I wonder if someone could advise. I signed up for the South wales 6 min course a few months ago but with the lockdown have gone a bit faster than I expected and am now looking at doing level 3 and some of the advanced materials. Living in North England there are few people to chat to in real life although the hangouts are really helpful - my real difficulty is in understanding what is being said. I’ve looked at the advanced materials - they look useful but seem orientated toward North Welsh and not all have translations. Any advice on anything else I can do at this point in time.
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Hi Ian,
There is a mixture of North and South Wales dialogues in the Advanced Material. Its worth trying both as you’ll get used to hearing us Gogs as well as those from the South. Another option is to try to get hold of Audiobooks and listen to them along with reading the actual book. I use BBC Sounds app and listen to Radio Cymru too. I assume you’ve joined the Welsh Speaking Practice Slack group?
…which part of North England are you in @ian-james?
Deg y Dysgwyr is a good starting point on the Advanced content - they are grouped by title on the SSIW website (but not on the App)…
…all of the ones that Becca has done up until very recently have transcripts and translation - there are just a couple which ‘held the fort’ when Becca was unwell which don’t - which unfortunately appear at the top on the website.
The process of listening - then going through the transcript - then listening again - then reading the translation - before the final listen was responsible for a big step up in my learning journey.
Rich 
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Thanks for this - the audiobooks seem a good idea.
Thanks Rich. I’m in Northumberland. I must admit I had only looked at th first few in the advanced materials - I’ll look again. The listening, reading translation then listening again seems a good idea.
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Hi Ian
Part of my family are still living in the Tyne Valley.
My favorite Welsh words are Wal and Wac. Oh, and Llanerch , difficult to bring that one in to many sentences though.
Hello Ian,
@gisella-albertini has a list of south walians that have been interviewed that you can use until you get comfortable with the format. Once fairly comfortable it is worth also working through the North Walian interviews. You will soon get used to the few differences in speech used between North and South. This will be really helpful when watching TV and listening to welsh Radio and also ensure you can enjoy travelling and chatting with everyone in Wales. In your Southern dialect wrth gwrs. Good luck.
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Since @Macky mentioned my list of the South Walians among Beca’s interviews, here’s some:
13, 19, 20, 24, 31
(these are the ones I found in an old post right away, might have missed a few but I guess that’s a start).
Bu the way I also agree with the suggestion of practicing the North Walian as well, at some point but in the beginning I found these a bit easier!
p.s. as for audiobooks have a look at Colin Jones’s:
South Walian accent and vocabulary!
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Thank you @Macky and @gisella-albertini for your help and very useful comments. I agree with your comments about North Walian - I’ve just about finished level 2 but before going further on to level 3 I wanted to do some more in depth work on comprehension which I feel is a real barrier. I try to get some conversation on the hangouts a few times a week but my poor comprehension I think lets me down. So I’m going to put in some effort on that in the next few weeks or so and probably start with Southern dialects. I’m extremely grateful for all the suggestions you have made. Thank you all.
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