Thank you so much, @rich, for that extremely helpful response. 
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Hi. I just did the South Challenge 5 for Level 1 and was pleased to find this thread as I am also used to mae… gyda fi from Duolingo so the switch in word order threw me a bit. However I also noticed I would like given as hoffen I where I learned hoffwn i. Is this just accent/dialect? Thanks.
@rich Good to know, thanks. I think that has been the one thing that I have found hard about learning Welsh. Not the lack of a standard language so much or the existence of dialects, but rather the lack of understanding of which grammar construction/word variant is used where in the country. Mind you it doesn’t help that one of the only issues I have with SSIW so far after using it for five weeks is the inconsistent spelling and lack of explanation in the vocabulary notes. It really doesn’t help when you have the South Speaker say Welsh like Cymrâg but have it spelt as the standard Cymraeg but then the next thing you hear and see is ma’ when mae is the standard spelling.To me, teaching dialect is fine so long as you teach the norm and explain the difference. I also got a bit frustrated when I saw both the North and South written notes for he is written as o’n when I learned that the South Version should be e’n and the recording sounds like fe’n. Having said that though, the rest of the course is fantastic and I’m so glad I signed up!
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Hi @duncanbrown
Yes, based on experience SSIW is by far the best method for learning a language - in my opinion.
Using the spoken language as the method of remembering it is both radical in comparison to other methods but also obvious at the same time - we all learned at least one language that way! 
I found the different dialects and spellings actually raised my awareness that this was ‘a thing’ - which in turn made me think about the whole thing as something which was a bit more flexible than I would have.
In turn this turned out to a big help in the wild as I was kind of expecting to hear a variety of things back - and it seemed OK.
So it may be one of those things which is a slow burn/ seems weird to start with but which you come to appreciate later.
The main thing is that it works - and I’m not sure I have found anything else which actually does (although there are plenty of things which are kind of fun - which is different).
Being given folders of material to learn from - or typing text into an App - are both extremely hard routes to speaking a language.
Rich 
@rich What you say about typing text is certainly true for me at any rate. However, having said that I am genuinely shocked by how far I’ve come in a short time and not just because of SSIW either. Before starting the Duolingo Welsh course I only knew a handful of phrases in Welsh from a hospital stay in Oswestry thirty years ago that I learned to be polite to the Welsh speaking staff. I started Duolingo last year after my interest in Welsh was rekindled and then restarted from scratch in October last year after Duolingo changed from the tree structure to the path. I still haven’t completed the course yet! Then I got interested in the idea of getting serious with SSIW which meant I started on the six minutes a day course five weeks ago. The first one to one session that I had was the first time I had ever spent that long in one conversation without using English for a language which I’d been learning solo from scratch. To say that I’m shocked by how much Duolingo has taught me is an understatement. I really don’t understand why people are so scathing about it. Yes it has flaws, of course it does and yes it won’t teach you everything but I found it has taught me the basics really well, which SSIW is building on and Nia even said as much to me the other week. Maybe she was just being nice, but nonetheless to have a native Welsh speaker say that to me after so little opportunity to speak really means a lot. I also love the sense of community that the course offers as well.
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