
A student was so interested in the Welsh language he studied it from books for two years - from his native Japan. Ryuichiro Hirata, 27, was determined to learn the language before he enrolled on a linguistics course at Bangor University, Gwynedd. He said he chose Welsh because it was "different" to English. Mr Hirata, from Kagawa said: "I wanted to learn Welsh to help me with my studies and so that I could talk to people in their own language...To be honest I don't really know why I had such an interest in the Welsh language - maybe it was because it is so very different to the English language. It definitely wasn't easy to learn with all the mutation rules and having so many variations of 'yes' and 'no'"...more...