Helo Pawb!
I understand that it’s kind of a thing to introduce yourself on this forum. So although I’ve been using SSiW for a few months and got to the end of Old Course 1, I will say hello because I’m now committed and have signed up and paid money ;0)
I’m Helen and from a generation who missed out on the birthright of my own language due to social pressures. My grandparents didn’t pass Welsh onto my parents so subsequently I had none. I went to private school which didn’t offer it at all. So mostly for 53 years I thought that I had missed the boat and it was too difficult to learn, even though I did French at Uni and live in Spain and speak Spanish and have somewhat of an aptitude for languages. My nieces and nephews went to Welsh language medium schools and through them and the Welsh music to which they introduced me I had a smattering of words but feared the grammar was too hard. My sister learned some at school and as an adult even trained as a teacher of Welsh but she learned Cymru Byw and even now has started on SSiW to understand how “real people” talk.
I can’t over emphasise just how overcome I was when I finished Old Course 1 and @Iestyn said “You are now a Welsh speaker”. I actually cried!!! Not that I am a Welsh speaker but I can certainly say a lot now. So thank you to everyone who made this course. It’s amazing. I’m from a grammar-based learning tradition but I’ve (mostly) ditched writing anything down.
So your fantastic and really generous offer of the 6 month course for £10 a month came at just the right time for me. I have a few questions though please:
- Is the course based on the 3 levels to which one has access? I understand that there will be emailed to me a series of tasks to accomplish, but presumably the lessons in the levels are part of that?
- I am a bit reserved really and am not sure I’d want to do the video lessons/chat things. Is that ok? I can see that it might slow my progress but am prepared to accept that.
- I’ve completed Old Course 1 and Vocabs and Bootcamp (though I don’t know it all thoroughly yet) so before I get my first tasks on Monday should I go onto Old Course 2 (which I tried and was a bit shellshocked by the revelation of Sai / So (SW))!! Or New Course / Level 1? I imagine you’d say the latter since surely the new 6 month course would be based on that as the newer version.
Am a bit anxious about doing the 6 month course but most days I manage 30 mins to 1 hour of Welsh so think I should be ok?
Anyway - diolch yn fawr i bawb. Sorry if this is a bit of a long message……
