I must pick @Aran’s brains about Pain and Suffering - just about to teach a professional development module to my level 4 Higher Apprenticeship and one of the standards to to do with theories of “how we learn”.
And simultaneously I’m trying to teach my younger pre-level 1 learners not to give up when it’s hard…
A slippery slope to what, though? To a thing that’s slightly different to another thing? That’s kind of how the world works, isn’t it?
This discussion has been had multiple times before on this forum alone. It never gets anywhere.
I wonder if a millennium and a half ago there were people in Brittany bemoaning the fact that all tha kidz were no longer speaking pure Cornish? 
Only in a very, as you say, extreme situation where the number of people who have learned Welsh far from Welsh speaking communities and who have done this in sufficient numbers and enthusiasm to develop their own dialect then move (“en masse” as it were) in to areas in large enough numbers to have a noticeable effect on the original language. Normally in areas far from Welsh speaking communities, the number and attitudes of people doing Welsh courses does not reach this level.
If that ever becomes a “problem”, I would say it would be a good problem to have to solve!
Most of the important increase in numbers will, if it comes, probably come from Welsh speaking children and Welsh speaking schools, which is a different kettle of fish.
But yes, I am used to and am quite happy with listening to various forms of Welsh- natural dialects, which are affected by English to a greater or lesser degree.
I would prefer to hear any dialect of Welsh than no dialect at all. (That’s not always the black and white choice though, of course!)
I like some dialects, accents, and use of words more than others - it’s a personal choice, which I also have in English.
I don’t think so, apart from the general process of giving emotional support to learners. It’s just about exposure. Anyone who gets enough of it, and combines it with enough production, will end up sounding very similar to whichever native/fluent speakers they engage with most often… 
Unfortunately I can’t quite agree with that. (Although I think the rest of the argument is pure genius.) In reality, all but the very most proficient of second language speakers reach a stage where their language ‘fossilises’ and they no longer actively self-regulate minor anomalies / accent. They can be extremely effective communicators and completely ‘fluent’ to all intents and purposes, but still have a strong accent and many habitual errors. These have nothing to do with their regular speaking contacts, more with the point at which they made a mental decision that they knew enough of the language and weren’t interested in honing it any more.
My husband is a case in point - after 10 years working as a musician in the UK, his English was extremely effective but very far from perfect. He had a hard time a few years ago getting to grips with some of the more obvious errors, when he decided to train as a primary teacher and it suddenly became important. (There’s not a lot to be done about the German accent, but it’s quite sweet really!)
I think it is a valid question, how to best help people build on the foundation they get from SSIW. Since completing the courses, I have been conscious of a fair degree of self-inflicted self-regulation, building on the patterns learnt, and clarifying questions that crop up. I can imagine it would be easy to ‘fossilise’ what can only really be called mistakes, if you didn’t take much of an active interest in how your language was developing. (Which of course is fine, depending on your language learning goals - but I don’t think that embracing mistakes in the learning process needs to equate to a lack of self-criticism in a fairly proficient speaker. I think the degree of self-regulation in adult learners probably varies hugely, and I would debate that it’s possible to reach a high level of proficiency without it.)
Guilty as charged In my experience, native/fluent speakers have accents, and habitual errors as well - but maybe this doesn’t stand out as much in the community in which they use their language.
Absolutely, but, well- languages have the history and influences that they have. Hebrew has the peculiar - as in individual- influences that it has. Cornish has its own. Welsh, French, Hungarian, various Pijins, all languages (as you know) take various influences from their completely different histories.
Stuff just happens.
If Cornish were to become a thriving living language, it wouldn’t be in the form it would have been had it continued as a commonly spoken language (not that [as you know] we know what that would have been.)
They are living things, based upon how many different people use them. In my view, it’s healthy to let them live free - but to be honest, that doesn’t matter, because it is what they will do anyway!
A good few years ago I was working somewhere where you might occasionally appear on television (I managed to studiously escape this apart from one time where a colleague was to blame). Because of this, we had someone from the BBC in to give us screen tests on camera. After it, I was given the advice “you have a nice voice, but you speak a bit too quickly for your accent”.
Well!
I ignored the advice completely, but didn’t say anything, which is probably a good thing. 
This is interesting - I have noticed where I live, which I think is quite close to the accent/dialect that you describe that a lot of people do speak very clearly and a bit more slowly than others I hear on TV and on the radio. I’ve been wondering if in the past I have been trying to link speaking naturally and fluently with speaking quickly, when actually most of the first language speakers that I encounter actually seem to take their time and don’t seem to rush at all.
Having said all of that, I suspect if you put a lot of people in a scenario like the one that you describe, then they would probably try to speak a lot quicker than they normally would anyway. I’m not saying that you might have been under any pressure, but I doubt that you would have been at your most relaxed and comfortable.
Hopefully the language isn’t too influenced by this, but I guess it would be impossible not to be. This influence must have a negative distortion on the language and hinder “naturalness”, because you could end up developing the language to counter the criticisms, rather than developing the language for it’s own sake with the freedom of not having to always look over you shoulder and always wondering what people might be thinking.
I’m pretty sure (going by what else she said and the way she said it, pretty much 100% sure!) that it was “you have an ‘accent’. A ‘Welsh accent’. This is a ‘strong accent’, ie, different to the way of speaking we have decided is standard. You should therefore speak slower so that you will not confuse people like me, who do not have ‘accents’.”
But yes, I have always found that people from where I am have a very good and clear pronunciation of Welsh, which carries over into English - something which made me even more put out by what she said!
Sounds like examples of languages taking their own routes because of their own histories and their own speakers.
Oh, people will do that anyway, and it will normally be from a position of ignorance, (as happens with Welsh, both about it being ‘made up’ and about a lack of understanding of similarities between Welsh and English words, and a lack of understanding of how languages borrow words) so I would think the more important thing is to have people speaking it and confident in it rather than trying to fend off people like that.
Perhaps you think that too many neologisms (or rather too many neologisms not within particular bounds) will mean that fewer people will learn the language, and people will not become speakers. This might be true, I have no idea.
But that’s a fair distance from the idea that too many learners becoming fluent speakers enough to develop a new form of the living language themselves will affect the language adversely.
Classic ethnocentrism! If only they could use that same yardstick when testing those presenters whose upper-class English accents are so thick it’s a task (even to a middle-class English person like me) to understand what they’re saying!
I finally got around to reading this thread - had to have time to watch the whole video! re-that: Gwych @aran! You are clearly a natural!
re-red pencil - I changed schools due to moving house more than once. On the last occasion, I was shoved into Sciences by a Head who knew nothing about them. An aged Chemistry teacher who was about 6 ft tall (female), red-inked virtually everything I had written, gave me C and wrote ‘see me’. “We don’t write up experiments like that.” she informed me, and told me whose book to look at, to see how it was done! She was wrong! I knew she was wrong because, just before leaving York, an exchange teacher came from the US and told us about scientific journals and how to write up our work. I was furious that this old bat had red-inked my book when I had only just arrived! I ended up doing Chem at uni because I was so angry, I was determined to ‘show her’! But I never, ever was afraid of her or of being wrong! I guess I am just a natural rebel!!![quote=“netmouse, post:32, topic:6324”]
the German accent
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And not too strong, I’d guess. I once went to a meeting at which one paper was given, in English, by a Japanese scientist who ‘spoke’ English. Unfortunately nobody had taught him how to pronounce it! I honestly would have understood no less if he’d been speaking Japanese! So accents can matter! Nobody at that session understood, but we were all too polite to walk out or tell nim!
There were no questions![quote=“owainlurch, post:37, topic:6324”]
you speak a bit too quickly for your accent
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On bus in Abertawe, American lady asks to go to Mumbles, Conductor says, “Sorry, we’re only going to Singleton, you’ll have to get off there and catch another bus.” Lady clearly doesn’t understand one word. I repeated it very slowly and clearly, with a small added explanation about, ‘this particular bus not going all the way.’ She asked me if he had spoken Welsh!!
Oh, I’ve read your follow-up and I know what you and Sara mean about that ghastly Englsh accent that I thought had died out, but sometimes hear in the House of Commons! (Actually, more so that the Lords!! Maybe the ‘ghastly’ one was people trying too hard?)
I suspect what we’re really disagreeing about here is what ‘sounding very similar’ means…
I am absolutely certain that if you recorded my Welsh - oh, hang on - what I’m trying to say is that I pick up on lots of errors every single time I have to transcribe a Growth Club recording… And although I pick up errors from Catrin as well, I strongly suspect that it would be possible to collect enough information (eg the new Corpus Cenedlaethol, perhaps) to identify my mistakes as qualitatively different to her mother-tongue ‘mistakes’.
But for me, I still pass the ‘very similar’ test - and it would be interesting to hear how other people feel about your husband’s English in that regards - maybe to them, it seems similar to how you speak (mistakes excepted!)…
I suspect we also differ on what counts as a ‘high level of proficiency’ - and maybe it would help to clarify that as ‘near-native usage’? Because I would consider myself to have a high level of proficiency in Spanish (in that I don’t feel any strong need to revert to other languages when I’m speaking Spanish) and yet it’s obvious that I’m a second language speaker and a very long way from not sounding like a learner.
But even if we talk specifically about sounding near-native, and we chuck ‘very similar’ as not good enough, I would suggest that the journey from ‘similar’ to ‘near native’ is one that people will, as you’ve said, largely self-regulate through the kind of attention they pay to their use of the language.
For me, the journey goes:
Courses/Other input -> Messy early usage (SSi does this)
Messy early usage -> confident usage (exposure and forced production do this)
Confident usage -> near native usage (paying deliberate attention to your own production does this).
Personally, I’m only really interested in the first two steps - and crucially, I don’t think those first two steps need to be different if your goal is ‘near native’…
That’s a marvelous reaction to setbacks!
The process of assessing a first language Welsh speakers work against his NVQ has been interesting in that regard. He def makes different errors to the ones I make. I’ll have to look back for patterns some time.
I know this is a bit “old” now already but anyway …
I’ve shared on Twitter and it is automatically shared further on my FB so as you @owainlurch are one of my FB friends it might be this made this “coincidence” possible.
Here’s one more with “app preloaded” phone and tablet so it might be data flow as there’s not enough (working) memory and if not through app, buffering could be too slow. Thankfully I’m not so dependent of my phone or tablet but still am moaning about all thingy some times.
Pure example I am, I think (regarding my English and not Cymraeg though).
If yes, then I’d asume it might be actually because yu didn’t (according to what you’ve told previously) quite wanted to be on TV in the first place. I know the feeling. I’d rush too probably.
I remember a few years ago now I was out walking the dog in Cyfartha Park in Merthyr Tudful when a local guy without warning starting chatting to me. Because of his strong Welsh accent I failed to understand one word he said. The accent made me want to hear the Welsh (not the English language). I instinctively changed the conversation to Welsh and had an intelligible chat, I remembered this incident for years and very suprisingly last year in a cafe in Bala, North Wales, some South Walian contractors speaking English to the waitress were not understood, She admonished them for not speaking proper English.