'I want to be a Welsh speaker because...'

Welsh General / Questions
#21

I want to be a Welsh speaker because minority languages are cool and need protecting and because someone kept showing me Welsh poetry things and made me want to be able to read them… :smile_cat:

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#22

Mi ges i fy ngheni yng Nghaerdydd on dw i’n byw rŵan yng Nghymru Gogledd. Dw i isio siarad Cymraeg achos dw i’n Cymraes!

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#23

Thanks for that, Pengwen! That was very like my reason… :slight_smile:

One little thing - we usually post in English on the forum, so that even beginners can follow what’s going on - this time, maybe you could just add in a translation? :slight_smile:

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#24

I wanted to be a Welsh speaker because…err…well…I didn’t really, I’m not Welsh, I don’t live there - I just stumbled upon this brilliant website one day that said ‘learning is really easy, why not try this free lesson?’ and here I am, 6 years and 2 bootcamps later, a Welsh speaker (more or less).

One really great thing that’s happened since is that my mum, who went to a Welsh-speaking school but didn’t learn Welsh and wished she had, has been encouraged to learn too (it is never too late).

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#25

I love stories like this :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :star2:

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#26

Many years ago my husband and I took a trip to Europe for our 7th anniversary. During that trip we spent two days in North Wales and I fell in love, with the place and the language. I bought a couple of touristy phrase books which only heightened my interest. At the time, there were precious few resources in the middle of the US for learning Welsh, but I kept looking for them. I found Mark Nodine’s online (short, written) course and got some very solid, basic grounding, but kept looking. In the process I became a member of Côr Cymry Gogledd America (the North American Welsh Choir, sadly now gone), with a director who is mamiaith and learned a lot more there. But I still couldn’t converse. My husband and I visited Wales several more times. I became a moderator on the old Forum Wales site (sadly now gone, too), and on that site someone mentioned this wonderful new site for learning Welsh - Say Somthing in Welsh. I was actually a bit skeptical at first, but I kept hearing glowing things about it so after a few months I tried it. And I’ve been here ever since. I’m a bit slow and patchy at my learning but I’m going to take the leap later today and sign up for bootcamp. :anguished: (Wish me luck!)

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#27

Pob lwc, @Sionned! :thumbsup:

I’ve written this elsewhere on the forum, somewhere, but…My story is similar to @flora’s - I’m not Welsh, have no connections to Wales, but have had an interest in Wales since childhood. In 2015, I wanted to learn how to pronounce some Welsh names in a book I was reading, found SSiW via Google, decided to try a lesson just to see what it was like, and…2 1/2 years later, I’m still here, still learning, and loving every minute! SSiW is fantastic - I never imagined I could learn to speak Welsh, and would be able to have conversations with people in Wales via Skype. And I never guessed it would be so much fun! :smile:

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#28

I do, at least, have Welsh ancestry, though it is very far back - my confirmed ancestor came to “this side of the pond” in 1683.

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#29

… achos (oherwydd?) Cymro dw i. (Prosiect ymddeol - gwell hwyr na hwyrach!)

Gobeithio byddaf yn gallu siarad â’m ffrindiau sy’n siarad Cymraeg a dw i moyn helpu’r hen iaith i barhau.

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#30

Excellent reasons, Pererin, and a warm welcome to the forum… :slight_smile:

One small point - we usually keep our forum posts to English, so that even our beginners can be a full part of the community - but we encourage you to use your Welsh as much as possible in the ‘Speaking Practice’ section… :slight_smile:

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#31

Thank you, Aran. Sorry, understood.

For my fellow beginners, it was my attempt to say:

… because I’m a Welshman. (A retirement project - better late than never!)
I hope to be able to speak with my Welsh speaking friends, and I want to help the old language endure.

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#32

Prynhawn da, I want to learn Welsh because we moved o Cardiff in the Spring. Seems natural to learn the language and as a fellow Celt (of the Scottish branch) seemed daft not to; and I want to keep my little grey cells alive and kicking! Wish more people spoke it though in Cardiff. Never mind, I’ve also started the Mynediad course. So wish me luck.

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#33

Good luck with Mynediad, @MoiraKleissner. I don’t live in Wales, but I have been using a version of Mynediad that some kind person put on Memrise. I think that it has helped me a lot with reading, and I want to do that.[quote=“MoiraKleissner, post:32, topic:10504”]
I want to keep my little grey cells alive and kicking!
[/quote]

Me too!
Sue

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#34

Because I speak Cymraeg now, my Cymraes neighbour is amazed at the number of people I’ve met here, on line or wyneb i wyneb, face to face, from all over the world, who are learning her wonderful language.

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#35

Oh, they’re there - 40,000 or so of them - once you start to track them down and figure out the networks, lots of stuff will open up to you… :slight_smile:

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#36

Thanks Aran.
We get a list from our course of pubs etc where groups meet, although most are difficult to get to from Pontprennau by public transport.
Most Wed mornings I go to visit a wee lady in our church to practice. I think we probably spend more time laughing and drinking coffee! But it;s good.
Looking forward to the day at the uni in 3rd Feb. I need more confidence to use the tiny little I have learned.

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#37

I want to be a Welsh speaker because I want to take part in the local community or, even better be part of the local community. When I was living in Hertfordshire, a feeling of community was definitely something that was missing.

I come from Birmingham originally and all the time I was living down south (for more than half my life), I thought I would like to return there. I always felt that was where my ‘sense of place’ lay. But now I have found my sense of place in mid-Wales.

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#38

I’ve been a Welsh speaker now for about a year really - and it’s opened up something completely new and exciting for me. My life is almost unrecognisable since starting. A new home, new hometown, loads of new friends, a reconnection with a past that I was sort of robbed off by growing up in the place I grew up.

None of which would’ve been possible without stumbling onto SSIW.

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#39

I want the language to stay alive and beyond …

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#40

@helenlindsay So I’m not the only ex-Brummie out here (Sparkhill)! I have little doubt that we have Welsh in our blood as a result of drinking the water that Brum nicks from the Elan Valley…Best of luck.

8 Likes