When I started learning Welsh with SSiW (in May), I had never heard the language at all. I happened upon SSiW when I was Googling to look for how to pronounce some Welsh words in a book I was reading. I started the lessons just to see what they were like. (Even though I’ve had a fascination with Wales since childhood, I certainly didn’t intend to seriously learn to speak the language - I didn’t think that was even possible. ) I was completely output before input.
I started listening to Radio Cymru, but not until I had done quite a few lessons, maybe a third of the way into Course 1. (Hard to remember exactly when.) Now, 2/3 of the way into Course 2, I am a Welsh speaker (albeit with a lot more to learn). I have totally amazed myself, but it’s nothing to do with me, it’s this fantastic SSiW method. I am working hard at my listening comprehension now b
y listening to radio and podcasts, watching S4C, and I even recently found an audiobook in Welsh available from Audible in the US. I know I won’t understand much of the audiobook yet, but it seems like a great way to immerse myself in the language. So while I think input is important, I don’t think it has to come first! In fact, I found it much more fun to start listening when I could pick out a word here and there, rather than have it all sound like complete gibberish
(Now I can’t imagine not continuing on my journey of learning Welsh…it didn’t turn out to be just a whim after all My life has been really enriched by my stumbling onto SSiW and this forum.)
Oh, this is so true for me! I can have excellent conversations with myself, and feel quite pleased about how much I know But when I Skype with Margaret, I am suddenly unable to find the words I need, even though I know them 100% solid when I talk to myself. And then there’s all the vocabulary I don’t know yet…
Funny how the real world is so different than living inside my own head, where I can control everything!
You begin to learn a language when you speak it with people who fluently speak the language - there’s no doubt about that!
But television, radio, reading of Welsh gives an opportunity of increasing vocabulary and different ways of speaking the language.
Of course, if you are in a family speaking Welsh, living in an area where you speak Welsh habitually outside to the exclusion of English, you will be able to pick up Welsh that way without doing anything else- including SSiW!
But alongside the wonderful way of learning which is SSiW, the wonderful way SSiW gives you a leg up to speaking Welsh with Welsh speakers- at the same time, learning vocabulary and other ways of saying things through other mediums- whether teach yourself books, courses or reading the wonderful world of Welsh literature will increase your exposure to and knowledge of Welsh. Vocabulary and otherwise.
I know that when I started speaking Welsh with people, it was SSiW which gave me confidence. Without a doubt. But it was my knowledge of other things (particularly short form verbs, as I was doing the SSiW courses! And also vocabulary.)which enabled me to fit in with speakers around me. And understand them, which is quite important! And also helped with with reading, which in turn enabled me to expand my vocabulary and ways of saying things.
SSiW is wonderful. It fits in with every other way of learning.
It increases your ability to speak with other people confidently, whatever other ways you are using to learn Welsh- and other input will also increase your ability to speak with other people confidently.
I absolutely agree, Justin. SSiW is wonderful. Especially if you want to speak the language. However, many people learn languages just for reading knowledge. Nothing wrong with that at all if that’s the goal.
Wow, what a great language journey! A lot depends on just trying lots of stuff out and seeing what works. I came to Welsh in a kind of random way, too. One day I stumbled on a program in Irish on the net. Thought it sounded nice and interesting, so I started learning a bit, just to get a feel for the language. But after a few weeks, I put Irish on the back burner to do other things.
Then about 2 weeks ago, a friend invited me to a Welsh folk concert for next month. Out of curiosity, I looked up the singer on youtube (Jim Rowlands). I immediately liked the sound of the language (that’s my litmus test; I only learn languages I like to listen to). I find it softer than Irish. I thought it might be fun to learn it. And the fact that it’s a minority language trying to make a comeback also interested me. Anyway, after a couple of Google searches I found SSiW. Bliss!
That’s interesting. I did a lot of listening to the radio and watching television (not to mention listening to Welsh being spoken around me) even before starting to learn Welsh properly. I only started understanding them after I started talkin to people and always found (and still do find!) that my comprehension of such things lagged behind my conversation ability. Probably because you miss out on the aspects of face to face communication and the way people react and to how yourself speak and react. I’ve always said to people not to judge how good their Welsh is by listening to the radio, as that is too depressing! Seems very different for you, which is good knowledge and interesting.
On the point of input versus output (and I didn’t know there was any argument over it!), I don’t think you can be 100 per cent output. You would just be making up a language if you were!
Conversation with people, the best way of learning, involves a lot of input!
I found input from people speaking Welsh around me, the radio, the television, and being surrounded by its written form whilst I was growing up was a definite advantage.
Personally, I love reading. I read a lot and I particularly like reading in foreign languages. If that is one’s main goal then why not read, read, read.
Now I have’ a question - and it can probably be best answered by Aran @aran - IF my goal was solely to read what would be my fastest and most efficient way of reaching that goal. I have learned languages by reading first - it took me a long time and a lot of effort - but my goal was to speak, read and write. Now I have adopted the SSi process. I would make a small wager that if I start with the SSi process, delay reading for a while, and then later choose a point at which to introduce reading - that I would reach my goal (even if it were mainly to read) faster and with less effort than by starting with reading and grammar etc. I don’t know the answer but based on just my own experience I would choose speak via the SSi process first.
What the answer is for the language learning community as a whole I don’t know - though the answer could be important for the educational sector.
I’m just tossing a thought in to all you expert linguists… It seems to me that we all are passive listeners for a fairly long time before any of us try to say a word. I’m not sure when the foetus starts to be able to hear, but from that moment, we all hear our mother tongue(s). I’m not sure when I started to try talking, but I know I was in my pram when I finally succeeded in saying “Dada”, and could already say, “Mama”.
Most of the rest of the journey was based on what my Mam wanted me to say, or read to me. But I do know for a fact that there were a number of words I learned from books, the meaning of which I could work out, even without a dictionary, but which I mispronounced for years because I learned them that way!!
So, if you want to pronounce things properly, learning by hearing and saying is best!!
Of course, I merrily ignore this when refusing to sound like @Iestyn because I don’t like his accent (sorry @Iestyn) and do like ‘h’s’!!!
Oh, I could give you lists of words I pronounced incorrectly because of that! And there will still be some I don’t know about!
Still, no-one was ever hurt because if of it!
Absolutely! But it’s better to come across a word in writing than not at all!
And the earlier the better even so. I never found changing pronunciation slightly to be a particular problem, whether in English or in Welsh
Audible US link here: Bore Da - Audible US. I tried to look for it on the Audible UK site, but it won’t let me in, so I don’t know if this link will work for you. The release date is January 2015, and it is published by Y Lolfa. It is read by the author.
I haven’t started listening to it yet. I’m sure I won’t be able to follow the plot, but maybe I can get bits here and there. Gobeithio There is a Kindle version available here as well, so if I really struggle with the audio, I could get the book and follow along as I listen - kind of like Welsh subtitles! I’m going to try just listening first, though.
(But not today - I just finished doing Course 2 Gwers 17 and my brain is leaking out of my ears right now. That was one of the most intense lessons ever!)
I looked on the Y Lolfa website, and one can get the ebook there as an epub. No mention of the audiobook though. Anyway, good for Gwennan Evans. It would be great if there were more Welsh audiobooks around.
Edit: BTW, you did well to find it. The advanced search does not even allow “Welsh” as a language to search on! (at least on the UK site).
…I have found one audiobook on CD on the Gwales website (there may be more): http://www.gwales.com/bibliographic/?isbn=9780954602505&tsid=11
(that’s an adult’s book though, and fairly advanced, by the description).
Obviously not as convenient as being able to download it, obviously.
…using the advanced search and choosing CD media, there are 4 pages of results, although most are not audiobooks per se. There are a few more though.
Croeso, Mike! Glad it is available there - I thought it must be, since I can get it here!
I think I just searched “Welsh” and “Wales” as keywords to see what I could find. No way to search on Welsh as the book’s language. Thanks for the additional info!
There is a wide range of audiobooks in Welsh in Swansea library- for the blind. I have to confess I have made good use of them. Many different novels which you can take out and read alongside.
Unfortunately, I can’t see how they could be leant outside the area
I’m sure Aran will come along and give us an informed opinion on this. But I just wanted to add that this is more or less what I did (and I’m a big lover of book learning). The stumbling block for me was the grammar of the more literary style of Welsh (which you don’t really hear spoken) - particularly the passive. But once I’d got that sorted out (thank you, Gareth King), I was off. After all, what is reading but hearing the voice on the page in your head? If you can understand spoken Welsh, you can read it on the page, IMO.
[I take it that It seems Justin and Eirwen do like other opinions, which is of course good! ]
Indeed! And if you can read Welsh, you can use it in speech. What I found, anyway.
Like most people growing up in Wales who were English speaking with an interest in Welsh, I started looking into reading Welsh at the same time as speaking it. I think that is inevitable- I would even say inescapable! Signs, writing, letters, books surround you.
Learning to speak of course increases your ability to read. Learning to read of course increases your ability to speak.
Learning Welsh increases your ability to use Welsh!
Thankfully, it is not a disadvantage to stay away from reading before you speak competently, otherwise living in Wales would be a disadvantage
As sarapeacock says, any teach yourself book or Welsh course will give you any necessary grammar which can appear in some forms of writing. (Gareth King has a ‘thing’ about literary Welsh, always stressing its difference. I am not sure this is always the most helpful or encouraging thing to do. In my opinion, someone like Heini Gruffudd [a native first language speaker of Welsh, as it happens] introduces such things more helpfully. Each to their own, though, and Gareth King’s books are very good!)
Hope that helps, Justin and Eirwen, I’m glad if it does!
I agree - I think the key issue is that ‘input’ and ‘bulk input’ can (perhaps should) happen at different times - particularly if you consider the importance of comprehensible input.
I’d suggest that we do input before output - each new word/structure gets presented before we start triggering output - the main difference between us and bulk input people is that we move to output immediately after input, and we continue in this ‘bit of input’ -> ‘lots of output’ model (adding chunks of comprehensible input as listening exercises on the way) until we get our learners to the point where they can keep their heads above water in a communicative situation - at which point, I believe that massive input becomes the central issue (although I suspect that the more comprehensible the massive input can be made, the faster the process would be, which is why we’re going to be providing a scripted approach to the most common 4k (once we’ve finished Level 3!)).
Interesting question about reading, Justin - I’m afraid I don’t have a ‘mind made up’ kind of answer for you! I do think, though, that output is vital - that it triggers synapse growth that is key to memory formation - and since writing is so much slower than speaking, my gut feeling is that any ‘reading/writing only’ approach would inevitably be slower than ‘speaking/listening’ - which means it’s not of all that much interest to me. But I do think you’re right that there’s a fighting chance that learning to speak/understand and then adding reading/writing might be faster than ‘reading/writing only’ from the start. It’d be fun to arrange some races…
In general terms, I agree with Sarah - if you’re already capable of reading in your own language, then the switch from speaking/understanding to reading is a comparatively minor gear change (although made a little more entertaining for Welsh because of the written forms that don’t get used much in the spoken language)…
There is a Kindle version available here as well, so if I really struggle with the audio, I could get the book and follow along as I listen - kind of like Welsh subtitles! I’m going to try just listening first, though.
