A big apology to tomorrow’s bookings, but I have laryngitis! I have sent you both emails with my apology and a request to reschedule if that’s OK with you. So very sorry, again. I really thought it would be better today but it seems not. 
Let’s hope we can chat to our hearts’ content nest week.
Kindest regards,
Catrin.x
Get well soon, @catrinlliarjones! This is most important. We won’t go anywhere I believe … (I believe others agree with me on this).
Well, this is for you to cheer you up! You need some sun I believe. 
Brysia wella, Catrin!
Helo bawb a blwyddyn newydd dda iawn i chi gyd!
I hope you all had joyful Christmas and New Year celebrations full of love and good company. Our festivities were certainly busy, but fun. We had a wonderful time here in Arosfa, Aran’s family were visiting over Christmas and much merriment was had.
The laryngitis that was has long since disappeared and I’m now back in the saddle.
I’m available for Skype conversations in Welsh every Thursday, for practice and some mentoring, guidance, casual chatting or sessions aimed at specific goals such as giving a speech, learning song lyrics, reading aloud in church, or anything else that may crop up.
Looking forward to chatting to you soon!
And here’s the booking link again, to save you needing to scroll back up to the top:
I just wanted to say thank you to @CatrinLliarJones for her patient, friendly and enormously helpful conversation on Skype yesterday. It was a great confidence boost. I’m just sorry that it has to be a one-off as I normally have an over-excited toddler crashing around the place on Thursdays, so I count myself lucky to have been able to squeeze this one in!
If anyone else is nervously standing on the banks wondering about taking the plunge, I wholeheartedly recommend it. Catrin is very clear and the North/South thing wasn’t a problem at all. Also, the use of the message facility to write up new or difficult words is brilliant. If only all conversations came with a little sidebar of handy references - fantastic suggestion @netmouse!
She’ll be delighted that you enjoyed it…
[And if she ever gets any sleep ever again, she might even get to check in and see this herself…;-)]
This is going to sound very silly but…
I’ve had 5 one hour conversations with a real Welsh person, who has very kindly agreed to chat with me. I’ve just about got over being hugely embarassed, but my mind still goes blank on lots of occasions. Also, I’m beginning to feel I will never learn Welsh because there is SO much I don’t know. The leap from lessons on my own with SSI and going ‘into the Wild’ seems huge and increasingly insurmountable. I’m wondering whether this is a throwback to feeling so unconfident in school and I just need to ‘get over it’ or whether it’s an inevitable part of learning a language or whether I’m just not any good at properly learning a language.
This is a long winded way of me saying, I think I’d like to try a lesson with Catrin, but I’m genuinely worried I’ll be so struck dumb I’ll make a complete fool of myself/ add to my sense of ‘one step forward, several steps back’.
( I’m on Level 2 lesson 12ish)
I will treat you to a bottle of our Italian wine if you do not have an incredibly successful lesson with Catrin - so that shows you how confident I am that you will shine - because I hate to deplete my wine stocks!! 
Justin
Hmmm …
I have the other “holdbacks” going in conversation with Catrin … I feel I’m just not good enough yet for this. Well, actually … I’m not sure why there was no holdbacks “chatting” with @aran regarding my knowledge of speach but with @CatrinLliarJones? I feel like another story … 
Once upon a time … one day in the future … … maybe … you never know …
Well, it’s definitely not this! The step from working through lessons (which, however much people grumble about them sometimes, are nice and easy and tidy compared to real conversations!) to actually speaking to someone is a huge one - we try and prepare the way with our listening exercises (are you doing those every day?), but it’s only in actual conversation that you really win your spurs.
If you’ve spoken Welsh for an hour five times, you’re doing excellently - and you’re doing exactly what you need to turn yourself into a confident Welsh speaker. I’ve two recommendations for you - try to have a longer session some time (go for four hours and a bottle of wine!), and otherwise just keep on doing it, and keep on pressing through the lessons. It’s a neurological process, and you WILL get there…
If I spent 4hours trying to talk and understand Welsh, with or without wine, my brain would explode. I feel I’ve done a really hard work out after an hour. The things I find really difficult are understanding -even simple things -and remembering what I know I know in that immediate situation of a conversation.
Then, I find it hard not to get discouraged.
Tatjana, I’m sure you’d do really well. You’re someone who is learning for the fun of it, yes? But I know how you feel.
Justin, thank you for the offer. I have no doubt Catrin is brilliant. Will that be enough to earn the bottle? Like, now?
That sounds all to familiar (the crushing feeling of being a buffoon with an empty head is not a pleasure).
That’s the worst point and from there it’s slowly forwards (well i hope so i’m still here).
The hard part is letting go of the perfect bridge between two languages and instead enjoy floating down the stream between the two and gradually improving.
There is a huge amount i have yet to learn (it looks like a mountain).
I often forget words i have used a dozen times.
but it’s getting better (mostly on skype).
I don’t think any of this means the people i practice with are not serious about learning Welsh,
it’s just that stressing has a negative effect.
Cheers J.P.
It’s true - conversations are really hard to begin with. Words you know sound alien coming out of someone else’s mouth. The first conversation I had, after I’d been learning for about a month, went terribly in my eyes. I found I couldn’t say or understand anything, and I felt really discouraged. But I kept going, and after the sixth or so conversation, I felt that it was getting easier. I still don’t understand everything, and often have to slip in an English word when I don’t have the vocab, but I can communicate. It’s one of those things - the only way you can improve is to keep doing it. You will find that it gets easier after a while, and your brain will stop freaking out when faced with a word it doesn’t understand, and instead learn to find meaning from context. 
Ooo, ja … This reminds me on today’s Skype chat. I’ve talked like a rain trying to say something and at the end I felt really puzzled as all of a sudden I felt even I can’t understand myself and what I’ve actually blurted out what the people who listened to my mixy wixy Cymraeg … What I actually said? Even now I don’t have the idea …
Well, what I’m actually trying to say is that not one chat/conversation … is the same. Once we have better days once we have worse and that we just have to bear in mind. We’re learners after all, no matter how good (or not good for that matter) we usually speak. Today was one of my worst days for example in which I couldn’t understand even myself and I couldn’t say much but next time might be better.
Well, @franhunni, I might learn the language for fun or at least it seams so, but the promise I once gave is a promise if even to those who don’t even know me and I take promisses siriously almost more sirious then anything else … For many of you the reason to learn is because of your encesters, for the others pure love to the language and the strong wish to know all celtic languages for me it’s the promise I once gave that drives me on … after that promise given, I’ve started to love what I started to learn and so … here I am. And … I’m not sure I’d really do so “really well” especially in the days like this one today (well sorry it’s yesterday already (at least where I live))
So, you’d not know whether you’d do well in conversation with Catrin or not unless you try. However I’m positive you’d do just great so go for it!
You will find that a sympathetic conversational partner will do wonders for your ability to talk, and also for your confidence.
I find if someone encourages me, and focuses on what I can do, then all of a sudden my inhibitions go away and I find I can do so much more.
So I would encourage you to find a conversational partner that will be gentle and encouraging. No doubt this will help you build your confidence and enable your undoubted knowledge (that really is in there dying to get out on display) to shine,
Justin
When I come to think about it this happens to me even in my native language if I am faced with people so much more articulate than I am who are in “full throttle”. Not only can’t I interject with some simple observation - sometimes it gets so bad I can hardly remember how to say my name. There must be some fancy psychological term for these obvious phenomenons.
And then there is light at the end of the tunnel - and with a patient and encouraging partner everything comes together. And how great that feels.,
Justin
And that’s exactly why you should do it.
Acquiring a new language isn’t easy - it takes some serious neurological changes - and if you stay in your comfort zone, you’re going to take far, far longer to trigger the synaptic growth that you need to become comfortable in your new language.
That’s precisely why I recommend extended time without using English - it creates, better than anything else I know of, the exact input/output mix that you need to improve your conversational ability. It’s why our Bootcamps make such a valuable difference (particular for first timers).
You also need to bear in mind that you’re still at a fairly early stage - halfway through Level 2 - and while you’ve already got a significant percentage of the most important stuff, the rest of Level 2 and then (in the not-too-distant future!) Level 3 will give you a much stronger platform from which you can keep on throwing yourself into longer and longer conversations…
I know I shouldn’t inhale - buy I can’t help myself when I hear those words
Justin
Just sent the framework off to the printers (well, off to Ifan to be loaded into the SSiBorg) - little bit of extra work because we have to pre-load the existing L1/L2 material for the spaced repetition - but I should be ready to start producing the script in the fairly near future…
