Learned a new word today, understand it completely
HIRAETH
Hiraeth is a Welsh word that is somewhat difficult to describe in English, for the reason that there is no single English word that expresses all that it does. Some words often used to try to explain it are homesickness, yearning, and longing.
However, there is more depth to hiraeth than in any of those words on their own. It seems to be a rather multi-layered word, which includes a different variety of homesickness than what is generally referred to. This kind of homesickness is like a combination of the homesickness, longing, nostalgia, and yearning, for a home that you cannot return to, no longer exists, or maybe never was. It can also include grief or sadness for who or what you have lost, losses which make your ?home? not the same as the one you remember.
One attempt to describe hiraeth in English says that it is ?a longing to be where your spirit lives.? This description makes some sense out of the combination of words that describe this feeling. The place where your spirit feels most at home may be a physical location that you can return to at any time, or it may be more nostalgic of a home, not attached to a place, but a time from the past that you can only return to by revisiting old memories. Maybe your spirits home could even be neither of the above, one from which you are not only separated by space or time, but instead a place that never was, where you can only go in your imagination.
Sometimes hiraeth is used by Welsh people to describe their admiration for the beauty of the landscape of their country, or their nostalgia for way their country used to be, or at least the way it is depicted in stories of how it once was. Wales itself was named not by the Welsh people, but by the Saxons (who would become the people of England). The Saxons saw who we call the Welsh, the original inhabitants of Briton, as foreigners. Wales means ?Place of the Others.? The Welsh people themselves prefer to call themselves Cymry, and to call their country Cymru. There are stories of Cymry heroes who would bring Cymru back to its former glory. The landscape is one aspect of Wales, or Cymru, that can fill some of its people with national pride for their home.
Hiraeth is a Welsh word that is somewhat difficult to describe in English, for the reason that there is no single English word that expresses all that it does. Some words often used to try to explain it are homesickness, yearning, and longing.
However, there is more depth to hiraeth than in any of those words on their own. It seems to be a rather multi-layered word, which includes a different variety of homesickness than what is generally referred to. This kind of homesickness is like a combination of the homesickness, longing, nostalgia, and yearning, for a home that you cannot return to, no longer exists, or maybe never was. It can also include grief or sadness for who or what you have lost, losses which make your ?home? not the same as the one you remember.
One attempt to describe hiraeth in English says that it is ?a longing to be where your spirit lives.? This description makes some sense out of the combination of words that describe this feeling. The place where your spirit feels most at home may be a physical location that you can return to at any time, or it may be more nostalgic of a home, not attached to a place, but a time from the past that you can only return to by revisiting old memories. Maybe your spirits home could even be neither of the above, one from which you are not only separated by space or time, but instead a place that never was, where you can only go in your imagination.
Sometimes hiraeth is used by Welsh people to describe their admiration for the beauty of the landscape of their country, or their nostalgia for way their country used to be, or at least the way it is depicted in stories of how it once was. Wales itself was named not by the Welsh people, but by the Saxons (who would become the people of England). The Saxons saw who we call the Welsh, the original inhabitants of Briton, as foreigners. Wales means ?Place of the Others.? The Welsh people themselves prefer to call themselves Cymry, and to call their country Cymru. There are stories of Cymry heroes who would bring Cymru back to its former glory. The landscape is one aspect of Wales, or Cymru, that can fill some of its people with national pride for their home.
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I have hiraeth for the United States 0 -
quote:Originally posted by remingtonoaks
I have hiraeth for the United States
Mine is for the Middle East0 -
Gwneud yn dda iawn!
Pronounce that. [:D]0
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