If anyone needs motivation…read this
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What an awesome surprise, Mo1! The trick will be holding off on speaking Welsh with them too early. You’ll be tempted to say Sh’mae and dw i’n cofio beth ddeudest ti.
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I want to be able to fill in my next census form in Welsh. I filled in the last one in Welsh to be fair, but then I had to tick the box to say I didn’t speak Welsh. And checking that the questions were in the same order on the English copy took me ages.
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I want honour my Dad who was a proud Welshman and to complete a journey I stopped 30 years ago.
I hope that through seeing me learn welsh my children will feel another connection to their heritage and grow up knowing that your identity is what’s in your heart - no matter where you end up living.
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Wow! That’s the passion learning Welsh as an adult creates. The need to honor one’s parents and pass on the Welsh identity and living language to the next. That’s beautiful Richard Thomas
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I need to be able to understand what my children are talking about![quote=“aran, post:1, topic:10504, full:true”]
What’s your WHY?
How would you finish the sentence ‘I want to be a Welsh speaker because…’?
Just ONE sentence…
I want to be a Welsh speaker because…
And what’s ONE thing you hope will happen when you are a Welsh speaker?
[Okay, okay, if you already are, what’s ONE thing that pleased you that’s happened because you became a Welsh speaker? 
]
[/quote]
I’ll make my grandparents very proud!
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I was born and brought up in Llanelli in a non Welsh speaking family. I trained in England and returned to Wales after 30 years still with a Llanelli accent. I was so pleased to be back and started to learn Welsh, but I am still not fluent. I am a volunteer in Castell Aberteifi, the birth place of the first Eisteddfod in 1176 and I would love to answer questions fluently and welcome visitors to a very special place in Welsh History
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thank you - It made me a bit emotional getting that out there!
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Your emotionality utterly resonates with me, @richard-thomas-1…
I just dissolve at the thought of honouring the people(s) I love - and the huge debt I owe them, or the huge honour I feel they bestowed upon me for sharing any tiny bit of their own home and culture and wisdom/insight or connectedness…
This is at the heart of my need to learn Welsh, though some of the people I am reconnecting with through this means/medium - the hardest to reach/what most puzzles me - are - (in my case) ironically - were… …exclusively anglophone, possibly, or not.
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I love my family and my 3 year old is cheering me on with lots of Da iawn Mummy’s,I hope that I will be able to join in more of the conversations at Christmas dinner and gain the confidence to speak to my in-laws in Welsh. I’ve got lots of words but struggle with being intimidated to try…Wish me Pob Lwc at Christmas!
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I want to be a Welsh speaker because as a visitor I love to exchange a few words for it is so enriching to speak a bit of the language and it makes it possible to really encounter each other.
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I want to be a Welsh speaker for my daughter, who has recently started attending Cylch.
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I want to be a Welsh speaker because, one day, I may have a Welsh speaking grand child. (My son lives in Wales and has married a wonderful lass who is a Welsh speaker).
I hope to be able to chatter away happily in Welsh
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A lot of people suffer the same thing. I did and still do sometimes. Maybe using this visualization will help. Picture you’re in-laws reaction as your Cymraeg goes beyond “sh’mae, bore da, diolch…etc”. I suspect they will become an ardent supporter of your efforts, which will encourage you even more.
I love hearing stories like this, how Welsh connects generations and provides another medium for expression.
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I have to say, some of my favourite reasons for learning are the people who are doing it for their families. Aran made a great point in a meeting a while back that we lost Welsh from a lot of families through love. People loved their children, wanted the best for them, and honestly believed that “the best” was replacing Welsh with English.
We know now that they were wrong, but that doesn’t change anything. What does change things is that the same love is bringing Welsh back into families. Children learning in school is all very well, but what changes everything is when the adults support them, and show how important the language is to their futures and their connections with their past.
Diolch to everyone learning for love!
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↑⇑⇡☝︎⬆︎⇧⇪⥣ This…so much this. What a huge reframe this is for me. Taking a historical fact and breaking it down to the familial level totally changes the emotions from one of anger to one of love. It makes we wonder if parents felt any sadness at the loss of their language? The fact it was not passed down to their children. I recently made an acquaintance whose native speaking parents raised him in English. Next time I see him, I’m going to ask him about that.
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I wish we’d had the tape recorders rolling (or whatever is the modern idiom for that) at the Centre for Alternative Tech Centre day… That is when I heard @aran express that view about what - through love - had nearly been destroyed, love will repair & bring back to life.
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I completely get the feeling of wanting to be able to speak Welsh after returning to where feels like home! And to be able to share it with other people too
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Thank you Bronwen. It is good to be back and I am enjoying the course .I am doing Level
2 challenge 7 at the moment and plan to go to the Lampeter meet up.
Hwyl nawr
Beth
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I promised my son that I would learn the language wherever he settled, and he came to university in Wales and never left. So my grandson is at Welsh school, and I want to be able to speak Welsh with him and with my daughter in law. In one way, my family has gone full circle. My father was born in Newport in 1920, to a non- Welsh speaking family. But when he was at school, he asked if he could learn Welsh, only to be told it was a waste of time and money, so he was not allowed to. He lived long enough to know that his grandson was a fluent Welsh speaker, and that his great grandson would be too.
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