Ray Smith discusses Radnorian English

Description

Ray Smith discusses his linguistic background and Radnorian English.

Video clip in English.

"I was born in a little village called Llangynllo, which is on the border country actually. It borders Shropshire in particular and fairly close to Herefordshire as well. And we spoke English in the home, as a child, and my mother could speak a smattering of Welsh, but Father didn’t and then, of course, we didn’t as well, you see. And there wasn’t any Welsh in the schools anyway, so it’s sort of Radnorian English, if there’s such a thing.

"Generally people struggle to recognise where I’m from, and even if I tell them where I’m from, they don’t know where it is. Radnorshire is one of those little lost counties, I’m afraid, tucked away in a corner of Wales, right on the English border. And so that’s really where I get my accent from, you see. People living and working both sides of the border, and intermarrying of course over the border. There was a time when – sometime over a hundred years ago or more when there was more Welsh spoken on both sides of the border, in Hereford and Radnor. In fact, some of the placenames still exist today, Welsh placenames in Herefordshire. Llandinabo is right, well and truly inside Herefordshire, and people still refer to them as being Welsh."