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OP On a CBC Radio documentary about James Joyce, a (slightly drunk) transgender travel writer by the name of Jan Morris describes a Welsh word which she pronounces something like "HAIR-rite" :
Quote:
We have a word in Welch “HAIR-rite” ... I don’t know if you know about it. Obstensibly it means a sort of nostalgia really... but it’s come to mean more than that... it’s a longing... but it’s a longing for something we don’t... we can’t analyse... we can’t define... and it’s more than nostalgia because it’s a longing for the past but it’s also a longing for the future... the future in any sense... maybe it’s death... maybe it’s a death-wish... [laughs] I don’t know... but it’s a longing for something over there... out there... that we can’t quite place... and I feel that about Trieste... this city always... it has been in a limbo, as we say... ah, for years... now it may be getting out of it... but it always seems to me to be on the brink of something big... something is gonna happen next year... next generation... next century... wow... it’s going to be there and as it was in the past it has been one of the great sea ports....
Can anyone Welch person confirm this definition and tell me the correct spelling?
This land of song will keep a welcome
And with a love that never fails
We'll kiss away each hour of hiraeth
When you come home again to Wales
We'll keep a welcome, Shirley Bassey
sounds a bit like the Portugese word, saudade:
"The Portugese have a word saudade that means
yearning or longing but, more than that, describes
the mixture of feelings that swim in the heart...
best described through example, what a man feels
at his daughter's wedding."
- Dan Rodricks, Baltimore Evening Sun
OP Great! Thanks a lot! Was it Rushdie who said if you want to understand a culture, look at the words in its language that cannot be adequately translated? Like duende in Spanish, and sarcasm is British English.
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