Welsh grandma, something I didn’t know before

[Gonnagetgoingreturnsagain]

I just found out something quite sad about my family yesterday. To do with my grandmother on my dad’s side whom I didn’t know very well but only because my parents divorced when I was 5 and DM didn’t want contact with any of them.

My grandmother was Welsh from Abergavenny in south Wales and I know nothing about her, only the fact that the place where she’s from is a market town. I keep meaning to look up her maiden name.

I got speaking to a lovely Welsh woman on the bus yesterday and she told me that when my grandmother married my grandfather (who was English) she’d have been shunned and cut off from her Welsh community because of this. I don’t know how true this is but it would explain how her side of the family was never mentioned if I asked my dad. I’ve always been proud of my quarter Welsh heritage even though I don’t know much about this. I know the English and Welsh have a chequered history too with atrocities committed from the English side to the Welsh side from what I recall of history.

It’s even more sad because at one time she must’ve loved my grandad to have married him and had a child with him but apparently he wasn’t the easiest of men to live with and they had awful arguments and he developed Parkinson’s Disease in later life. How sad that she felt cut off from her Welsh family, if this is the case, and even if she’d wanted to have divorced him, probably wouldn’t have been welcomed back in her home town.

Well, grandma Peggy, I’m going to look into your maiden name and history soon just for you. And my other great grandma on the other side (that’s another story!).

I don’t even know as only a few photos if I look like my Welsh grandma and my half siblings I don’t speak to so can’t ask there.

DM said she walked into a pub where everyone was speaking in English and as soon as she and my stepdad went to order drinks, apparently the locals switched from English into Welsh and ignored

You DM is spinning a tale that many have spun before her.

This is a really odd thread. Almost like a covert attempt at Welsh bashing.

Sat in Wetherspoon in N Wales last year, and it was nearer 50/50 Welsh speakers. A young group near to us were interesting, as you couldn’t quite tell what language they were using. Turned out to be Welsh liberally sprinkled with English phrases.

I think it's great you want to learn more about your family from this encounter, but this woman has really exaggerated the anti English sentiment in wales. I live in Cardiff and don't speak Welsh and although I of course do often hear Welsh being spoken, because it is one of the languages of the country, I am rarely in a situation where I am in the minority for not speaking it.

Yes signs are all in Welsh but also English too - I didn't realise that was surprising? It's been the case most of my life I think (I'm in my 40s). And yes in other areas of Wales you will hear Welsh even more but outside of some particularly belligerent nationalists, who do not represent the majority, I don't think that means English people would be shunned!

As a Welsh person it annoys me when being Welsh is correlated with speaking Welsh, as I and the majority don't, but I am still Welsh, so I think it is overstated as a sign of Welshness (and you can't say of course the people in the pub were speaking Welsh because they are Welsh, as that doesn't necessarily follow).
However it also annoys me when English people take hearing anyone speaking it as a personal attack, or a sign of anti English feeling, not just what they happened to be talking. I suspect a lot of the stories about people switching to Welsh come from the fact that a lot of English words a phrases often get dropped in when people are speaking Welsh naturally, so if people overheard one of them they might think there has been a switch. Again, not saying there aren't any arseholes who would do it, just not the majority!

Oh come on!

That old tale about welsh people all suddently speaking welsh when someone they just absolutely know is english walks into a shop or a pub is a load of old bollocks thats been bouncing around to be thrown at welsh people for years

Im mixed race and I absolutely dont take after my Welsh ancestry. So when I walk into shops and pubs in areas in North Wales where I dont know people (because we dont all know each other 🙄) I dont look Welsh. But I do speak it

And despite not looking Welsh in my 40 years I have never had someone swap languages or start speaking about me in Welsh when I walk in.

I have walked in on conversations in Welsh, but it's fairly obvious they are conversations that were already happening about pretty mundane subjects. But hey, how dare someone speak their own language in their own country....

You might be "proud" of your Welsh heritage but you might want to try also not speaking crap about Welsh people...

Im not convinced about the shunning either but that didnt happen in the bit of North Wales I am from. Quite the opposite a little while later actually as a fair number of evacuated children in WW2 married into Welsh families and stayed in the area. Without any shunning either

I'm actually getting the same impression now

I went to university in Wales and go back quite often to stay in the N Wales area. I have never had the experience of people ‘changing’ to speak in Welsh when I walk in anywhere. In some shops people might greet me in Welsh but if I answer in English they switch happily and pleasantly to English. My written Welsh isn’t too bad but I can’t keep up with spoken Welsh so I don’t embarrass myself or them by attempting a whole conversation!
I love the way the language has been kept alive despite attempts to eradicate it in the past.
Absolutely no danger of not knowing where you are, what speed to go at or what traffic info means, as all signs are dual Welsh/English and it’s really eye opening how anglicized so many place names were.
I’m sure communities everywhere had families who would get the huff if members married ‘out’ but that’s not exclusive to Wales!
You’ve reminded me to get on and trace the Great Great Granny from Bwcle OP, so thank you

I live near Fenny, its gorgeous. Quite upmarket. And it's my nearest place to travel to if I want to attend Welsh speakers and learners socials apparently.

I've lived in the valleys here and in the Cynon most my adult life but lived in Cardiff first, and the bullshit I was fed by Cardiffians about places in the valleys was awful.

They'll be adamant things happen a certain way but they've not lived there themselves to know if they're speaking truth or just further perpetuating mistruths.

In places where Welsh folks accents are thicker, or the dialect is very different to standard English phrasing, it's easy to mishear what's being spoken. My first experience of hard-core valleys people was a neighbour with a thick Merthyr accent and dialect, I didn't understand him at all for a few weeks til we got speaking more (and he spoke slower for me).

Cardiff has Welsh speakers but most will speak English at least out and about.

There will always be some who take hatred of anything to a high level, whether it's vegans or indeed the English. But not everyone would behave that way, if someone married an English person. Many families are diluted, it's a fact if life and I meet people all the time who have blended cultures here.

Your best bet as has been mentioned, is joining an Abergavenny Facebook group and posting what you're looking for. I've seen it happen in groups near me and I love reading the threads because people always always know someone who knew someone who is related to the person you're after. It happens every few weeks or months in the groups I'm in.

Give it a go.

@Gonnagetgoingreturnsagain - this is just some hearsay from a woman you don't know on the bus. I grew up in the Valleys, now live in the SE and I can tell you that is rubbish. One of my great aunts married an English husband and moved to Essex. No problem, in the 30s. You've convicted a whole story out of nothing.

Well it wasn’t like that at all in my family. My grandfather from a farm in rural mid Wales married my English grandmother & came to live in Cumbria. The family was always very close. My grandfather & my dad used to cycle every summer from Cumbria down to mid Wales & back again to spend a holiday with the family, I have several photo albums of their trips,this was before the war. The only reason my grandmother didn’t go was because she stayed to tend their farm not because of any animosity. My dad was bilingual, Welsh & English.

You've created a whole fantasy here from some prejudiced woman on a bus.

She might have come across that interpretation of things from her family, but that certainly wasn't a Countywide or Countrywide thing at all.

Don't start me on the ridiculous myth of people "starting to talk Welsh when English people walk in the pub / shop" . Can't believe people are still pedalling such rubbish.

Nor me @NewName24
I mean, apart from anything else, how can they tell to look at you that you aren’t a Welsh speaker? None of it makes sense.

I mean, I’ve had the slaughtered lamb experience all across the UK, where there’s a pause while everyone looks at you, and then conversation restarts. It would be easy to misunderstand that, but a bit paranoid.

Op I believe this to be true

My gran was also from Abergavenny and married an English man. Was tok uncomfortable to go back to visit, we never ever saw our Welsh family

Never gave it that much thought before but traded a lot of relatives via ancestry

This would be 40's/50's/60's though

"I got speaking to a lovely Welsh woman on the bus yesterday and she told me that when my grandmother married my grandfather (who was English) she’d have been shunned and cut off from her Welsh community because of this."

Um, no. This is not true. At least not in general.

My parents were both from the Welsh heartlands in north west Wales. If they had married English people, it would have been awkward for communication with the family and gp may have been quietly disappointed, but shunned is obviously rubbish.
The only shunned person I know is someone who left the Jehovah's Witnesses!

Anti-Welsh people use the word crachach to imply there is a 'Welsh cabal' as you put it - typical tactics, but the Welsh word crachach just means posh or elite, could be of any ethnic or national or linguistic origin.
The 'crach' is the local squire, etc.

" Wales she says all the road signs etc are in Welsh not English and that people tend to speak Welsh rather than English in shops e.g. in Cardiff. "

Well now we know this woman is talking rubbish. Road signs are bilingual and the main language in shops in Cardiff is English, even though Welsh is also spoken sometimes of course.

Yes, it's rubbish, quite a good joke sketch about this myth here:

Totally normal of course to use parts of a neighbouring language. You also get code switching among groups or certain people in the same group preferring one language over another.

Do you know anything about Monmouthshire? Seriously, of all the places this could happen, Abergavenny is not it.

This thread is hilarious. Love the old 'they were speaking English before we came in' bollocks getting an outing again. I'd love to know how English people are able to hear what people are saying before they enter a building..do the English just have superior hearing so you think??

I can confirm that this sort of thing does happen. It happened to us when exH and I were on holiday in north Wales and went into a shop in Beddgelert. The woman behind the till stopped speaking in English to another customer and switched to Welsh. The customer followed suit and they chatted for some time, blithely ignoring us as we waited to be served. We were made to feel distinctly unwelcome. This would have been some time in the mid 1980's.

I've been back to the same place recently and it wasn't like that then though. Everyone was lovely.

No, it really doesn't happen. You can't know what language they were speaking before. They were probably speaking Welsh with some English words. Why would two Welsh speakers in Beddgelert be speaking English to each other? It's so arrogant to think that first language Welsh speakers go around speaking English to each to each other and only speak Welsh once a year to confuse English tourists.