I did such a double take at this place name, I assumed I’d misread it and the piece was actually talking about Wales! Are Welsh place names common in the eastern US? Would love to hear the local pronunciation, I was rubbish at Welsh place names until I’d actually lived in the country. The good news is it’s way more phonetic than English, the bad news is some of the alphabet encodes sounds which straight up don’t exist in English.

Can’t imagine any children getting this kind of grief in the original Bala, it’s a very small town in Eryri national park (commonly known as Snowdonia in English) set in a very beautiful landscape. I wouldn’t have spent a minute indoors if I’d grown up there, I’d have been out on Llyn Tegid / Bala Lake from the moment school ended.