Words

This is, purportedly, the place where St Gallus lived in a cave and did the things that saints do. After his death a church was built to house his relics. The church became the abbey, housing one of the most wonderful collections of medival literature (a must-see if you are into that kind of thing). St Gallus died somewhere around 650 AD and the cabin that goes up through the tunnel, to the part of town called St Georgen, used to have the station name "Bangor" as that's where St Gallus started off from on his trek to bring christianity from northern Ireland to the Austrians. (I'm not sure why either)
The Mühleggbahn, as the cabin is called, is a special kind of funicular called an inclined lift. When I arrived here, some 1350-ish years after St Gallus, I absolutely fell in love with this little train and made sure I always used it to get from our flat down into the town. These days I don't get to use it often but will take it whenever I get a chance. Today I took my camera along especially so I could blip it.

Thinking back to the early days here in Switzerland got me thinking about language - it relates as well to some reading and conversations I've had recently.
Growing up in Wales meant that I learnt Welsh - but not very enthusiastically. I knew from an early age that I would not be staying there and it was also clear to me that English was my mother tongue, the language I love/d, I feel comfortable in using, the language I felt able to fully express myself in. However, on leaving home, I discovered that there were many Welsh words that lived in my English - words I used day in day out without knowing they were Welsh. There were phrases and ways of expressing myself that were 100% Pembrokeshire. Being a dim-witted 18 year old meant that I got rid of these things and spoke English properly....but only 18 months later I found myself staring at this waterfall for the first time as I started my life in a country that didn't speak English in the way I did - before or after my cultural cleansing process - and they didn't even speak German in the way I had learnt to.
When you are someone who loves language, loves writing, loves twisting patterns through words...then taking language away is the cruelest thing. To go from being someone who could express themselves very, very clearly and accurately, however complex the discussion - someone who got praised for her writing style and her knowledge of literature - to go from that to someone who has the language skills of a cave-monkey is a form of torture. For many years I lived a half-life of bad English and worse German, of using language purely to communicate basic needs.
The internet was my saviour. If I couldn't speak I could, at least, write. My English was kept alive and nearly up-to-date by writing backwards and forwards to friends via email and in forums - later on Facebook. Still later, with pictures, on Blip. With Blip especially I have felt the wordy bit of me coming back to life. Being able to hang words onto a picture, to think about something to say - or not - every day has unlocked the torture chamber of wordlessness and, now I have got used to the light, has left me wanting more.....

If you take away a person's ability to express themselves, to tell you about what they feel and what they know, then you are committing a great crime against them. The amount of frustration that such a person contains is dangerous and makes people harm themselves and the people around them.

I consciously plant Welsh words and idioms back into my vocabulary. I give myself opportunities to use English properly. And I have learnt to love my new language, to feel at home in it and to live with it as a part of me.
I love the language I speak - even if I'm not sure which one I'm speaking.
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If you can correctly pronounce every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world. After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

- B. Shaw