She decided to take a rather drastic course of action. She would seek out Welsh-speaking communities in non-English-speaking countries ... there would be no "English" to fall back on ... Welsh would be their only common language !! Brilliant !
And this book is all about that trip to far-flung corners of the globe ... Patagonia of course, Japan, Holland, Bangkok, Greece ... taking with her her Portugese friend ... of course!
It's a fascinating book and a page-turner, and I've grown to like it and her better with time, but there isn't enough Welsh in it (!) and Pamela herself can be a little , er, difficult to fathom at times.
One of her favourite tricks is to arrive at some new country where she is going to have a real opportunity to speak Welsh, and immediately lose her voice. Ha !
Also, she often turns up at some "Welsh Society" get-together" after thousands of miles of travelling and then finds out that actually nobody there speaks Welsh. That's on top of the fact that she is almost always dog-tired and knackered!
Then there's the character who speaks to them in Welsh voluminously but she can't understand a bloody word ! He learned Welsh from Y Beibl ! Actually, there's quite a few people whose Welsh she can't understand at all.
From my point of view the book has lots of useful quotes.. about the language, about Welsh culture, about how "Welsh" people are, about Welsh history, and about the state of the language in the past, present and future. Her heart is in the right place ... she too is learning Welsh in a world that thinks that Wales is somewhere in the suburbs of London,and that Welsh is just one of England's weird accents. She, like us, has a mountain to climb.
So ... I think all Welsh learners should read this book, despite it's little flaws and idiosyncracies.
Here's some opinions from other readers, borrowed from the Amazon site ...
1st Review
You don't have to be Welsh to enjoy this book. I am Welsh and have given it to friends in Wales, England and the USA who have all loved it.
Whilst she is an American learning Welsh, other people learning a different language will be able to relate to her problem of trying to understand and gain confidence in actually speaking a foreign language.
Her tales of travelling around the world and the characters she met keep the pace moving along nicely. For anyone wanting a funny travel book this is a must!
2nd Review
As a Welshman who has lived overseas for a number of years I found this book really struck a chord. Petro is an American, but her ability to understand and describe the Welsh personality is extraordinary. She obviously loved her subject matter, but to take on the task of learning Welsh and then conversing in it with native speakers took no shortage of courage. In all, a very witty book, and a re-affirmation that you can take the boy out of Wales, but you can never take Wales out of the boy.
3rd Review
The very idea of touring the world chasing up Welsh speakers got my interest right from the start.
Following Pamela's plans for her travels
and the frustrations caused, could have proved rather limited in reader interest but the way she interspersed snippets of history, comparisons of cultural differences, Welsh poetry and writings drew me on to the next page and the next. Never mind that I could not begin to pronounce the phrases in Welsh and had, like someone learning to read, to gloss over them, it put me "in touch" with my Welshness and was all part of the magic that she conjured up.
The travels jump around the world with flash backs to Wales and yet it is not confusing and there are some wonderfully descriptive sentences which drip from her pen as though she has dipped it in a particularly strong bottle of Welsh ink.
Her astute observations of why people outside Wales are more Welsh than those who never left the valleys and why speaking English is a distinct disadvantage in learning Welsh are very funny too.
Altogether it is a "good read" and I had a great urge to go see for myself whilst acknowledging that she has greater stamina than I have.
4th Review
Essentially the story of one woman's travel round the world in search of Welsh speakers (with a view to practising the language without the corrupting influence of English), this book mixes information about the Welsh language and culture with insights into other cultures, in a fascinating collection of anecdotes that is at once thought provoking and funny (sometimes painfully so).
As a fairly new learner of Welsh myself, I found the comments about the language and its peaks and pitfalls especially interesting. In particular, Pamela Petro speaks a southern dialect of Welsh, whereas I am studying the very northern speech of Bangor, so it was interesting to read both her comments on the dialect differences and her actual southern-inflected Welsh phrases (don't worry - they all come with an English translation). On the other hand I think there is enough in this book to appeal to people from fluent Welsh speakers to those with no knowledge whatsoever of the language.
In summary, this book is excellent, or as we say in Welsh: "mae'r llyfr 'ma yn fendigedig!"
5th Review
This is an excellent book. the author, an American has gained a love of Wales and "Welshness" from her time in Lampeter, learning Welsh but more importantly being in Wales. Her travels around the world, looking for Welsh people and Welsh speakers from all countries is fascinating, as a travel book firstly, but with the added interest of someone trying to understand what Welshness means, what being "very welsh" is, as well as other cultures. The whole book is a joy, and can be enjoyed without knowing anything about Wales, but as a "Saes" living in Wales, with a Welsh speaking wife and family, I enjoyed it on another level too. An outsider/insiders view of the Welsh, and attitudes towards the world. Read this book.
OK ... reviews over, and music time approaches .. and it's Geraint Jarman and the much-loved Eithiopia Newydd .....