Living Tongues: reading realistic fiction; Direct Translation 7

Direct Translation

1. Even before the taxi could fully brake, my grandma or Nain (as she insists) came bounding down her driveway, practically tearing the door from its hinges.
2. She pulled me into a tight squeeze. “Croeso nol,” she said, blue eyes beaming.
3. Welcome back; it had been at least three years since I’d heard that. Three years and another life ago—when I took the long flight from New York with my parents. This summer, they both stayed back to untangle our small family unit. I knew it would be hard to spend two months away from my friends. But at least I had a whole ocean between me and my parents’ divorce.
4. The driver beeped and leaned out his window. Nain and him chattered in a singsong Welsh.
5. “Translation, please,” I requested as he drove off.
6. “We were discussing what a brave girl you are, to travel by yourself. Rhys couldn’t believe you were only 13. Of course, I told him you get that from me,” she said. “Oh, and he told me he’d be dropping off a box of old cookbooks to the shop this week.”
7. She gave me a nudge. “I’m glad I have my assistant to help me shelve them,” Nain said.
8. “Some assistant, I’ll be,” I said. “My Welsh is hardly ‘

   tidy

   ’!”
9. Nain laughed. “Oh I’m glad my Gwen still remembers some slang. Well, you might not be a brilliant speaker yet. But you’re bound to absorb something this summer.”
10. As the weeks passed, I’d hardly absorbed anything but the name of Nain’s Welsh language bookstore: Y Ddraig Goch. Though I spent most days stacking only Welsh titles, I understood them “worse than the Queen knew how to scrub a floor,” as Nain liked to say.
11. I had to ask Nain why she held so tightly onto this old language.
12. “Isn’t it easier to just stick with English? That’s what most of the world speaks now,” I said.
13. “That’s the point,” she said. “Many Welsh united to keep our language from dying. No one could contain our

    hwyl

    ! We had so much passion and drive. Welsh has many words like hwyl that don’t translate directly to English. This feels special to me.”
14. I didn’t really understand. But I did see the hwyl in Nain’s friends who came to the shop. They were mostly a bunch of kind and rowdy farmers, always looking for a controversy, always up for a protest. They spent whole afternoons debating climate change, genetically modified vegetables, the merits of Dylan Thomas—you name it.
15. One especially heated argument led to Rhys slamming down his tea onto Nain’s counter, shattering her delicate cup. The rest of them howled with laughter as he stormed outside.
16. “Translation, please,” I said to Nain.
17. “He’s furious about the plight of the honeybees,” she said. “Don’t worry about him. He’ll be back in a moment laughing with the rest of us.”
18. The truth was: I wasn’t worried. I was lonely.
19. I reached out to friends back home. “The bookstore’s name means ‘the red dragon,’” I texted. “It’s a Welsh symbol. I think it’s pronounced ‘I dog cough.’ Ha ha ha.”
20. Because of the time difference, it took hours for anyone to respond. And by then, the joke seemed to fall flat anyway.
21. The next afternoon, I spotted a familiar face on a cover, snapped a picture, and sent it to my mom.
22. “I can read Welsh now,” I wrote. “Harri Potter a maen yr Athronydd is ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.’”
23. “That’s funny, Gwen,” she responded. “I want you to know that we’ve decided to sell the house. . .”
24. I quickly shut down my phone.
25. “What’s wrong, dear?” Nain rushed to my side.
26. I couldn’t answer and thankfully, she didn’t make me.
27. Later, we closed the shop for the day and stopped at Oh Cod. Nain bought two sacks of fish and chips—one for the walk and one for home. By the time the village opened up to pastures, our fingers were greasy and our lips puffed with salt. We tossed some chips to a pair of sheep. The field shone almost electric green in the setting sun. I breathed in the soft, grassy air. My heart swelled and then suddenly ached.
28. “Nain, I never want to be anywhere but right here and now. But I also feel so sad at the same time.”
29. “My dear, I know this feeling. We call it hiraeth.” Nain looped an arm around my shoulders.
30. “Translation, please.”
31. “Hiraeth has no direct translation. It’s kind of like homesickness. And it’s kind of like

    nostalgia

    ,” she explained.
32. “But I can’t say I’m homesick. I’m more sick of home lately. And how can I be nostalgic for right here, when I’m standing here?”
33. “Oh because hiraeth really signifies a longing for an imaginary place. It’s what we want from the past and yearn for in the future. It’s almost a perfect idea of home,” she said.
34. My heart ached a little less. I told Nain how much I treasured this word, treasured her language. By the end of the summer, I learned a handful of Welsh words.
35. Back at home, I can’t say life was any easier. I had to get used to living in two different houses. My friend group shifted and changed. But I had a word—hiraeth— to help me understand the longing I’d feel.

Practice questions

Part A

Part B