Happy Wednesday! 👋
I hope your week is off to a good start.
Before we dive in, quick question: Have you ever felt a strange kind of longing you couldn’t quite explain?
Not even for a specific place. Just… something. A feeling that things were better once, or that somewhere out there is a version of home you’ve never actually been to.
Let's get into it!
Language: Welsh - “Hiraeth” (HEER-eyeth)
Meaning: Hiraeth is a longing for home, but deeper than that. It’s a nostalgia for something you may never have had, or can never return to. It carries grief, love, and longing all at once, woven together into a single feeling that English simply doesn’t have a word for.
In English, we might say: “I miss something I can’t name.” Or: “I feel nostalgic for a time that may never have existed.” Welsh captures all of that in one word: Hiraeth.
Why it's fascinating:
The word breaks down beautifully:
hir — long
aeth — going, or gone
Literally: “the long going.” The idea that some longings have no destination — they just stretch out ahead of you.
What I love most is how Welsh speakers use it: Mae hiraeth arnaf — “Hiraeth is upon me.” The emotion isn’t something you feel. It’s something that comes over you, like weather. English puts the feeling inside you. Welsh puts you inside the feeling.
It’s used for homesickness, yes, but also for cultural loss, for the Welsh language itself, for landscapes, for people, for entire ways of life. It’s grief and love holding hands.
Example:
Mae hiraeth arnaf am Gymru.
“Hiraeth is upon me for Wales.”
Cornish: The Language That Died and Came Back
Cornish is Welsh’s close cousin, another Celtic language from the southwest tip of England. And unlike most endangered languages, it has an extraordinary story: it actually died, and was brought back.
The last known native speaker, Dolly Pentreath, died in 1777. For over a century, Cornish existed only in old manuscripts, fishing songs, and fragments of prayer.
Today, there are estimated to be a few hundred fluent speakers and several thousand with some knowledge of the language. It’s on school curricula in Cornwall.
Is it the same language Dolly spoke? Linguists debate that. But it exists again and that’s something.
The word “nostalgia” was actually invented as a medical diagnosis.
In 1688, a Swiss physician named Johannes Hofer coined it to describe soldiers who became physically ill, feverish, unable to eat, sometimes dying, from intense homesickness. He built it from the Greek nostos (returning home) and algos (pain).
For nearly two centuries, doctors treated nostalgia as a serious medical condition. By the 20th century, it had softened into something we just feel on Sunday evenings.
Words, like feelings, change over time.
Join the Conversation
What gives you hiraeth? A song, a place, a time in your life, something you can’t quite get back to? Hit reply and tell me, I read every one.
If you’re learning English and want to express feelings like this, the subtle ones that don’t translate directly- that’s exactly what I built LLH Tutor for.
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