Confidence

In a few days I'll be moving into the house I've rented. In the interim I've been staying at the house of a colleague of mine who is out of town for the summer, and who very kindly allowed me and Mollie to use her place. I have spoken with her on the phone a few times, but we've never met in person. Still, since she is a scholar, I feel that I'm getting to know her by examining her home library. Come to think of it, this is probably an ideal way for academics to meet one another - take a few hours to scan their shelves before any of that face-to-face business, especially since academics like books, but rarely excel at interacting with other humans. Her interests are varied, as portions of the shelves deal with feminist criticism, Holocaust narratives, the history of fashion, Victorian literature, and lots and lots of Tolkien. She's also an active and adventurous type, as evinced by the books on horse riding, scuba diving and marathon-running. A few days ago I noticed an intriguing title on the shelf - Teach Yourself Welsh. Welsh is one of those wonderful languages that is naturally funny, what with its liberal use of Y and W and its place names that can't be uttered in under eight minutes. I decided to pull it off the shelf - turns out it's a book and CD combo. I wondered what her motivations might be for learning Welsh, let alone teaching it to herself, but the book was helpful in this regard - the cover reads "Goal: All-around confidence." Not just confidence in speaking and understanding, mind you, but all-around confidence. Indeed, if I managed to teach myself a language as difficult as Welsh, I'd feel pretty confident, but I still felt like they were over-selling the benefits of Welsh. However, when I opened the book at random, my eyes fell on this phrase, printed in large, bold letters:

Dw i'n teimlo bod pawb yn fy erbyn i

translation:

I feel everyone is against me

The fact that the book considers this phrase a priority in one's pursuit of Welsh fluency suggests that the goal of "all-around confidence" comes from a much darker place than I had previously thought.