Hi! I’m back in Melbourne. I have finally met up with Karla, only to find that in a city of four million people we live within one kilometre of each other. Byd Bach! We have a Welsh language chat with a group of eight others scheduled for Thursday night and are hatching plans to have a Welsh discussion group as part of our Tuesday classes - for those who are ready to just Siarad Cymraeg.
One of the people who has been helping out with the Welsh classes in my absence - a man called Aled - will be in Wales over the next six weeks. While we were both at the eisteddfod last year we couldn’t help noticing that the hard working people in the Cymru a’r byd tent had a limited sense of how much interest there is in the world at large for Wales and the Welsh language. Someone has started a Facebook group Undeb Cymru a’r byd - Welsh international (the Cymru a’r byd website hasn’t been updated for some time). Aled will be meeting with members of Cymru a’r byd while in Wales and hopes to discuss the growing world wide interest. If you are on Facebook, why not pop over and join the group. It will help inform their discussions. smile
People have no idea that we are out here! Or that the modest push for a million Welsh speakers is happening on various fronts around the globe.
If you are one of the many SSiW groups that meet up, why not post a photo in the group?
I was just listening to someone on Radio Cymru now talking about the Melbourne meeting tomorrow night - sounds like it’ll be fun.
Good to hear that you’ve met up woth Karla as well - her Welsh is astounding after only 6 months or so.
I hope Aled gets some joy with Cymru a’r Byd - there is a real feeling in Welsh speaking circles that it’s s struggle to get people to hear us, and that no-one is interested in little us (the whole “Cymru fach” thing!). And yet there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people in the world who would love to join us if they only knew how. The sooner we get that message out, the sooner we can start meeting the thousands. Thank you to you ,and everyone else who has started that missionary work.
Thanks Iestyn. Yes, Karla’s Welsh is amazing. I tried to show her video clip to the class but it kept freezing on us. I agree about the Cymru fach. I tried to pitch the idea of a hunnangofiant by an Aussie who has learned Welsh from afar and spent six months living in Wales but … Apparently she wouldn’t be able to promote it because she doesn’t live in Wales. Funny, the Aussie in question wasn’t thinking of a small Welsh market. She had the world wide learners community in mind.
I am not too fussed because I haven’t written the said document. But the reaction was interesting. They have no idea how many of us are out there.
Yes - that sounds like a book that would be fascinating, both for the world-wide community and the domestic.
As a matter of interest, who said that such an author wouldn;t be able to promote the book for not living here? I wonder if they’ve heard of this brand new, soon-to-be-released-in-Aberystwyth innovation, the interwebby thingy…
Someone at y Lolfa. the idea of self publishing hadn’t occurred to me. As I’ve said, I haven’t put pen to paper, it was simply an idea. But one worth considering maybe…
Fiction writing is my first love and there was one Welsh publisher who was willing to take a look at my novel. So, we’ll see… But it strikes me now that it may be a good ‘complimentary project.’ Maybe I’ll write a couple of chapters and see how it feels.
Thanks for the offer to promote it. as you know marketing is the biggest drawback for self published authors.
Bethan Gwanas interviewed my for Golwg so maybe they will recant. Hopefully the article will give SSiW a plug. Incidentally, how many people are registered with SSiW currently? I told her 25,000 plus. I cautioned her to check the figures.
It’s a bit messy because we’ve moved around a few times - we’ve probably had about 40,000 access the lessons at some point by now, but on the current website we’re running at almost exactly 20,000 registered users.
I am not on Facebook, but I am trying to get as many folk as possible from outside Wales to sign the petition to keep up the funding for S4C. If any of your friends, in or out of facebook, value such small amounts of S4C as they can get, the petition is at
and I have no faith in the current UK Government’s good intentions towards the channel, so will be very grateful for signatures. Please ask them to make their city/state and country clear, as this gets a dot on the accompanying map!!
We figure (extrapolating from the people who put their hands up to be on the map) that we have about a third of our learners in the United States, a third in England, and a third in Wales - but that’s very ‘finger in the air’ kind of stuff (and conveniently ignores the rest of the world!).
In terms of active - we’d like to do more of this kind of drilling down - but it’s hard to be sure about activity, because people can be working away enthusiastically at the lessons without ever logging in to the website…
I’ve dabbled in a few different ways to access Welsh TV (and I told S4C so at the eisteddfod) but nothing beats going to the official website and just being able to view - even if it is a limited program. Radio Cymru is great. I listen to lots of that too. But TV gives me another outlet.
