…are now available!
Have a go, and let us know what you think.
Enjoy!
Diolch yn fawr Iawn!
Thank you so much Iestyn and Cat. I decided I liked the new course more than the old one - even though I do find it a bit harder (not sure why). So I decided to go with the new course before hearing about the pain Cat is dealing with and realising that it might take longer than you had hoped to get the new lessons out. Your dedication to the work you are doing is amazing and I’m very much looking forward to meeting you both at bootcamp some time.
I’ll be away for just over a week now but will be getting stuck into the new lessons when I get back 
All my best wishes to you both and the whole Say something in Welsh family and I hope you are getting all the support and help you need.
xx
I’ve just run through 6-9 and I’m reminded to say again - The recording quality is much more clearer; the overall structure much more helpful to a fledgling conversationalist… Yn fy mharn i.
The introduction of Galla i/Alla i ddim, Galli di/Alli di ddim is also very useful. As is the contraction of wedi to 'di - Have been: Wedi bod to 'di bod - which you hear all the time…
Also, telling people those who make the most mistakes make the most progress is a great confidence booster…Truly!!! I heard Benny “The Irish Polygot” say last week that he attempted to make at least two hundred mistakes every day when learning a new language in order to make rapid progress…
Well, bother. I must have /just/ missed this message before I went for an hour’s walk listening to SSiW. Oh well - the C2 vocab lessons are good too (albeit brain-frying).
Thanks Iestyn, Cat and team.
Wwww… I shall download these from the app when I get to a wifi hotspot!
Echoing what has been said already, I am finding these new challenges rather refreshing. Reminding me of words and patterns I have already learned, learning new ways of saying things I already know, and learning new things I haven’t learned yet, or hasn’t been included in the old course. All in all, I feel all the material we have, and are getting, is really helping me to improve my Welsh beyond what I imagined I would speak. Diolch yn fawr Iestyn and Cat for producing these - Especially as we know it’s not an easy task for you both at the moment, but we are patient and understanding people here!
All the best
How exciting! I am well into the first three lessons in the Challenge and love it. I giggle. (Don’t ask) so when I saw the news here today I jumped straight to challenge 9 to see what I could look forward to. Brilliant. With the words and phrases that I already know from the main course one I am enjoying amazing progress with the new words though some of them are hard to grasp. So before self flagellation sets in, I remember how difficult the Welsh for “work hard” was when I started and how I said the words over and over on my walk downtown till it was engraved forever. Do try everyone! the mix of familiar and new is more enlivening than you could ever imagine. Well done the Welsh team and many many thanks
Hooray! Diolch yn fawr fawr iawn!
Dear Southern Team,
I am loving the new course and learning loads having completed the old Course 1 and Vocab Units.
I love the focus around speaking and not speaking Welsh in the vocab and I too love the quality of the recordings.
I really enjoy the speed of speech (Slower and clearer for me) when introducing new words or phrases. I would love it if you could continue this slightly slower speed of speech throughout the new course. When full sentences with new words first come round, would you be willing to watch that they are also easily comprehensible and speed them up later e.g. when they are repeated in the next lesson?
Are there any accompanying notes? I am asking as I tend to visualise words I am learning. This means a lot of unlearning for me at a later stage. How I did Course 1 was to do a lesson fully in audio until confident and then check the notes, learn the spelling and do the lesson again as a dictation This way I try to stay true to the SSiW method
As I correspond per email regularly with a friend in Wales writing is an importnat skill for me and teh primary place for me to practise.
Very many thanks for the time, energy and committment you are clearly pouring into this project.
Warm wishes,
Elkie (the Netherlands)
Hi I did a marathon of lessons from challenge 3 to challenge 9 today. I went straight through them with no pauses and not many mistakes either. I think that it is good revision for the Canolradd exam that I am going to do on 4th June particularly the Prawf lafar which will be 40% of the overall mark. It has helped me feel more comfortable saying those short forms in the only way that SSiW can do!
I think that this new course is excellent and better than the than the old one by bringing in different tenses and short forms from the beginning. It is definitely the stuff I wanted to say when I started learning nearly 4 years ago!
Looking forward to steaming through the rest of the course!
Hi I did a marathon of lessons from challenge 3 to challenge 9 today
Excellent, well done! Delighted to hear it went well for you - I’m more and more certain that occasional bursts of high intensity work particularly well with the SSi approach, so I’m always especially pleased to hear that people have done this kind of stuff…
I’m loving the new course, but I’m surprised how different it is. I finished Course 1 and Vocab a while ago and was finding Course 2 a bit hard going, so I thought I’d try the new course 1 to see what it was like. It’s kind of half familiar and half new. I’m going through it quite fast, mainly because of it’s familiarity.
I wonder as to the long term plans for this. Is the new course going to replace course 1 eventually? And, presumably, courses two and three will also be remade? Or is it planned to have two courses running in parallel?
I notice that the new course spends less time explaining how things work - for example it’s already (lesson 6) shown five different past tenses (Wnes i, O’n i, Dwaedest i, Dw i wedi and Dw i wedi bod) and whereas it explained Dw i wedi and Dw i wedi bod as direct translations of “I have” and “I have been”, it hasn’t really mentioned anything about the differences between the other three. Or, for that matter, that they can be used with any verb, rather than just the ones they’re introduced with. I’m not sure how I’d feel about that if I was doing it as my first ever Welsh language course. I’m aware that Aran would like to eradicate any mention of grammar so as to keep our minds pure and undefiled, but my mind tends to inquire in that direction anyway and I’m not sure if I could stop it.
So I’m going to be switching between the new course 1 and the old course 2 from now on. The change is interesting and, as I mentioned, I was finding course 2 hard going, so it’s a relief to do something a bit easier.
Is the new course going to replace course 1 eventually?
Yes…
And, presumably, courses two and three will also be remade?
Yes…
As for grammar - I think there are two different things that get referred to as grammar. One is the kind of historical linguistics that you head towards whenever anyone says 'Why does it work like this?’, and the other is the (more practically valuable) understanding of which patterns you can extrapolate from.
I think we’re better at extrapolating from being exposed to the patterns themselves, rather than being given a traditional explanation of when to use a particular structure - for example, you’d never use ‘wnes i’ with ‘isio’ in Welsh, but if you try to explain that by talking about the nature of past present vs the past continuous, you (usually) confuse people.
If, on the other hand, their only exposure to ‘isio’ in the past tense is with ‘wnes i’, they’ll always use ‘wnes i isio’. So, the individual structures that can be extrapolated further ( like o’n i/wnes i, as you comment) will become clearer to our learners when they hear further examples of usage (most of which, in due course, will probably come through our redesigned listening practices)…
Isio used as in the Northern sense of “want”, presumably? What we’d use moyn for in the South?
When I first encountered “O’n i” on course 2, I did note it was similar to the French imperfect tense, which I’ve also had problems with - it’s a direct translation of “I was…” or “I used to…” but, just like Welsh, there are cases where it would be used for other past tenses, the same ones as in Welsh, I think.
It struck me then that I don’t think I’d ever heard Iestyn say “Wnes i moyn”. I haven’t gone back over the course one files to check but, given what you’ve said, I’m guessing that’s true. But I would probably have uses wnes i moyn if I’d been asked to translate “I wanted”. So yes, I can see the point of introducing it early.
As before, I can’t tell what effect this would have had on me if I’d done the new course as my first Welsh course. By the time I did the new lesson 2 I’d already encountered “O’n i” on course 2 and had come to the realisations above. I’m guessing, though, that I’d be wondering why “I wanted” was “O’n i moyn” and “You said” was “Dwaedest ti” (once I got to lesson 7.) Like I said, I tend to look for patterns.
But this is all supposition. Is there anyone out there who’s done the new course as their first Welsh course? I’d be interested in hearing how they got on
Like I said, I tend to look for patterns.
Good - that’s the normal, natural way of expanding any language - it’s why children will cheerfully say stuff like ‘I goed’ and then maybe ‘I wented’ until they’ve heard the ‘correct’ forms often enough to produce those.
What we’re going to try and do is provide the best set of initial structures coupled with enough follow-up material to allow people to fine tune into an increasingly natural usage…
New users on the new course - not that I’m aware of. Once the full course plus the listening practices are available, we’ll push it a bit more firmly at new users and see what the feedback is like…
I have just started doing the new southern course one in earnest. I’m only up to lesson three but have already noticed huge differences. I like that you introduce o’n i. I once spoke to the Welsh speaking wife of one of my class members. She said to me: he keeps using wnes i when it should be o’n i. I said, well, if he’s only doing SSiW course one he hasn’t been given much alternative. You have now given him that alternative. This is realistic. The past continuous is so useful. I’m excited to see how you structure the whole thing going forward and where the new course three ends. It seems some of the old course three has made its way into the new course one. I wonder what of the old course one will pop up in course three. I’m just relieved I still have some SSiW lessons to follow. I’m alternating between the new course one and re-doing course three. Pam lai? It’s all good practice.
I’ve just done lesson 3. Can someone write the words ‘about a month’ for me? I’ve always used tua for a about. It’s nice to have a new alternative. But…you know me… I need to be able to spell it. So, I can write it. So, I can read it ayyb…
Dwi wedi bod yn dysgu Gymraeg am fis/ I’ve been learning Welsh for about a month.
Dwi wedi bod yn dysgu Gymraeg ambouti fis/I’ve been learning Welsh for about a month.
O GWMPAS MIS - around a month
O AMGYLCH MIS
“Dwi wedi bod yn dysgu Gymraeg am fis/ I’ve been learning Welsh for (about) a month.”
Did you mean to include “about” both times, Kim?
Hmmm!!! It is “for a month” they’re saying …
Funny, I’ve just noted I do translate both examples as “for about a month”
Discussing it with my mate it appears that’s how we say it around my “Filltir sgwar” we seem to add the “about”…I wouldn’t say, “ I’ve been speaking for an hour.” even if was exactly sixty minutes I’d been talking about… I’d definitely add the “ for about.”