. But I don't work like that.

That said, Squeaky has helped me. Initially to get out and meet anyone - through ante-natal classes, breastfeeding groups, baby massage, mum & baby groups - PirateGirl's mummy is one of the best friends I could ever ask for, and that's exactly how we met.  Then, as Squeaky got older and went to nursery & I went to work, I got to know more people, in work, through work, and through the nursery (in fact, there's a former Welsh rugby international with a child at Squeaky's former nursery, that was quite a surprise!), both parents, carers and colleagues.  Bizarrely, when I first started in my job, I knew 4 people in the office, directly through taking the young Squeaky to baby groups. My icebreaking introduction was that half the office had seen my boobs and I wasn't even drunk.  But enough said about that.

Fast forward to today.  After 13 years, I've started to discover that I know people.  I go to Zumba twice a week (let's not mention those days when I don't, childcare can be a pain sometimes), and I've recently joined a line dancing class.  Squeaky goes to swimming, gymnastics and dancing lessons.  And of course, there's school and work.

I discovered a little while ago that the receptionist at my dentist goes to my Zumba class.  Then I learned she was the sister of someone I work with. One of the swimming mums (and a former mums & babies mum) goes to line dancing.  My next door neighbour's son works with a former colleague in her new job.  My other neighbour's son is in Squeaky's year at school.  My boss's son was in Squeaky's swimming class last term.  And the list goes on.

It seems that wherever I choose to go, someone knows me, or knows someone who knows me.  In the village, I would have found this suffocating.  But having been here longer now, and living in the kind of street where people keep themselves pretty much to themselves (curtain twitching aside!), it's almost comforting.  I'm beginning to feel that I should know people, that actually, yeah, I do belong here.

I might not speak a word of Welsh aside from cwtch, but I've as much right to be here as the next person. It's not about how long you've been here, but what you've made of your home.  And this IS my home, it's Squeaky's home, and I'm only now starting to realise it and recognise it for what it is.

Curriculum Envy

I posted a link on my personal Facebook page a couple of weeks ago to a news story about the re-emergence of the Manx language, and how there is now a Manx primary school, which contained what I thought to be a very pertinent point. The writer said that all the professionals they had spoken to put the success down to one thing - children were not forced to learn the language, and as a result they were approaching it with enthusiasm and interest, because they *wanted* to learn it.

This got some interesting replies, especially as we live in Wales, where Welsh language is compulsory throughout education. People who had been through the system themselves said they had hated it, people whose children had been through it said if they could do it all again they wouldn't, and others said they felt it was a real gift, but not appreciated at the time.  I can't really give further comment on Welsh as I was brought up in England, and I was good at languages at school so I may well have got on with it OK, we'll never know I guess.

It did get me to thinking though. Do politically motivated curriculums (ok, curricula if you want to be correct about it) do children any favours at all, or are they merely pandering to the preferences of adults?  While I didn't go to school in Wales, I did go to a church school, and as a result, I was forced to study RE throughout school. At GCSE level we had the choice of the GCSE class, or a non-GCSE class, no option for "actually I'm not that interested". This meant that out of the 9 subjects we could take, we had one less option, one less chance to study something that interested us, or that would prove useful in employment and later life. I can tell you plenty about the Synoptic Gospels, but do you want to know it? I didn't, and I'm still not sure I want to now.  Schools in Wales are much the same, by making Welsh compulsory, they are taking away the chance for children to study the things they are good at, and are interested in.  If that's Welsh, great, if not, give them a choice.

I remember watching with envy my friends in other schools, who had the opportunity to choose to study psychology, sociology, media studies, things that interested me and would have proved far more helpful in my university days and later in my career.  Instead I took RE and History which bored me senseless (I still managed to pass, despite my best attempts otherwise).  No teen really knows what they're going to do with the rest of their lives at the age of 13 or 14 choosing their options, but I knew for certain I wasn't going to be a religious historian.

I'm not taking away from schools being particularly good at teaching one subject, or group of subjects, as long as there is choice involved. I'm not in England now, I can't comment on the Academy concept which came along long after I left school, and I know that some schools have always been known for the quality of their X department. I remember one boy in my year was especially good at drama, and his parents moved home to enable him to attend a different secondary school with a great drama department (he went on to a few bit parts in Casualty), but again drama, as with art, music, languages, these subjects are a choice not compulsory, even in these specialist schools.

What do you think? Did your school, or your children's school have compulsory subjects outside of the English, Maths & Science that we all expect? How did you approach it?

Further Adventures In Welsh

I've written in the past about our adventures in learning Welsh, and the difficulties we face in supporting Squeaky's education in a language that we don't speak ourselves.  It's not like learning a language

in secondary school where children have the skills to research, practice and learn independently, Squeaky still needs those around her to reinforce what she's learning, and that's really difficult when you don't have a clue.

Her pronunciation is getting better through repetition, and she's been introduced to a few new songs at school, with greater or lesser degrees of success.  Her latest song however, made me laugh more than maybe it should.

Mr Hapus had a wee, had a wee, ha ha!

Mr Hapus had a wee, had a wee, ha ha!

The internet comes to my rescue at times like this, and apparently what she should be singing is 

Mr Hapus ydw'i, ydw'i, ha ha!

(pronounced roughly Mr Hapus adoo ee, adoo ee, ha ha)

Or in English, Mr Happy is my name, is my name, ha ha! Almost to the tune of If you're happy & you know it.  Not that you'd realise, because right now, Squeaky is not going to be setting the next series of the X Factor on fire.  

I know Welsh isn't deliberately full of words that sound to the untrained ear as though they are bathroom related. But when you're teaching to a bunch of 3 & 4 year olds, to whom bodily functions are the most hilarious thing imaginable, there's not much that's going to convince them that they shouldn't be singing about toilets, or having a wee.  And to be honest, here's times where I'm no more mature either. Many pop songs sound better if you substitute heart with arse, or I think so anyway. Think about Billy Ray Cyrus (just for a minute!) Achy Breaky Arse is a whole lot funnier.

Talking to a few other mums, it seems that Had A Wee is quite a common misunderstanding of the song, and will pass in the same way as all the rest.  I'm just intrigued as to what bathroom related misunderstanding Squeaky's going to come home with next.  And how to keep a straight face when she sings it at the top of her voice in the supermarket.

Learning Welsh

Despite both Daddy & I being from the West Midlands, we live in the South Wales Valleys, and as such we're governed by the sometimes strange rules laid down by the Welsh Assembly Government.  Education is a little bit different in Wales to the rest of the UK, it's an area where the Assembly have devolved powers to make their own rules.  (Oddly, since I started mentally writing this post yesterday, the AM with the portfolio for education has resigned, and been replaced by my local AM, Huw Lewis, so education's been very much in the news here.)  One such rule is the compulsory inclusion of Welsh language in the school curriculum, right from the Foundation Stage.

In fact, BEFORE the Foundation Stage.  Squeaky starts part time at the school nursery in September, but Welsh has been included in the things she's been learning in the preschool class at the day nursery she goes to now, for at least the last year.  Neither Daddy nor I speak Welsh at all.  I can recognise a few written words from signs & that, and answer the phones at work with a chirpy "Bore Da! Good Morning!", or a slightly less chirpy "Prynhawn Da! Good Afternoon!" because I'm less confident of my pronunciation of the latter (and I just had to look up the spelling)  This is making things tricky when we try to support Squeaky's learning.

Not understanding the language ourselves though, does make it a fascinating experience, watching how her brain makes sense of and learns language.  If she hears & understands something properly, she repeats it accurately, and learns the right word.  She can count to 5 in Welsh quite effectively (and 6 in Spanish, thanks to Dora The Explorer!), and has picked up a couple of nursery rhymes.  The fun comes along when she doesn't quite hear something right.  Naturally, I guess, she substitutes in something that she does understand, whether or not it makes sense in the context of the song, with entertaining consequences.

Clap, clap, un, dau, tri,
Clap, clap, un, dau, tri,
Clap, clap, un, dau tri,
Toilet, toilet, toilet.

For the non-Welsh speakers, the above numbers are pronounced "Eeen, Die, Tree", and according to a swift google, the last line should actually be "Troi a throi ei’n dwylo", which a colleague advises me is something to do with turning your hands over & over.  I don't know.  There are people far smarter than me who can help with that one.

Yesterday, she decided to match her Spanish skills in counting to 6, by doing the same in Welsh.  As I said above, she's mastered 1 to 5 quite comfortably, but I really can't help past that, even though my train home from Cardiff Central station always goes from Platform 6.  So she went for it herself

Un  (Eeen)
Dau (Die)
Tri  (Tree)
Pedwar (Pedwaaar)
Pump  (Pimp.  Yes. Really. I know.)
QUACK

Again, a quick google tells me she was aiming for "Chwech" so Quack isn't really a million miles away, but the substitution was just so cute, and I really couldn't correct her because I wouldn't have been sure of being right.

It's quite natural, I suppose, to substitute something you understand, even if it doesn't make sense. I remember learning Spanish at school, and seeing one of my classmates write "Kettle" for "¿qué tal?", purely as an aid to her memory.  And the number of mis-heard lyrics I could entertain you with, well, that's a whole other post!

It's going to get harder as she gets older, and learns more Welsh at school.  I've thought about taking classes myself, so that I can support her education. It's not like when she's in High School, doing chemistry or something I was hopeless at, she's going to be looking for a lot more support in the early years of primary school, and I don't quite know how to do that when I haven't got those skills myself.  We're fortunate to have Welsh speaking family members living close by though, so I suspect the linguistic talents of aunties & cousins will be being called upon for the complicated bits.

Do you have any experience you can share with me, on education in a second language?  Or your own mishearings?  C'mon, spill!