Well done Peter that’s brilliant ! I am finding that learning Welsh often seems to be two steps forward , one step back but a noticeable , slow gradual move forward. Sounds like you have just had another 2 or 3 step forward moment . Have a brilliant weekend
I think that happens when you learn any language. I started learning Welsh years ago but came to a stumbling block with the use of “bod” in subordinate clauses and then one day it all fell into place without me trying.
Hi ianroberts it’s good to know that it all fell in to place for you . I guess the key is to not let the set backs get you down , just keep on going and don’t give up. There isn’t a week that goes by where I don’t make a fool of myself by either saying something wrong , not understanding the reply or getting brain freeze . It is a horrible feeling when it happens but I just keep reminding myself that it’s just part of the learning process
Agreed…things i always get wrong…in no particular order
Achos bo’ fi…i always seems to do achos dwi
Ar gyfer…i always seem to do am
Ohono fi and all variationd
arnat ti and all variations
Iddi instead of wrthi and vice versa
Then of course there’s genders, mutations, short forms, future tenses (mi fasai i v bydda i v byddwn i etc etc).
Should i mention spoken v written etc, and dialects.
I think that when learning a language we tend to impose higher standards on ourselves than we would in our own language. However, none of us speak perfect English all the time and I’m sure that not all native Welsh speakers speak perfect Welsh all the time.
Unbeknown to myself, the Welsh I taught myself was literary Welsh and as a result I have a degree of difficulty understanding colloquial Welsh whether written or spoken. I was in a pub in Blaenau Ffestiniog trying to speak Welsh once and a customer remarked that it was like listening to the Welsh equivalent of Shakespearean English.
I often wonder if it is very obvious to people that I am learning Welsh due to the odd mistake here and there but I guess it can go the other way too where your Welsh can be too perfect . That remark about it being like listening to the Welsh equivalent of Shakespearian English really made me chuckle
Then the other question is, why does it matter if it sounds like we’re learning? Nothing wrong with being a learner. We weren’t blessed with the chance to speak multiple languages naturally from birth as many are.
I couldn’t agree more with @ianroberts I had this very conversation with my fiancee. She is first language, but her dad is an English speaker. She went through Welsh education. She still speaks fluent Welsh but feels self-conscious about her Welsh because she worries it’s not perfect. Yet she doesn’t bat an eyelid if she says something like - did good, rather than did well (nor should she). Since I’ve been learning she’s re-found her Welsh (we met when we were both at university in Plymouth so her opportunities were less). Now she can use it in at home, at work and out and about and I notice she says “diolch” at the end of English exchanges too.
We just spent a couple of days around Llandeilo and the Black Mountains in the west of the Beacons. We were chatting in Welsh together (mine is far from fluent) but people in shops and pubs would start conversations with us in Welsh. It was great!! I felt much more comfortable and less self-conscious than I may have done speaking English with my English accent (not that I should).
I remember taking a Welsh examination in Leighton Buzzard back in the 80’s where candidates were advised not to worry too much about grammar or using the correct mutation and to Welshify an English word if they did not know the correct Welsh word - because that is what Welsh people do.
I’m doing that for the third time. In the States in the pre-internet days it was hard to get good materials, so I took out a self-instruction book from the library and plowed as far through it as I could. (That was around 1982.) A couple of years later I fell into an evening class in a larger city and found out that what I’d been studying was literary Welsh that had disappeared long ago. Instead there was this new colloquial Welsh called Cymraeg Byw that was the wave of the future. Now I’m in that future and it turns out Cymraeg Byw was some kind of fad and I’m starting over again. Which is still a joy, even if I don’t have as much time to devote to it as I did as a teenager.
If you studied Cymraeg Byw it is not the end of the world! You adjust your speaking to people around you whatever course you study, and though there are better forms to learn than Cymraeg Byw there have been a lot worse!
If you remember anything (if!) and remember to go with the flow, it should be an advantage rather than a disadvantage!
Quite honestly, no it isn’t- or somewhat further away than other forms taught, anyway. It’s certainly closer to the spoken and colloquially written form than the most formal forms of Welsh, but the attempt to make it a common written form or spoken form was a failure.
This doesn’t mean it isn’t a decent diving off point for either.[quote=“HowlsedhesServices, post:19, topic:6242”]
for some reason I´ve never understood, it was poo-pooed when it came out
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Well, it was because it fell between two stools. It is a decent way to teach it as a diving off point, but it isn’t closer to any written or spoken form of Welsh than other forms taught. The idea that this should be the only form taught never caught on, and that’s a good thing in my opinion.
It wasn’t the Welsh that anyone spoke or wrote in any area or any dialect, and more colloquial forms taught alongside the idea and forms of a more literary Welsh was probably the way to go (as most people seem to have come to think).
There are colloquial dialect forms, certainly forms used and understood everywhere, and literary forms - Cymraeg Byw seemed to be an attempt to create a slightly artificial completely standard form, which was neither one nor the other.
I taught myself Welsh back in the 60’s and I didn’t attend any classes or even speak Welsh until the 80’s. That was when I first became aware of the so-called Cymraeg Byw. Still, I don’t regret learning literary Welsh for it gave me a good grounding in the grammar which I don’t think a lot of new-fangled courses do
