Hello from South Africa! I landed in Cape Town on Wednesday morning, and since then, most of my time has been spent sheltering from the rain. It was mostly clear on the day I arrived, but we had a few storm warnings today, and it’s supposed to keep raining until Tuesday. Oh, the joys of Southern Hemisphere winter! Luckily, my hostel has an indoor work room, so I’ve spent lots of my time working on my photo organization system and writing out my interview notes.
I did have a wonderful time in Muizenberg yesterday, though, where I met a University of Cape Town lecturer over coffee. Muizenberg is a lovely coastal town around 30 minutes south of Cape Town’s city center, and it becomes a very popular surf spot in the summer. My contact was kind enough to show me around after our meeting, pointing out interesting signage and taking me along the beautiful shoreline to Rhodes Cottage, a house turned national monument and the place where Cecil Rhodes spent his final days. So far, the signage in Cape Town has been largely only in English, with some signs in Muizenberg showcasing English, Afrikaans, and Xhosa. My interviewee is part of the African Languages department at UCT and speaks Xhosa, so I asked her to teach me the different click consonants of the language. The X click, one of three in the Xhosa language, is lateral, made by pulling the tongue away from the side of the mouth. I may need some practice, but I can now say the name of the Xhosa language correctly!
Rhodes Cottage
A large part of my blog posts from Wales detailed all the traveling I did, so below are some of the most interesting research findings from my time in Cardiff and surroundings. As a reminder, my study is about minority and indigenous language revitalization with a focus on signage. While half of my time is spent in interviews and meetings, learning from scholars and other members of the community about the history and use of these languages, the other half is spent documenting the linguistic landscape around me – taking photos of any and all visual language, including street signs, place names, advertisements, warning signs, museum placards, graffiti, and everything in between.
- I met with my interviewee from the office of the Welsh Language Commissioner at the Wales Millennium Centre (WMC), which is Wales’ national arts center and is located in Cardiff Bay. The WMC is a popular venue for opera, ballet, musicals, and other performance arts, and it also features a co-working space, café, and gift shop on the ground floor. The building’s architecture supposedly reflects both the geographic and industrial history of Cardiff, drawing inspiration from the country’s seaside cliffs and history of steel production.
- The facade of the building features a bilingual poem by Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis that, in its entirety, reads: “Creu Gwir Fel Gwydr o Ffwrnais Awen | In These Stones Horizons Sing.”
Wales Millennium Centre
- It is interesting to note, as I learned from my interlocutor, that the English translation of the poem is by no means literal – in fact, the Welsh reads something more like “creating truth like glass from the furnace of inspiration.”
- The café on the ground floor is called Ffwrnais (meaning furnace), alluding to Cardiff’s history of mining and coal exportation and drawing from the poem.
- As I discussed with another interviewee from Cardiff University, poetry is one of the least accessible forms of language, and according to him, this inscription is a prime example of bilingualism in Wales. With its use of figurative language and obscurity, poetry isn’t exactly a form of language you would expect a beginner learner (or a child, for that matter) to necessarily understand. It requires a certain level of linguistic sophistication to access. On top of that, in the case of this bilingual poem, the English is much more accessible than the Welsh; the English translation is a much simpler sentence, and therefore meaning is more accessible to English speakers than to Welsh speakers. Only bilingual speakers would know that it is a misleading translation and simplification; English speakers who do not speak Welsh (like myself) would assume that the Welsh must say the same thing as the English, and in the process, we lose the original meaning and significance involving Cardiff Bay’s industrial history. The use of glass within each letter, a possible allusion to the Welsh poem, is also an observation lost to those without access to the Welsh meaning.
- That same interviewee from Cardiff University also delved into some public attitudes towards the Cardiff Bay area – particularly, some hold criticism of this area because it has become very linguistically homogenized. Historically, the area was a cosmopolitan trade hub, with mariners from all over the world settling down in Cardiff and working at the docks. This legacy still lives on in the Somali, Yemeni, and Greek communities around the bay. So, although many signs feature English and Welsh, there is a sentiment that even this overlooks and ignores the true multilingual history of the area – an interesting angle I hadn’t thought of.
- Cymraeg 2050 (Wales 2050) is the name of the Welsh language action plan that outlines a strategy to reach 1 million speakers of Welsh by 2050. A secondary target is to increase the percentage of the population proficient in Welsh from 10% (in 2015) to 20% by 2050. As I noted in a previous blog post, Cardiff has a high number but low density of Welsh speakers. Two of my interviewees noted that about 20% of the people on their streets are Welsh speakers. However, they believe that this is mostly thanks to children who are learning Welsh in school, not necessarily attributed to adults. My interviewee from the office of the WLC noted that recent legislation was passed with the aim of elementary students developing oral skills in Welsh equivalent to the B2 level in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) – an upper intermediate level. Welsh is taught in all schools in Wales, however, the degree to which it is taught and used depends on the medium of instruction; Welsh-medium schools will use Welsh as the primary language, whereas in English-medium schools, it is taught as a second language.
- While the Welsh Language Commissioner (WLC) publishes a public list of standardized Welsh place names, local authorities retain the power to decide whether to adopt them. The WLC’s advisory panel – composed of specialists in place-names and Welsh orthography – follows specific guidelines to recommend a standard form when a place, such as a rural town, may have five or six legitimate spellings. Since only one orthography can appear on signage, the panel selects a preferred version and sends it to the relevant authorities. Initially, this process occurred privately between the WLC and local governments. However, in 2018, the WLC began publishing its recommendations publicly, which significantly increased local authority engagement. Once made public, the recommendations gained weight – not just as internal suggestions, but as resources accessible to the broader public, raising the stakes of standardization decisions.
- An interesting dilemma arises with naming topographical features in rural Wales. Visiting hikers and climbers often assign new names to peaks or landmarks – names that may be in English, non-Welsh, or even Welsh but not the original local term. These imposed names can be unintentionally disrespectful, contributing to the erasure of existing place-names held by local farmers and residents. The issue is further complicated by differing relationships to the land: where a farmer sees terrain to work, a hiker sees a peak to conquer. These contrasting perspectives shape the kinds of names given. Since place-names reflect how people relate to and use the land, such discrepancies carry cultural weight. The challenge becomes particularly pronounced when attempting to assign an “official” name – whose history, language, and worldview should it reflect?
Some reflections from my visits to some museums:
- There is a consistent use of bilingual signage – Welsh almost always appears first, either on top or to the left. It’s a clear, deliberate choice, and one that stood out after seeing some monolingual English signs elsewhere in the city. In particular, warning signs – like “In the event of fire” notices – tend to be in English only, even in spaces that otherwise make an effort to include Welsh. I’ve started spotting more bilingual warnings recently, but the inconsistency is hard to ignore. Inside the exhibits, there’s also a noticeable variation in how both languages are presented. Sometimes they share the same font, color, and size; other times one is bolded, italicized, or completely different in style. There doesn’t seem to be a consistent visual standard, which subtly changes the way the two languages relate to each other on the sign – who gets emphasis, who blends in. Even the video exhibits reflect these dynamics. Rather than subtitling, the showings alternate between Welsh and English versions. It’s a creative solution, but it does mean you either catch the version you understand, or you don’t. I also couldn’t help but notice that the English narrator had an English accent – not Welsh. It’s a small thing, but it speaks to how authority and “neutrality” are still often linked to English, even in bilingual contexts. Though I’m focusing on visual language, I’ve been thinking a lot about what happens when there isn’t any visible language, like when information is only conveyed through sound. Those absences are meaningful too. On a related note, I started to notice all the little overlaps between Welsh and English – words like coffi/coffee, deinosor/dinosaur, lifft/lift. There are so many homonyms and borrowings that pop up in signage and speech.
Although this has been a lengthy blog post, I have much more to say and write about from my two short weeks in Cardiff, not to mention everything I’ve already learned and experienced in just two days in Cape Town. I’m hoping to go to some museums tomorrow (a good rainy day activity) and take advantage of the clearer weather on Tuesday and visit Table Mountain!
Until then,
Maya