Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Ianto, Jack

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 2,155 words

Content notes: none

Author notes: Written for Challenge 230 - Language

Summary: The local lingo has Jack scratching his head.



'Do you know where we are?' Ianto asked, walking along the path that lead from the wide open field where they'd parked their vessel.

'No idea, but it's got a marketplace,' Jack said, pointing off about a mile away, 'and that's all we need. Besides, isn't it exciting not knowing?'

'Sometimes,' Ianto qualified. Everything here looked reasonably placid and rural so chances were that they weren't about to go walking straight into trouble. God knew they'd done that often enough. And they did need supplies and to stretch their legs after days of travelling through the emptiness of space.

The clean air and the blue skies were invigorating, as was the walk itself. If it weren't for the handful of other spacecraft dotted around the outskirts of the town, he could have confused it for a little English hamlet, all green fields and low stone fences, animals grazing lazily in the pastures. He much preferred these small market towns to the big bustling cities. There was something nice about buying things from little stalls knowing they'd been made by hand.

As they reached the edge of the town, stepping into the heart of the busy marketplace, Ianto blinked and stopped in his tracks. He could hear the voices beginning to filter around him, the individual voices separating from one another like untangling threads. No, he shook his head. He was imagining things. He looked across at Jack to see if he was equally confused but it seemed as if he hadn't yet noticed, too busy eyeing off a stall where they were grilling the most delicious smelling meats.

'Uh, Jack. Am I going crazy?'

'Huh? Why?'

He almost didn't reply. He was sure his brain was playing tricks on him. They'd travelled so many places that arriving somewhere new and having to cope with the multitude of languages the universe had to offer took a while to get used to. He'd managed to master a solid written and spoken Galactic Standard which got him around most places they went. English was reasonably prevalent as well, and when neither of those two helped, Jack was usually on hand with a basic vocabulary. How he'd ever learned so many languages was beyond Ianto's comprehension. He'd also had a fairly soft landing into travelling the universe, the TARDIS having helped out, automatically translating for him those first few months they'd taken to the stars with the Doctor.

He listened again hard before finally speaking. 'Are they speaking Welsh?'

Jack paused, his brow furrowing as he stopped to pick out individual conversations. He'd wanted to laugh at Ianto and tell him not to be so ridiculous. Nowhere in the entire universe did anyone speak Welsh. Hell, the amount of people on Earth that spoke it was next to none. But the longer he stood there, focusing on one single discussion between a stall holder and a customer, the more familiar the lilt. He wished he could say he could pick out specific words, but Welsh had never been his strong suit. It was hard to deny the similarity though. It had this warmth that made him feel like he was home, a sort of musical bounce to it, guttural as it was.

'I'm going crazy, right?' Ianto said. 'Is it some kind of residual translation from my time on the TARDIS gone haywire? I could swear I'm hearing everything in Welsh, which can't be right.' When they'd travelled with the Doctor, he'd always heard everything in English. He couldn't lay claim that his Welsh was the more dominant language. Everyone in his family had always spoken English. His Welsh was only what had been thrust upon him at school, and what he'd tried to retain since.

'It can't be,' Jack replied. 'The TARDIS only translates into languages you can understand.'

'Yeah, I think I've got that covered, Jack,' Ianto said, giving a slight eye roll. Jack loved teasing him about his Welsh and how it couldn't possibly make any sense, lacking for vowels as it was.

'No, I'm mean me,' Jack clarified. 'If it was something like that, which it can't be, then I wouldn't be hearing it. TARDIS translation only works when you're near the TARDIS anyway.'

'You mean it sounds Welsh to you, too?'

Saying yes sounded stupid. There was really only one way to settle it, Jack walking up to the first stall holder he saw and asking him in Galactic Standard what language everyone was speaking. The stall holder just frowned at him, obviously not conversant. 'What language is that?' Jack repeated in English, slowly and purposefully. Still no response.

Ianto grabbed his lover gently by the arms and stepped forward, politely asking in his best Welsh. It had been a long while since he'd had occasion to use it, but it all came back to him the moment he opened his mouth and started speaking.

'Cymraeg,' came the reply, chirpy and friendly, followed by questions about where they were from and complimenting Ianto on his reasonably good Welsh, much better than most people who came here to trade. Though the rest of the sentence was ninety percent Welsh to Ianto's ears, there were subtle variations on words he knew, and more mutations than he was accustomed to. Ianto thanked the man and wished him a good day.

'Okay, so I got the first word,' Jack said. Even he knew that one. 'They're seriously speaking Welsh?'

'A variation most definitely,' Ianto replied. 'There are some differences, but no different really to the differences between north and south Welsh.' Even in such a small country as his, there were many words and mutations that clearly marked you as from one part of the country over another. North Walians were fiercely proud of their language, and looked down on the South Welsh. A shw'mae instead of a su'mae gave you away immediately. 'And you said it was a dead language.'

'It is a dead language,' Jack replied. It was one of the reasons he'd never bothered to learn it, despite all the years he'd lived in Wales. There were very few places he couldn't get around using English.

'Clearly not,' Ianto said, smiling as more of it reached his ears. Gods but it sounded like being home. He couldn't believe how much he'd missed that sound. It was so warm and comforting, the sound of that Welsh chatter.

'What, did you travel back in time and plant a bunch of them here to protect it or something?' Jack teased. How else it had reached this distant star was a complete mystery.

'It wouldn't be the strangest thing,' Ianto said. Perhaps some time in the future that was exactly what they did, or at least taught it to a few settlers, which grew into a huge population of Welsh speaking residents. 'Or maybe someone back on Earth was taken by the rift and ended up here,' he suggested. 'Maybe there's more of them scattered across the universe. We really have no idea how many people the rift might have stolen. They could have ended up anywhere. Even here.'

'Well, I'll be damned,' Jack said, adding a chuckle.

Ianto grinned, thinking how nice an idea it was that some of them might have survived and found safe haven, when so many that the rift returned had not. 'Bet you wish you hadn't wasted all those years refusing to learn Welsh now, don't you?'

'I managed just fine,' Jack said, standing a bit taller, hating it when Ianto made him look foolish. 'In fact, I've managed a lot of places just fine.'

'Okay then, mister fancy pants time agent,' Ianto said. 'Why don't you go and buy us some of those much needed supplies, whilst I go find us something to eat? I've got a list of my own that needs filling.' Things that Jack never thought about like soap, pens and paper, toothbrushes and thread for fixing holes in socks.

He was also on the lookout for anywhere that sold towels. You could never have enough towels, and theirs got used for more than just daily hygiene, given their propensity for adventures and picking up strays. It would be nice just to have one luxurious set that was reserved solely for the purpose for which it was intended. It was all well and good making sure they had fuel, medical supplies and tradeable goods and currency, but it was the little things that made the journey comfortable.

He was quietly hoping that with Welsh language came other Welsh customs. Just the thought of a hearty bowl of cawl and Welsh cakes dusted in sugar made his mouth water. And books! Real books written in Welsh about the history of a place that wasn't Wales excited him. He wanted to know everything about this world and how the language of his homeland had come to be here, answering all of the questions in his head.

'Fine,' Jack replied. 'What's say I meet you back here in about an hour?'

'Sounds like a plan. But make it two hours.'

'Are you giving me a handicap? Trust me, Ianto, I don't need it.'

Ianto just smiled at him. 'We'll see.'



It didn't take long for Jack to realise he was out of his depth. He couldn't understand why he suddenly felt so much like a fish out of water. He'd been loads of places where he couldn't speak the local lingo and been just fine. Being here though, where by rights perhaps he should have been able to speak it, he felt all out of sorts.

Everywhere he went, his Galactic Standard was met with looks of confusion and his English wasn't received much better. They clearly didn't get a lot of folks travelling here from other places, he thought. Any good merchant had a dozen languages under his belt to make sure he could sell his wares and negotiate the best price. Around these parts though, it seemed there was only one language that talked, and it wasn't money. It was only by sheer luck he'd manged to acquire a handful of things they needed, more because he could simply point to them. After several failed attempts at haggling, he handed over whatever the asking price was, knowing he was getting fleeced but not caring. Coming back totally empty-handed would be more than he could live with. Discouraged, he took whatever he'd managed to procure back to their ship, checking his watch and making his way back to their meeting spot, knowing Ianto would be there right on the dot of two hours.

As expected, Ianto was there, waiting for him, positively glowing with happiness, arms laden with bags full of necessities. There'd be time for wandering and shopping later, once they got the essentials dealt with.

'Got everything we need, did you?' Ianto asked. His tone of voice suggested Jack had done anything but, and Jack cringed, hating that Ianto was right.

Jack huffed. 'It turned out no one around these parts speaks anything but Welsh,' he said.

Ianto smirked at him. 'So, what you're saying is that you came back empty-handed.'

'Not nothing! Just.... not as much as we needed. If we could power our ship using only bananas, we'd have been fine,' he replied. That at least translated directly from English to Welsh without alteration. Clearly the Welsh hadn't had bananas before the Norman invasion. 'One guy kept trying to offer me carrots and called me a moron. Several times,' he added, looking annoyed.

Ianto laughed at that. 'He wasn't talking about you, he was talking about the carrots. Though maybe he should have been talking about you.'

'Hmph,' Jack pouted. 'You don't have to be so smug about it. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen anyone so smug in all my life, and trust me, that's a long time and a lot of people.'

'Me, smug?' Ianto asked innocently. It was so very rare that he knew more about how to navigate the universe than Jack. Just once it was nice to be top dog, even if it was probably a one-off.

'Stop sulking,' Ianto said, transferring bags from one hand to the other and wrapping his free arm around Jack's waist. 'I found a stall that sells the most wonderful donuts filled with something that tastes like raspberries.' Admittedly he hadn't bought nearly as much as what had been on his list either, getting thoroughly distracted by shops full of books and marvelous hand sculpted artwork. The town was full of dragon iconography, much to his delight. 'We'll eat, buy some to take back with us, and then you can take me wherever we need to go to get everything else. I can be your translator for once.'

Jack hummed at the idea. 'I do love those Welsh vowels of yours.'

'They sound even better when they're speaking actual Welsh,' Ianto promised him.