There are two words in the Welsh language which have no direct translation into English.
CYNEFIN, as a noun can be translated as ‘habitat’ and as an adjective ‘familiar’, but dictionary definitions are a poor attempt to reproduce the rich content. Because this word is the knowledge and experience of a particular place that generations have given each other, a rich relationship with the landscape of our birth. It refers to the fleeting moments of passing time - a place or the time which we instinctively belong to or feel most connected. Our home-place.
HIRAETH is a longing to be where your spirit lives. 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. It is a longing that’s experienced when you walk back over the doorstep that your parents walked over and your grandparents. It is met when you knock a front door in the street you grew up in and recognize the sound from your childhood. It is being able to know that no matter where you travel - home is always where you left it.
