@MarilynHames - would you be willing to chat to a journalist about it? I’ve got a friend who thinks it would make a great ‘human interest’ positive story about the language… 
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I would be delighted to do this Aran—anything to help, and to support your amazing work in making Welsh a ‘living’ language for many of us who had no other effective way to discover the joy of speaking it.
There is an 8-hour time difference with Vancouver, but that still leaves plenty of daylight time both ends of the phonecall.
Is there a secure way I can send my phone number, or maybe Skype address?
Best wishes,
Marilyn
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Terrific - thank you so much!
If you could drop us a line at admin@saysomethingin.com then I’ll pass that on to Martin… 
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Done!
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She must have great eyesight… I can barely SEE the images on the forum!
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I wonder if that’s because of the alcohol? Maybe it makes us less inclined to worry about getting things wrong!
I’ve always found that friends I’ve met who had very limited English, and were learning, always seemed to be more confident after a couple beers. It’s almost like the become more fluent if you know what I mean? Like you say, I think it’s more of a courage thing to “have a go” and not worry about it.
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Know what you mean, I’m the same, but I can enlarge them—and the text, on my tablet. It helps.
Perhaps also worth mentioning that the other party to this exchange ( @ruthandjan, I believe) took part in a hangout this afternoon too, and told this story!
Edit: in case it isn’t obvious, this refers to the Vancouver pool incident. I should have quoted the post, I guess but haven’t looked how to do that.
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While I’m here, I had a sort of ‘breakthrough’, however tiny, today. We moved to Wales when my daughter was in year 5. She’s now year 8 and hasn’t had that much exposure to Welsh, really, and the second language Welsh teaching at her school doesn’t seem that effective, compounded by the fact that she mainly seems to have supply teachers. Nevertheless, we managed to use a bit of Welsh with each other in the car today, and she helped explain some past tense structures that I hadn’t quite grasped yet from the challenges, as she’d been revising them for a test.
I hardly think we’ll be chatting in Cymraeg like natives any time soon, but it was a sweet moment.
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I do worry a little about just how dependent I am on gwin coch to launch into Cymraeg with anything approaching confidence!
(And the forum software has told me off for adding too many separate replies to this thread. I guess that was the booze ‘talking’ too! 
I’ll pipe down now.
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Don’t let it boss you around!
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Ant: (And the forum software has told me off for adding too many separate replies to this thread. I guess that was the booze ‘talking’ too! I’ll pipe down now.
Mike: Don’t let it boss you around!
[/quote]
Don’t worry about it. I noticed a badge next to my name on the Slack Site. I clicked on it and it came up with “Chatterbox” 
And that’s the site that’s meant for talking rather than typing
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I went to visit my sister in North Wales and although I’m doing the southern welsh course, I plucked up enough courage to go up to two strangers in a shop that I had overheard speaking welsh and say hello and say a few phrases. They were very kind with my garbled attempt and that made me smile.
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There’s evidence that children who know their parents have a positive attitude to the language do better with it at school in general, so you’ve already won that…
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I did a “discover Welsh” course at City Lit in London yesterday. I booked it months ago thinking I’d still be at that level bit it didn’t take long to realise how far I’d come and even had small conversations with the tutor (who was very good+knew about SSiW/Bwtcamps etc). It was the first time speaking to an actual person! I also got a chance to tell the other learners about SSiW as they seemed pretty suprised that I’d had no ‘formal/traditional’ classroom lessons before!
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Bear with me - this sounds more like a breakdown than a breakthrough… I arrived, exhausted, at a guest house, after spending the journey talking to myself in Welsh, as you do. ‘Sut dach chi?’ I said to the man in the doorway, and he replied, a bit startled. It was a while before I remembered I was on the Isle of Mull…
The next morning, I found out that he was on holiday too, from Llandegla. He asked rather sceptically where I came from, saying I had a Gog accent. A Gog accent! Not an English accent!! Result!!!
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I talked to my partner’s mam on the whole car ride from Bangor to Benllech Beach in Cymraeg yesterday. I know it’s not that long a car ride, but this was a massive breakthrough, as I don’t think she had realised how much I know and understand already. She usually always translates everything for me, even when it isn’t necessary at all. 
I also managed to have some exchanges with stubborn toddlers who don’t yet understand that they’re bilingual. Nobody ran into the sea or in front of a car, so I count this as another success! 
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But don’t your toddlers play in the shallows jumping little waves and splashing Mam? And learning never to run out into the sea but always along the waves. It is useful if a bit of sand is a bit ‘sucky’, helps to explain why going out into it for any distance is a bad idea!