According to a report I found today, a textbook for Japanese people wanting to learn Welsh entitled ウェールズ語の基本 (Wēruzugo no Kihon – “Basic Welsh”) by Dr Yoshifumi Nagata (永田喜文) and Takeshi Koike (小池剛史) was recently published.
Dr Nagata teaches Welsh culture at universities in Japan and developed an interest for the Welsh language through the Welsh poetry of R. S. Thomas. While trying to learn Welsh in Japan he was frustrated by the lack of material in Japanese so decided to produce the textbook. Takeshi Koike learnt Welsh in Lampeter and speaks and writes it fluently and has published several works on the Welsh language.
This isn’t the only Welsh language course in Japanese though: on Amazon.co.jp I found 毎日ウェールズ語を話そう (Let’s Talk Welsh Every Day) by Hiroshi Mizutani (水谷宏), which was published in 1996.
Do you know of any other resources in Japanese for Welsh learners?
Oes llawer o bobl yn dysgu Cymraeg yn Siapan?
日本ではウェールズ語を勉強する人がたくさんいますか？
Wow, that’s wonderfully specific isn’t it! I don’t know about any Welsh resources in Japanese, but I did once find a Japanese textbook for TEACHERS in Burmese (or was it the other way around?) at a Kinokuniya in Sydney, and I remembered laughing at how hilariously unlikely it was that anyone would ever buy it.
I do feel sorry, though, for my fellow language lovers who aren’t native English speakers!!!
Sadly, I only have a transliteration nitpick: the first word of the title is better rendered Wēruzugo, rather than Uēruzugo, which would be ウエールズ語.
Interestingly, Japanese is very regular compared to English in constructing words for languages. In almost every case it’s the name of the country + 語, and, handily for an English speaker, most of the Japanese names for countries outside of East Asia are borrowed from English. Like here, where Wēruzu is a Japanese transliteration of “Wales”.
The one unusual language name is for English itself, which is 英語 Eigo. “England” is Igirisu, which sounds to me like a borrowing of Portuguese Inglês. (Which is the word for “English” rather than “England”, yes, I know.)
Is the illustration on the book cover supposed to be Wales? The flora looks distinctly Mediterranean to me…I know global warming’s a fact but looks like it’s particularly speedy in Wales!
If we are going to fuck ants (dutch expression: mieren neuken) about the Japanese translation, I prefer “Let’s speak everyday Welsh” where everyday acts as an adjective.
Unfortunately I only find those two books as well … well those two and a really awful looking cd-rom from some half baked series.