It is only my fifth full day in Singapore and there’s already so much to say! After Wales, South Africa, and now Singapore, left-hand traffic rules have almost become second nature to me. 

Duck noodle soup

It wouldn’t feel morally right to create a blog post about Singapore and not share the marvels of its food scene. For the past few days, I’ve been busy trying all of the hawker centres and $5 dollar Michelin Star meals I can find. So far, I’ve had the traditional Singaporean breakfast of kaya toast (toast with coconut jam dipped in runny egg with soy sauce) as well as duck noodle soup, pork and chive dumplings, butter chicken and naan, butadon, chilli crab bao buns, nasi lemak, otah (fish cake wrapped in banana leaves), and of course, kopi (Singaporean style coffee and also the Malay word for coffee). It’s safe to say there’s always more food to try in Singapore. 

Clive St sign and mural in Little India

Hawker centre in Chinatown

Apart from this food rampage, I’ve visited the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) campus, walked around Chinatown and Little India, explored parts of Jurong East and the Jurong Lake Gardens, and visited both the Indian Heritage Center and the National Museum of Singapore. 

I had my first interview this morning, with a linguist from NTU who has a background in secondary school teaching and currently studies approaches to interactional sociolinguistics and ethnography in Singapore. Below are some of my reflections from this interview and from my experiences and observations over the past few days:

A crucial thing to understand about Singapore is that the state enforces a bilingual education policy: students must learn English (typically the primary language of instruction) and a “Mother Tongue” (MT), which is assigned based on race and not necessarily on the language one actually speaks at home. The state uses the CMIO model – Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Other – to racially classify people, which loosely maps onto the country’s four official languages: Mandarin, Bahasa Melayu (Malay), Tamil, and English. This model assumes that one race equals one culture equals one language. 

Warning sign at construction zone – English, Mandarin, Tamil, Malay

MTs are usually assigned according to one’s father’s race, and while mixed-race individuals can nowadays technically choose between their identities, many still default to the father’s side for tradition’s sake (or for pragmatic reasons, like choosing Chinese because of Mandarin’s economic and international value). Even children who don’t fit into CMIO neatly still have to pick a MT to study in school. This rigid structure is framed as promoting racial equality, but in practice, it requires constant maintenance and ends up reinforcing artificial divisions.

English is the dominant working language, essential for international business, education, and survival in the global economy. Despite high literacy and widespread home use, especially among younger generations, English isn’t recognized as a legitimate part of Singaporean heritage by the state. The government frames English as purely functional – useful but culturally empty. Plenty of younger Singaporeans see English as their first or native language, but this clashes with state ideology. Compared to places like Cardiff, where young people are reviving indigenous/mother tongue languages, here it’s the opposite: kids are leading the shift to English at home.

The state discourages people from learning languages outside their assigned MT, framing it as a threat to racial balance. At the same time, it promotes English for economic reasons – which is the same logic some families use when choosing to study Mandarin or other useful languages. The system is stuck: if too many non-Chinese people learn Mandarin, it looks like favoritism. But denying it to them can also seem unfair. These contradictions emerge because the state has tied language so tightly to race that it can’t adapt easily when real people make different choices.

Singlish, a local variety of English mixed with Malay, Mandarin, Tamil, and other influences, is widely spoken but officially discouraged. The government has tried to suppress Singlish through the Speak Good English Movement, partly because it’s seen as damaging to Singapore’s international image. Still, Singlish is alive and evolving – youth are now mixing in Korean and Japanese phrases too. Even when people speak their assigned MT, it’s often a localized version – like Singaporean Tamil, which isn’t always intelligible to Tamil speakers from India. These hybrid forms reflect how people actually live and speak, even if they don’t align with official language categories.

The state uses language policy as part of nation branding – projecting Singapore as modern and global (via English) but also deeply rooted in culture (via MTs). Multilingual signage, museum materials, and public campaigns often include all four official languages, but usually in symbolic or curated ways. MRT (Singapore’s subway system) announcements, for example, include all four, but the order often reflects population hierarchies, even if unintentionally. An attempt to make transport announcements only in English and Mandarin some years ago backfired – even many Chinese Singaporeans saw it as catering to mainland migrants over local diversity. National Day (which is coming up – August 9!) songs and posters are supposed to appear in all four languages, but this isn’t always carried out consistently.

In Singapore, there’s no formal or universal signage policy requiring bilingual or multilingual signs. Public transport, government notices, and tourist areas sometimes may use all four official languages – but largely for image, not functionality. Hawker centres and neighborhood spaces reflect more bottom-up multilingualism (i.e. signs created by people rather than by the government), showing the actual languages people use. At hospitals, older people may struggle if signs aren’t in their language,  and most museums are English-only. Some neighborhoods (like Kampong Glam) have curated murals and signs in multiple languages, but most street art is commissioned and top-down. Even things like Chinese script (simplified vs. traditional) vary across contexts depending on the audience being targeted.

Bottom-up sign (created by an individual) looking for a roommate and stressing racial/ethnic requirement

Sticker in English and Mandarin, individual looking for shophouse

In contrast to the younger population, most older Singaporeans wouldn’t call themselves native English speakers. Despite Singapore’s wealth, there’s little structural care for the elderly, who often work menial jobs like cleaning or tray return at hawker centres. The country is deeply future-focused, often at the expense of the older generation’s needs – including linguistic accessibility. Public infrastructure doesn’t always accommodate non-English speakers, even though that includes a significant portion of the aging population.

Like I said – so much to say! I’ve heard plenty of travelers say you can do Singapore in just a few days, but I think that depends on what you want to see. I’ve been here for five days and still feel like there is so much more to discover! Still on my to-do list are the Gardens by the Bay, Arab Street and Haji Lane, the Botanical Gardens, and a few more museums. I also have a couple of interviews scheduled for later this week. 

Until then!

Language is always there in the background, quietly shaping space and movement, whether people talk about it directly or not. During my first interview, I learned that Ditsong Museums (operating across Pretoria and Johannesburg) have an official language policy grounded in the South African constitution. On paper, they commit to using English, Afrikaans, isiZulu, and Sesotho. These are supposed to appear across external communication, exhibitions, and internal operations. But what’s on paper and what plays out are two different things. According to the policy, exhibits are in English and one “adopted language,” depending on the audience. Tour scripts and programs can be offered in any of the four languages, but only “visitor preference permitting,” and translation is available – again, if requested. This means the burden is on the visitor to ask. If you understand English, you’re unlikely to go out of your way to request another language, and even less likely to know that you can. So English, while officially just one of four languages in use, functions as the default – silently signaling priority and importance. 

Ditsong’s marketing manager also described how the physical location and subject matter of a museum might influence what languages you see represented. For instance, a museum dealing with paleontology or meteorites (like their Museum of Natural History, which I visited) is less concerned with cultural-linguistic representation than one focused on ethnography or material history (like their Museum of Cultural History or Kruger Museum). Some museums have limited audio content, mostly in response to accessibility concerns – visitors who struggle to read small text or who are visually impaired have given Ditsong this feedback. But, for the most part, English dominates both signage and the website. There’s an effort underway to make the site multilingual, but English’s reach – especially with international visitors – keeps it at the center. 

I was fascinated by how this interview turned toward the role of museums as community hubs. My interlocutor emphasized that Ditsong doesn’t want their museums to be purely academic or didactic spaces. Many of their museums have beautiful courtyards, gardens, and even overnight accommodation for visitors at more remote sites. One museum site hosts weddings; another holds community fun runs followed by music and food. These choices aren’t just about generating revenue (though that’s certainly part of it); they’re about redefining what a museum is for – making it a lived and loved part of the community. This desire to create accessible, social, and healing spaces is also what motivated them to expand into programming about indigenous knowledge and medicinal plants. I was told that at Tswaing Meteorite Crater, their meteorite site museum, there’s a strong focus on this connection between land, memory, and wellness. It’s an entirely different kind of “knowledge production” than what museums are traditionally known for. 

In the same conversation, I also learned something I hadn’t expected: a short history of how some Southern Bantu languages were standardized. Sesotho, Setswana, and Sepedi all originated from a common linguistic ancestor. The names of countries like Lesotho and Botswana literally mean “land of the Sotho/Tswana people.” But what really struck me was the story behind the orthography of these languages – how they came to be written and not just spoken. In the 1830s, French missionaries arrived in what is now Lesotho. They learned the spoken language and began teaching literacy using French spelling rules. That’s why, for instance, the /wa/ sound in Setswana is spelled “wa,” but in Sesotho, it’s “oa” – a quirk that reflects the French use of o + vowel to make the sound /w/ (oiseau, for example). Similarly, where Setswana uses “we,” Sesotho might use “oe.” It’s a small detail that tells a big story: colonial powers didn’t just document languages – they shaped them, embedding their own phonetic habits into structures that still exist today. 

Another conversation that shifted how I think about language was with a sociolinguist who studies what he calls the “semiotic landscape.” It’s not just about words on signs, he explained, but about anything visual that communicates meaning. One example he shared was of a trilingual road sign in English, Afrikaans, and Tswana. The English was printed at the top, easily visible to drivers; Afrikaans and Tswana were lower down – eye-level for pedestrians. The sign wasn’t just multilingual, but also encoded assumptions about who was driving, who was walking, and who needed which language. The conversation made me rethink my photography method. I have of course been photographing signs themselves, but now I find myself stepping back, noticing how and where the signs are placed and the context that surrounds them, not just what they say. In touristy areas or places trying to seem “authentic,” language can also function more symbolically. He pointed out that certain languages get used to signal cultural credibility, used because it “feels local” to consumers. It’s a performance of authenticity, typically more about trendiness or branding than communication. That theme came up again with a young tour guide I talked to, who leads walking tours around Soweto and the inner city. He lives in Soweto and speaks ten of South Africa’s official languages. When I asked which one he didn’t speak, he smiled and said, “South African Sign Language – but I want to learn.” He told me that in Soweto, unlike the city center, there are hardly any visible street signs – no overhead posts, and the street curb labels that are commonplace across South African cities have mostly faded or crumbled away. People navigate more by memory and landmarks than by written names. 

He described an area near the Mzimhlope station that locals reference as the ‘herd of elephants,’ apparently because of the way the tightly packed houses look – language as metaphor, drawn from landscape and familiarity rather than street maps. Walking around Soweto, I kept noticing how place names themselves hold layers of meaning. Mzimhlophe means “white houses” in isiZulu, referring to the standardized color of the homes in that area. Jabulani means “rejoice” in Zulu. Naledi means “star” in Sotho. Orlando, I learned, was named after a former mayor – Edwin Orlando Leake – who chaired the Native Affairs Committee in the 1920s. These names are more than administrative; they carry memory, pride, and resistance. 

Then there’s Tsotsi Taal, or Isicamtho – a township slang that blends Zulu, Sotho, Tswana, English, Afrikaans, and more. It began as a sort of street argot but grew into a full-fledged youth language, especially after the 1976 uprisings, when Afrikaans became associated with the apartheid regime. Isicamtho became a form of defiance – reclaiming voice, rejecting the language of power, and building a shared identity in its place. It’s still evolving, still alive in Soweto, especially among younger speakers. Some of these themes echoed in an interview with a restaurant manager in Parkhurst, one of Johannesburg’s more gentrified neighborhoods. He runs an Indian restaurant, staffed mostly by South Africans of other backgrounds (he himself is Indian). The menu was in English, naturally – it’s a trendy area, and English performs a particular kind of cosmopolitanism in spaces like that. Nothing out of place, just another small clue about how language meets audience, geography, and economic aspiration. Of course, there are the food words that survive and thrive: kota, for example. A township classic made from a quarter loaf of bread filled with fries, sausage, cheese, egg, and sauce. The name itself – kota – comes from that quarter-loaf. It’s a delicious little reminder that language, like food, is always evolving in the street, in homes, in the everyday.

Hello from Qatar!

It’s been a while since my last post – I wanted to get one uploaded before leaving South Africa but interviews, exploring, and packing for this 22-hour journey (of which I’m currently in the middle) caught up to me. 

I’m writing this blog post from the airport in Doha, as I have a 3-hour layover here before I hop on a flight to Singapore. Landing in Doha, where my family lives and where I graduated high school, was definitely more surreal than I expected it to be – as I stepped out of the plane and onto the tarmac to await a shuttle bus at around 10pm Doha time, I was greeted by the familiarity of warm, humid summer air and the soft yellow glow of the city’s skyline in the distance. Everything from the Qatar Airways boarding music to the selection of films onboard felt familiar, so it is definitely strange to be merely passing through here for a few hours. 

An example of bilingual signage in the Doha airport, which, in part, inspired this project

As for Joburg, I arrived last Wednesday afternoon and had my first interview on Thursday. This interviewee was the marketing manager for Ditsong: Museums of South Africa, an amalgamation of eight museums in Pretoria and Johannesburg. Their offices in Pretoria – where we met – are about an hour away from where I was staying, so I decided to make a day trip out of the meeting. Before the interview, I was able to visit Ditsong’s Museum of Natural History, which gave me some good signage material and a better sense of the style of Ditsong’s exhibitions. My contact welcomed me with a beautiful spread of coffee, juice, and scones in the sunny courtyard behind Ditsong’s administrative office, which was also connected to the garden of their Kruger Museum. She and two of the women who work in her office also gave me a gift – a hat and a mug, each featuring Ditsong’s logo. It was such a warm welcome and there was so much to talk about that I ended up staying there for 3 hours! Since I was in Pretoria, I wanted to visit both Freedom Park and the Voortrekker Monument after the interview, but I was only able to make it to the first before sunset, when I embarked on the hour-long return to my hostel. In the following days, I was also able to talk to a sociolinguist, a local restaurant owner, and a tour guide. More about these conversations and other Joburg findings in the next post. 

Since then, my week has been filled with a mix of sightseeing, going to various museums, subsequent interviews, and staying up late playing card games and sharing pizza with my hostelmates. This has been my favorite hostel so far. One night, we held a braai (the South African version of grilling/barbecue) in honor of someone’s last night in Joburg, turning the simple meal into a warm farewell – my first time trying ostrich (which tastes like a mix between chicken and beef)! Also, every morning at around 11 am, a local man would drop by selling amagwinya for R2 each – South African fried dough balls, made by his wife. They were delicious and instantly took me back to the oliebollen I used to enjoy living in the Netherlands. Those little tastes brought a surprising comfort amid the constant change.

Amagwinya

Braai!

I visited the Apartheid Museum and Constitution Hill, both of which give an amazingly vivid depiction of life under apartheid and the conditions under which political prisoners lived. While visiting Constitution Hill, I was able to walk into the cells in which Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela were held, and the Apartheid Museum had a lengthy exhibition dedicated to telling the story of Mandela’s life. This is what is given to you when purchasing a ticket to the Apartheid Museum:

The slip of paper given to me reads, “Your ticket to the museum has randomly classified you as either ‘white’ or ‘non-white.’ Use the entrance to the museum indicated on the ticket.”

This is the entrance to the museum:

From the very first step, this museum created an incredible educational and emotional impact. Behind the revolving doors, signs from the apartheid era are also showcased (in English and Afrikaans). 

On Sunday I walked the grounds of the Johannesburg Botanical Gardens, and on Monday I went on a biking tour of Soweto. Soweto, its name an abbreviation of South Western Townships, is an area of Joburg that became an epicenter of the fight against the apartheid state in the 1950s. It also is home to Vilakazi Street, the only street in the world to have housed two Nobel Peace Prize winners – Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela and Desmond Mpilo Tutu. Mandela’s former residence has now been turned into a museum, so I was able to go inside and look around. Soweto is also where Trevor Noah is from!

Mandela House outside…

…and inside!

Kota, a popular South African street food that gets its name from the quarter (kota) loaf of bread stuffed with chips, sausage, and sauces

As I sit here in Doha, between continents and places I’ve called home, I’m still processing all that the past week in Johannesburg held – conversations, stories, histories, and late-night hostel laughter. A week was barely enough to scratch the surface of a city so layered in history, energy, and lived experiences. I’ll be sharing more soon from Singapore, including a post with some of the research insights from my time in Joburg.

…And the aforementioned Tuesday is already upon us.

I did not, as I had previously planned, visit Table Mountain today – instead, I spent all day yesterday on a 9-hour tour that took me to numerous landmarks (including Table Mountain) around the Cape Peninsula! Expecting a van or bus of some sort, you can imagine my surprise when a cheerful, friendly Albert (our driver-guide) picked me up at my hostel in a tiny four seater yesterday at 8am, reaching across to the passenger’s seat to pop open the door for me. I had been in contact with him about pick up time and expectations, and he explained that since we would only be four people total on the tour this morning due to one family rescheduling, they had instructed him to take one of the cars used for private tours from the depot. Amused, I hopped in, and after picking up a middle-aged couple from a hotel around the corner and exchanging introductions, the four of us were off to our first stop. 

Albert, despite being originally from the Congo, was an incredibly knowledgeable and a wonderful guide around Cape Town. From connecting a bluetooth headset to the car speaker so that we could all hear his commentary (in no way necessary given the size of our car), to stopping for us at every gorgeous viewpoint along the coast, to being my own personal photographer and instructing me on how to pose at each location, he made the day super fun and educational. From the center of the city we drove south to Muizenberg Beach, then headed West to Boulders Beach to see a colony of African penguins, then continued down to the Cape of Good Hope park and Cape Point, circled back up behind Table Mountain on Chapman’s Peak Drive, and finished with a stop at Table Mountain. The views and natural beauty were incredible, especially from the Cape Point lighthouse and the scenic drive along the coast. I didn’t see much from the top of Table Mountain as it was quite foggy, but I definitely got my fair share of amazing views elsewhere, including a wild ostrich spotting on the side of the road. 

The tour was a great way to experience all of these landmarks, as many of them are only accessible by car and it is not always advisable to go alone, despite them being tourist hotspots. Many people have told me I came to South Africa at the wrong time of year (during the winter months), but despite the rain occasionally preventing some exploring, I have really enjoyed the weather and manageable crowds.

V&A Waterfront

Kirstenbosch

I’ve visited a few museums (the Iziko Bo-Kaap and Slave Lodge Museums, as well as the District 6 Museum), walked along the V&A Waterfront, and explored the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens – so beautiful. Unfortunately, the ferry to Robben Island – where Nelson Mandela was held for 18 of the 27 years he was imprisoned – was closed for maintenance and will remain so until September. I did manage to stumble upon the Cape Town qualifiers for the Red Bull Dance Your Style international street dance competition while I was walking along the Waterfront, so I sat in the crowd to watch that for a while. One of these dancers might go on to represent South Africa at the global finals in LA later this year!

I met virtually with another scholar from the University of Cape Town on Friday whose work focuses on decolonization and education, and she shared some very interesting insights that echoed my own experiences. Despite her willingness to talk to me, she shared that South Africa (and the African continent as a whole) has a complicated relationship with research, especially research surrounding people, culture, and – adjacently – languages; the land whose natural beauty, food, and culture I find myself enjoying has, obviously, a history of colonization, oppression, and violence on many fronts, and the legacy of such forces is apparent in the way that Cape Town is still very socially and economically segregated today. She remarked that the process of researchers coming here to study race, religion, languages, etc., can be, for people living here, a process of violence, as it involves reliving or unearthing generational traumas and experiences. This is exacerbated when researchers themselves are foreigners, as the so-called ‘findings’ are often then used to create a narrative that fits the researcher’s goals – and, not to mention, published outside of Africa, in a way recreating dynamics that define the area’s historical past. She explained that for these reasons, people might be hesitant or unwilling to speak with me about my research, which is something I have definitely come across. It’s something I didn’t think to consider while planning my project but am grateful to have learned from her. I also realize that perspectives like this are only something you can learn from being here, and it informs how I want to write about my time in South Africa. 

I’m very curious to visit Johannesburg, which is generally considered more racially and culturally mixed than Cape Town. I’ll be meeting with a representative from Ditsong Museums, an amalgamation of museums in Pretoria and Johannesburg, within my first few days of being there. I leave for Joburg tomorrow, so here are some reflections from my time in Cape Town: 

• Most public signage in Cape Town, especially in the city center, is in English only, even though a wide variety of languages are spoken throughout the city. In areas like Muizenberg, signage is more likely to be bilingual or trilingual, typically in English, Afrikaans, and occasionally Xhosa. Whenever multiple languages are used, it’s almost always these three – a reflection of historical language policy and present-day demographics (see to right).
• A notable pattern is that Xhosa translations often appear only for the prohibitive parts of signs – for example, “No Swimming” might be translated into Xhosa, while the rest of the information is left in English. This raises uncomfortable questions about whose access is prioritized and how language choices may unintentionally frame certain groups as needing to be policed rather than informed. Similarly, crucial safety signage like wet floor warnings is often in English only. In a few cases, I’ve seen the word “Qaphela” (Zulu for “attention”) appear, which stood out to me – especially because I’ve been noticing similar inconsistencies in wet floor signs across the different (rainy) places I’ve visited so far (see below).
  

  Cardiff (English, Welsh)

  

  Cape Town (English, Zulu)

• In the conversation with my contact in Muizenberg, she told me that Xhosa and Zulu are mutually intelligible and should really be considered dialects of the same language. According to her, the split between them was largely colonial – a way of dividing groups artificially by drawing new linguistic boundaries. She said the difference between Zulu and Xhosa is less than the accent difference between Scottish and Welsh speakers of English. When I mentioned how people in Wales sometimes physically correct bad Welsh signage by writing over it with a marker or sticker, she laughed and said that kind of informal language activism doesn’t really happen here – at least not that she’s seen.
• That same scholar has been actively pushing for better signage in Muizenberg, and some improvements have come as a direct result of her complaints. Many of the poorly translated signs around Cape Town stem from one-time translation requests that aren’t proofread or updated – often due to lack of funding or attention. One example she mentioned was a beach sign that was supposed to say “No swimming” but ended up with a message closer to “Bring your food and swim here,” completely reversing the intended meaning.
• The City of Cape Town’s official logo is trilingual (English, Xhosa, Afrikaans), and public institutions like the Muizenberg clinic generally use trilingual signage – though not in integrated formats. Instead, information tends to be printed three times, once in each language. Street signs, on the other hand, are mostly just place names – often Dutch-influenced or an Afrikaans word – and rarely offer language-specific information. Very occasionally, you might see English words like “Way” with Afrikaans equivalents like “Wag” underneath, but this is rare and inconsistent.
• Welcome signs tend to be the most multilingual, often displaying many languages in a word-cloud-style layout, similar to what I observed in parts of Wales. Museums, however, are surprisingly English-dominant. At the Iziko Slave Lodge, for instance, even when signage includes multilingual headings (often for exhibition titles or themes), the actual descriptive content is typically in English only. On the top floor – which was unexpectedly focused on Ancient Egypt – this meant that non-English speakers could understand what the exhibit was about, but not actually engage with the full text, as if the appearance of inclusivity was prioritized over actual access.

Finally, some of my favorite signs from this week:

See you in Joburg!

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 

Hello everyone! It’s been a wonderful week full of long walks, meetings, and plenty of Tesco meal deals. I feel like my last blog post was a lifetime ago!

I checked in to my hostel on the 24th after having been in a hotel room for a few days – although “checked in” is a bit of an overstatement. With a completely DIY check-in process that involves an online key and no assigned beds, this is definitely one of the strangest hostels I’ve ever stayed in. I had been looking forward to socializing after spending a few days in a room to myself, but the vacant room and the sparsely furnished common area seemed to have other plans for me. So, I dedicated the following few days to my research – walking around different parts of the city, photographing the landscape, and having some very insightful conversations with two professors at Cardiff University. I’ve run into some hurdles with some contacts being away or having to meet online, but nonetheless, it’s been a productive leg of the journey. 

Two days later, however, the stars aligned – people! I walked into the common room on Thursday night to eat my dinner and struck up a conversation with two other Mexican girls around my age who had also just met. Soon after, two Austrian girls joined us at the table along with a Spanish guy who was stopping in Cardiff for the night. All of the girls, as it turns out, were in town for the open-air Noah Kahan concert the following night – a fun pit stop in their respective summer itineraries. As the hours of conversation continued, they urged me to check out ticket prices online…and the deal was too good to pass up.

The concert was held just behind Cardiff Castle, on a plot of land in the middle of Bute Park. We queued up in the Friday afternoon sun, playing charades to pass the time. Things turned out even better than expected (as they often do!) when we made it through the entrance. Apparently, the “VIP” tickets with access to the very front rows of the venue had not sold out, so they started to hand out the yellow wristbands that entail access to that area – for free! We couldn’t believe our luck (particularly me, with my last minute purchase) and ended up having the time of our lives in the first few rows of a crowd of hundreds. It never fails to amaze me how fast you can meet people while traveling. After only having known these girls for around 24 hours, I knew not only their names but also the stories behind them, as well as where they grew up, their birthdays, the sports they played when they were younger, the details of their recent break ups, and what they want to do with their lives. Our experiences up to this point could not be more different, but we somehow all ended up with each other for the night. The bright yellow wristband now lives pasted in one of the pages of my notebook, along with museum tickets and maps and other bits of paper that have fallen victim to my scrapbooking 🙂

They had all left by next morning, off to continue their respective journeys. I decided to spend my Saturday morning roaming the beautiful landscape of St. Fagans, a picturesque village on the outskirts of the city that has been turned into an open-air, walkable museum. The museum was recommended to me by some of my interviewees as a site rich in both multilingual signage and Welsh history. The area is home to St. Fagans castle, an Elizabethan manor that served as the Windsor family’s summer home in the late 19th century. You can go inside and visit the various rooms, including the hall, the study, the kitchen, and the butler’s room. The surrounding grounds hold a myriad of historical buildings from different time periods from around Wales, which were completely taken apart and rebuilt here to be on public display. They range from tanneries and farmhouses to chapels and mills. I felt like I was in Bridgerton! I thought a lot about the Windsor family and their daily summer activities. Lady Windsor would likely have taken strolls down to the pond, just as I did, with nothing else to do on a hot June afternoon while she waited for dinnertime. Apparently, she liked to play music from the phonograph in the drawing room after dinner and hold sewing parties with her friends. I think Lady Windsor and I would have gotten along quite well. 

Tomorrow is my last day in Cardiff before I head to London for one night and fly to Cape Town the next day. Off to country number two already! Two friends from home and one from Northwestern are in London right now, so I’m going to try to see them before I leave. Enjoy some pictures from my last few days in Cardiff (and shoutout to the lovely gentleman who took my picture with the flag!):

Cardiff Bay

A toddler came up to me and gave me this flower!

Roald Dahl’s childhood church

Cardiff Food & Drink Festival

After a few days of strangely beautiful weather, Cardiff finally looks about how I expected it to outside: cloudy and grey, with a constant slight rain. I’m not complaining though – I’m very grateful to be experiencing this in place of what I hear is an unbearable heat in Evanston 😉

I had my first interview on Thursday with a senior research and place-names officer from the office of the Welsh Language Commissioner (WLC), an independent body created to promote and facilitate the use of the Welsh language. The WLC was formed through the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011, which replaced the Welsh Language Act 1993. This measure both grants Welsh equal status to English and outlines the powers and responsibilities of the Commissioner and their office. As per the focus of my study, we began by discussing bilingual signage. I explained that in my limited time exploring the city of Cardiff, I had not only noticed the myriad of bilingual signs but also some consistencies in signage design: Welsh seemed to 1) typically come before English and 2) be written in boldface font. My interviewee explained that the WLC has developed standard practice guidelines for creating bilingual signage across Wales – a framework for creating first rate bilingual material in accordance with the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011. Generally, Welsh is to be placed so that it is read first, among other strategies. This typically means on top and to the left, as both languages are read rightward. It is interesting to note that this guide is not a statutory code of practice but rather a recommendation aimed at any and all organizations, regardless of their legal obligation to operate bilingually. In this and other ways, the WLC serves in an advisory capacity – considered experts on best practices for promoting Welsh, the office of the WLC is a resource for companies, organizations, and local governments across Wales seeking guidance on how to implement bilingual policies and improve language visibility.

Although many Welsh speakers live in Cardiff, they are diluted by the city’s large overall population. New legislation was passed earlier this month with the aim to ensure that all children reach the end of compulsory school age as independent Welsh language users, a step towards the big picture goal of the Cymraeg (Wales) 2050 language strategy plan, which includes reaching one million Welsh speakers.

In the few short days I’ve spent here, I’ve definitely seen this effort reflected all over the city. Most, if not all, directional road signs are bilingual, place-names are typically showcased in both English and Welsh, and even some warning and caution signs have taught me some useful Welsh exclamations. I’ve even learned some phrases to teach a bilingual pet!

Since my first interview, I’ve spent some days getting to know the different parts of the city. So far, I’ve visited the National Museum Cardiff, Cardiff Castle, walked through the City Centre and Cardiff Bay, and enjoyed some delicious Welsh cakes at Cardiff Market! The city is very walkable, which I so appreciate, and very green in some parts. I took a long walk through Bute Park on Saturday, where I sat at a café and enjoyed their homemade quiche and iced tea. I also took a stroll along the River Taff, which is apparently where the term “taffy” (a Welshman) comes from! Cardiff Castle was definitely a highlight – I listened to a podcast about the history of the castle while walking its grounds. Apparently, the historic landmark also serves as a venue for concerts and raves! All of these places have been rich with signage, so I’m already pushing 100 photos. I spent some time yesterday sorting through them and creating a spreadsheet to organize everything. It’s been a busy but fun first few days to be sure!

Welsh cake!

Cardiff Castle

Hello everyone! I’m writing to you from the surprisingly comfortable seat D35 on the Great Western Railway, en route from London Paddington to Swansea. This train will take me across the Welsh border to Cardiff – my first destination. The countryside is unfolding outside the window in soft greens and stone villages (and the occasional cow), and with it comes the quiet thrill that this journey has really begun. Thank you all for following along! More to come soon.