I’m a little confused about when to use “pan” vs. “pryd” for “when”. Apparently “pan” is for statements involving the word and “pryd” is for questions, but I’ve seen statements with the word “when” translated as “pryd”.
An example of what I mean can be found at 18:23 in Northern Level 1, Challenge 8. The sentence “I want to remember when you started.” is translated as “Dw i isio cofio pryd wnest ti ddechrau.” Shouldn’t it be “Dw i isio cofio pan wnest ti ddechrau.” as it’s a statement of when “you” started and not a question about it? Thank you so much in advance!
As a basic rule, yes, pan is for statements and pryd is for questions, but there’s also something a little more subtle going on.
Pryd is used whenever you are referring to a specific time, whereas pan is more “general circumstances” - which is why you can find pryd in statements, but never find pan in questions or implied questions (because questions are asking about a specific time).
I’d also say this is a great example of how no two languages ever work in exactly the same way - as long as you get a foothold in the new language, you’ll fine tune via exposure - until at some point pan/pryd just make sense to you as pan/pryd instead of as versions of ‘when’. The key is not to worry - people will understand if you use one they weren’t expecting, and if they don’t, they’ll ask (and that will help your brain fine tune further)
Hello, I’ve just started Welsh and am loving it. I’m still in the ‘free’ stage - have completed 2 hours - but will be signing up as soon as I can. Is there anywhere I can find an overview of the course? I’m someone who still uses paper maps as well as Google when driving because I like to have the big picture of where I am.
I’m Irish, retired, fluent in my own lovely Irish Gaelic, and learning Welsh is my small contribution to supporting minority languages struggling to survive the in the increasingly Anglicised world.
Thanks
Hi Teresa, and thank you very much for learning Welsh! Go raibh maith agat, if I’ve managed to spell that correctly
The further we go towards customisation/personalisation, the further away we get from set texts, so I’m afraid we don’t have any handy overviews - the closest you could get would be to look at the vocab lists per challenge for Level 1 and 2, I think, but they’re behind the paywall - sorry about that. Our material isn’t anything like the curriculae you’ll see for traditional courses, so this kind of stuff has always been a bit tricky for us.
As Aran said in his reply, there isn’t really an overview and the vocab lists are behind the paywall… but handily, you can also find them here on the forum on this thread Vocabulary from Challenges if that helps.
This makes so much sense now! Thank you! I’ll keep this in mind
I appreciate this way of looking at things, Welsh words making sense as themselves instead of Welsh ways to say English concepts. I hope my post didn’t come off as complaining that non-English languages don’t work the way English does - that was absolutely not my intent.
Not sure if this is the right place to ask it, but as it is my first question on this forum…
I have been a diligent learner so far, but I was very disheartened by how badly Challenge 10 went for me. One thing that threw me off was something that I was certain that had learnt it before, but that without explanation prompted another result:
I ask you - Dw i’n gofyn wrthot ti
Now I’m positive that I had learnt gofyn i mi earlier, so I had expected something along those lines… Is this incorrect, a “childish” way of saying things or simply another, equally valid way?
It’s simply another way of saying it - in the spoken language some people use wrth, some use i. The trick is to use whichever you’re comfortable with or that you hear most often around you but to be aware of the other version that someone else might use.
SSiW will throw in variations like that unexpectedly - exactly as you’d come across them ‘in the wild’ - so that you get ‘thrown’ in the safety of the course rather than ‘thrown’ during a real conversation.
Thanks @siaronjames . To be honest, during conversations I would expect other variations but it may be (at the very least) confusing to do this unannounced during a course - but that might be just me
I’ll give Ch10 a new go with new enthousiasm then
You’ll find that it settles into gofyn i mi as you work through the course, especially from Level 2 on, as that is the most common way and generally considered “standard”.
Bore da! I’ve just received my week 3 email, and am fairly confident that I’ve got lessons 1,2&3 down to a reasonable standard, but I may have another few goes at lesson 4 today before moving on. I think I may be a “high repetition” learner, as I find I get a panic induced brain fog if I don’t feel confident enough in what I have already learnt. I’m currently repeating each lesson at least twice, plus using Automagic to reinforce everything I’ve listened too. I am struggling slightly to get through each lesson and often have several false starts and long pauses (while I deal with some outbreak of chaos!) as I am simultaneously parenting a 5 year old and 5 month old solo through the summer holidays, and don’t really get a solid 30mins to concentrate, ever! I’m also running on about 3 hours sleep a night, so I’m afraid my poor brain may not be at full power! Anyway, this sounds like a pile of excuses, but my question really is, is this still possible? I’d love to be able to follow the program properly, but it’s just not possible at the moment. Am I being too ambitious?
Considering the circumstances you’ve described, I’d say you’re doing wonderfully well!
There are a couple of things it’s worth bearing in mind with the SSiW course - firstly, while there’s no doubting that some people are high-repetition learners, don’t feel that you have to repeat until you have every sentence down to perfection. There is repetition built into the course, often by repeating blocks of phrases and joining them to other blocks of phrases, so it’s not a case of learning things parrot fashion and moving on.
Secondly, the course is flexible and can be adapted to meet the needs of individuals, so it’s not really a case of “following the program properly” (there had to be some sort of guidelines to follow, but they’re not set in stone!) - do what you can when you can, repeat as little or as often as you want (but avoid aiming for perfection before moving on), and take a break when you need to so that doing a bit now and then is more like a welcome task to return to rather than a chore of “keeping up” (there’s no one to ‘keep up’ with - it’s your path, and you can take it at your speed).
Diolch! Thank you very much, that’s reassuring. As much as I am trying not to aim for perfection I do find it hard to move forward without a certain degree of confidence, unless the Welsh comes to me almost without thinking I go in to a spin and then can’t come up with anything useful at all!
@beatrice that’s a very common reaction at first until you get used to this way of learning and can really accept that making mistakes is an important part of learning. So every time you think you haven’t a clue, but blurt out ‘something’ in Welsh then compare what you said to what comes back, your brain stores away a little bit more information about the Welsh until the day arrives when you open your mouth and out it comes, almost without thinking. I agree with Siaron, you’re doing very well already!
Hello all, here’s a question about pronunciation. I’ve never tried learning Welsh before, I live in England and have had almost no passive exposure to Welsh which means that the sounds of the language are very new to me. I’ve amazed myself by arriving at Challenge 6, level 1 and I think I might be just about getting the idea of welcoming my mistakes or at least not getting hung up on them, but the thing that is bothering me is whether I should be doing extra practice to try and get my tongue around all these new sounds, for example pronouncing my r’s properly, making a clear distinction between the “rh” sound in a word like “rhwbeth” and the “r” in “rŵan”, getting my tongue in the right place fast enough to try and pronounce the “ll” sound in phrases like “rhwbeth arall” and “dw i angen gwella”. The “ch” sound is also a bit of a challenge, I’m sure it shouldn’t be giving me a sore throat but at times that’s the sensation I’m getting. Are there any other former complete novices out there that could offer some advice on whether these sounds will just become natural if I press on with the course, or if I should take some extra time outside of the challenges and Automagic to keep practising them so hopefully my tongue and other mouth muscles will learn how to produce them quickly and easily?
While I had previously made a point of learning the ch sound so as not to get told off by my Scottish mother for calling lochs locks, other than I hadn’t any real experience of Celtic sounds before starting SSi. People tell me my pronunciation is fine.
My habit through the challenges is to say what I think it should be, and then after the first time it’s said on the recording, I repeat that, trying to match pronunciation, intonation, and if possible speed as exactly as I can manage. If there’s time I might even say it a third time, but I won’t hit the pause button in order to make that happen, and usually I’m too slow for that.
I feel that repetition of what I hear helps me get in the practice I need at speaking the words naturally and as phrases, instead of hesitantly and one… or two… words… at a time.
And of course, sometimes now but especially earlier on, I trip over my tongue and just sputter helplessly, but still, I keep on and find the next time those words come up I do better.
And by the way, if you’ve got as far as challenge 6 without throwing in the towel, you definitely have what it takes to become a confident speaker! Da iawn chi!
