When I first arrived at the Angel Hotel, I flipped on the television to try to get my bearings. I flipped through the channels -- BBC1, BBC2, ITV and a fourth channel where they were speaking something that I first thought was German.

No, maybe it's French, I thought. Then it dawned on me. It's a Welsh language station. Most of the road signs in Wales are bilingual, and the Welsh are tenacious in preserving their language.

It's a tongue that I find completely incomprensible. With the exception of English words that they borrowed, I couldn't understand any of it. It's as if someone took a bagful of consonants and starting pulling them out and decided to call them words.

Place names are particularly enigmatic. For instance, the Black Mountains feature spots such as Twyn Pwll Morlais and Rhydymitwyr.

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