Clwb Cymraeg, or “Welsh Club,” meets every Thursday in Lazenby Hall, and works to teach members the Welsh language. Credit: Faith Schneider | Arts & Life Photo Editor
Friendships shape everyday life, but three Ohio State students turned theirs into something new: the university’s first and only Welsh language club.?
Clwb Cymraeg, or “Welsh Club,” reflects their shared bond and passion for preserving and sharing the language.?
Rhys Davis, a second-year in integrated language arts/English education, Connor Davis, a second-year in psychology and Aiden Toler, a second-year in agricultural science education, are the founding members of Clwb Cymraeg. Toler, the club’s treasurer, said he, Rhys Davis and Connor Davis are all from the town of Gallipolis, Ohio, and have been friends since kindergarten, which is part of why the club was formed.?
“The basic first answer is [Rhys Davis and Connor Davis have] been my good friends from kindergarten all the way through high school,” Toler said.?
Rhys and Connor Davis, identical twins, have ancestral ties to the language through their grandmother, who hails from Ceredigion, Wales.?
“She immigrated here in her 30s and started her family here,” Connor Davis said in an email.?
Rhys Davis, the club’s president and Connor Davis, the vice president, said they share a large amount of pride for their heritage and cite it as one of their motivating factors for the club itself.?
“I’ve been lucky enough to visit Wales and see my family across the pond,” Connor Davis said. “ I share my brother’s passion for the country, the people and the language, and I see this club as a very unlikely outlet for expressing that passion.”
For Rhys Davis, the club has been a way to bring the familiarity of his home to the university.
“In a school of 60 to 70,000 people, I was expecting that there’d be one other person that knows Welsh, but there wasn’t any when I got up here,” Rhys Davis said. “So I decided, ‘If there are 1,400 organizations, we might as well get one going for this.’”
The club formed in the spring of 2024, but was not official until near the end of the same year, Rhys Davis said.
While the Davis brothers cite their Welsh heritage as a their motivating factor for running the club, Toler, who does not have Welsh heritage, said it’s their combined love for language, culture and their strong friendship that drew him to join.
“I’ve always been interested in languages, always been interested in learning, always been interested in cultures,” Toler said. “And [the Davis Brothers have] always been the same. They’re some of my best friends.”
The club meets every Thursday from 5:45 p.m. to 6:45 p.m. in Lazenby Hall.?
Rhys Davis said the club works on a curriculum he created himself, and looks to teach members a more functional understanding of the language.
“[The club] doesn’t spend a lot of time learning about different names or things you wear or things like that,” Rhys Davis said. “We’ll enable you to use the structure of the language and then we’ll piece together everything else after that.”
While some may feel the Welsh language is “dead” or “dying,” Connor Davis said he strongly disagrees.
“The simple fact is, the balance has shifted and the population of speakers is increasing every year,” Connor Davis said. “Now, I don’t anticipate fluency as an end goal for the devoted members of Clwb Cymraeg; I’m still working towards that myself. But creating a place to appreciate the language and get more people of my generation involved in the dialogue around Cymraeg’s past and future — I find that to be a really cool thought.”
The club is open to everyone, Toler said, but can really benefit those who are “looking to reconnect or learn about their culture.”
Toler said the club can help recreate that tight-knit bond that comes with smaller communities, bringing a more intimate feel to the group.?
“If you’re looking for a small community on campus, say, you’re coming from a very small town like we did,” Toler said. “This club is somewhere where you can get that community back.”
Connor Davis said the club fosters an environment that allows for learning to thrive.
“I think it’s a really great setting to practice a really unique language and engage with others who are there to learn something that they’re passionate about,” Connor Davis said.
