A new group for learners is to be launched on Monday 11th January at 7:30 pm in the Liverpool Welsh Centre near Penny Lane. Thereafter, we plan to meet in the centre at the same time every Monday evening. All are welcome, from complete beginners to experienced learners. The idea is to help each other with learning materials, advice, and Welsh conversation practice. Needless to say, I will be recommending SSiW to anyone and everyone.
You can find the address and email contact details on the Liverpool Welsh web site at:
I really hope that we can find enough people to make the group viable. A group of us have done this with Swedish at our local Scandinavian centre (between 10 and 20 people turn up every Thursday evening nowadays) so it should be possible with Welsh too. There are loads of us here in Liverpool who are descended from families that decided many years ago not to speak Welsh to their children. I’m sure that those in our city who have Welsh roots heavily outnumber those who have Swedish roots!
I’m absolutely certain that it will be possible, and we’ll do everything we can to help - @Deborah-SSi flagging it up in the next few emails as a starter, even if it’s been mentioned already?
That’s great, thanks. It won’t have been mentioned in an email yet.
Incidentally, I’ve posted an invitation for the Mancunians to visit us if any of them lives near enough. Their group only meets monthly, whereas we will be meeting every week.
Just a quick reminder to anyone who’s interested - the first meeting of the Liverpool Learners’ group is at 7:30 tonight. Thereafter, we plan to meet every Monday at the same time. Croeso cynnes i bawb!
By the way, I did a ten minute interview about our new group this morning on BBC Radio Merseyside and managed to include a plug for SSiW. It’s on the iPlayer at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03cy5v1#play and the interview starts at 1:04:55 into the programme.
You’re welcome. We had a huge response to our publicity. There were 23 of us at the meeting last night, plus D Ben Rees (Minister of the local chapel and de facto Brenin Cymry Lerpwl) plus four more who had sent apologies and said that they can’t join us until next week.
Part-way through the meeting I was in the process of addressing 21 other people who hadn’t heard of SSiW, and trying to explain that it was a good way of actually learning to speak, when Bob Phoenix arrived late, all the way from East Lancashire, greeted me in fluent Welsh, and credited his fluency to SSiW plus lots of conversation practice. You couldn’t have wished for a better plug!
I anticipate that there will be a few more people in our area opening accounts with you soon.
Wow, that’s absolutely fantastic! Sounds as though you’ve done an excellent job of reaching out to interested people, and that the extremely strong Liverpool/north of Wales connection is really kicking in. I’m looking forward enormously to seeing how this develops…
Thanks for the vote of confidence. I’m hoping to be able to use the forum as a means for the new group to keep in touch, rather than using Facebook or Twitter. You should then be able to watch developments.
I’d rather support Welsh enterprise than support multinational corporations with ambitious tax planning!
One of the things we’re particularly eager to do (if we can get to the point where we have an advertising budget!) is reach out much more consistently to learners in England - I think there’s huge untapped potential there, which would help change perceptions in Wales as well - so I’m always particularly delighted to see people like you promoting the language over the border…
I think you’re right about the untapped potential. There must be loads of people in England who have Welsh roots but whose families have not passed on the language. Counting the numbers of Joneses, Evanses, Thomases, and so on will give an indication, but then there are people like me whose Welsh connections are hidden by the practice of surnames being, well, surnames. They usually travel down the male line. That’s what the word “surname” means. I’m only one generation removed from Y Jonesiaid, but you’d never guess it from my name!
The Liverpool Learners’ Group meets tonight (and every Monday) at Canolfan Cymry Lerpwl, Auckland Road, L18 0HX, near Penny Lane. Doors open at 7:15 so that we can make a prompt start at 7:30. There will be parallel groups for conversation, for beginners using SSiW, and (if anyone is uncomfortable with the idea of learning entirely by ear) for people who want to follow a written self-teaching course.
