Really glad you’re enjoying them!
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Thanks for your work on this, looking at implementing it or something similar asap…
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‘Byse’ is the south walian ‘bysa’ which is the spoken form of ‘byddai’. So like you’d say “byddai hi’n braf cael mynd ar wyliau”, you could also say “bysa/byse hi’n braf cael mynd ar wyliau”…
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Hi all - another debut piece by one of our new contributors is up. He’s Luke Davies and he’s from Llanelli, so proper West! Luke is a presenter on local tv station Cardiff TV. Hope you enjoy his first piece which is about being a country boy living in the city…
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Loving these local ones. Rhydaman, Treforys, Llanelli… When you coming to Sgiwen? 
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I can’t believe I asked you for help now right now things are moving towards the South Walian!
But honestly I had never seen it nor recognized as such if I ever heard it!
(diolch for the explanation of course) 
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Haha yes! Oh the irony…! It means that I’ve been successful in Gogging you!!
Daniel and Luke are our South Walian contributors, to make up for the strong Gog-bias of the Advanced Content thus far…!
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If you’ve listened to Luke’s piece you’ll know that he’ll need a reliable bus service…!
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Byddai and Buasai both tend to go to fysa/fasa bysa/basa when spoken.
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Why is it just a selection of vocabulary and not a full translation? I thought the Advanced Content process involved a transcript and a full translation, otherwise how do you know whether you are understanding it correctly?
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As a fellow learner, I find interesting the possibility to work in different ways with the Advanced Content.
The first interviews (Beca a’i Phobl) were very long and complicated and rich in vocabulary. It’s fluent speakers speaking at standard speed the same way they chat with other fluent speakers in everyday life. That’s very hard to translate word by word, and the full translation allows you to learn more expressions and sentences.
But this new series seems very similar to simplified books for learners: you don’t get a full translation there, because they’ve already been written in simplified Welsh.
What really matters here, and makes a difference, is that you have the transcript so you can make sure of understanding what you’re hearing.
And you can also learn the correct pronunciation of words.
Consider I’m really bad at reading Welsh and the only things I’m able to read without getting frustrated are…Mynediad level books for learners! 
Just like with those books, of course there’s words I don’t know, of course it takes an effort but by looking up in the dictionary or asking here it seems very manageable. And it helps me learn more because if I had the whole translation done, I’d just get lazy and browse it quickly. 
Just my opinion, anyway!
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Hi Coralie - we’ve got some navigational work to do so that you can see more clearly what the different stages of the Advanced Content are like/for - there is a huge body of interviews which are all fully transcribed/translated, and that’s where you’re meant to get that highly detailed work done - once you’ve done those (or really even if you’ve mastered two or three of them) it’s important that you start to get material which starts to remove some of the swimming aids and let you do it all on your own…
Hi there, most of the content has a full translation - I think there are around 40 Beca a’i Phobl pieces with full transcription and translation; the Stori Dwy Steddfod series and others too. The latest content pieces by our new contributors are shorter and written and recorded in a more spoken style of Welsh, which means - along with the transcript - that they should be easier to follow. Bethan often gives the English word after the Welsh in her pieces, and Daniel uses English within his Welsh as many first language Welsh speakers do! I appreciate that this - people refer to it as Wenglish - can be trickier than formal Welsh, as your brain isn’t listening out for English that’s in there with the Welsh sometimes. But this is the type of Welsh you’re most likely to hear in the real world - you’ll hear it in both Luke and Dan’s pieces, and they’re both first language speakers - so it’s really useful for you to become familiar with how people really speak.
As for checking you’ve understood - if you’re unsure about anything and the vocab doesn’t help, you’re very welcome to ask me here.
Take care and thanks for your message.
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Thank you all for your replies. I have two problems with the Advanced Content. The first (major) problem is that most of it seems to be aimed at people who live in North Wales. I live in Carmarthen, and my main purpose in learning Welsh is to be able to understand and communicate with the people where I live. Listening to 30 minutes of a conversation between people who live in North Wales doesn’t help me. I appreciate that there are now a lot of shorter pieces on the page, but they are still mainly aimed at people in the North and consequently, after a few attempts, I gave up on the Advanced Content altogether.
My second problem was the length of the conversations, although I think that has now been addressed. Imagine my joy at finding a 4 minute piece by a South Walian, at last! Now I could do what Aran suggests - listen, read the transcript, listen again, read the translation, then listen again, all within the space of half an hour (hopefully). Imagine then how let down I feel when told to go away and do the translation myself.
I can do the translation, but I doubt that it’ll be as accurate as it could be (what idioms are there in Dan’s piece?) and as far as I’m concerned it’s wasting valuable listening time. Vocabulary is all very well, but I know most of the words you’ve provided; what I want to know is how they’re strung together. I can understand a lot of Dan’s piece - I get the gist of it - but I don’t get the detail, which is what I need.
By the way, I haven’t been able to listen to Luke’s piece as it doesn’t appear to be working. And also, there are pieces with full translations which are only a few minutes long in the ‘Caru Paru’ and other series on this page. It’s very disappointing to find the translation isn’t provided for the South Wales pieces.
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Hi Coralie,
There are around a dozen or more southwalian interviews with full transcript and translation in the earlier advanced content interviews. @gisella-albertini has a list she often shares.
I found it hard to do the full 30 mins as the transcript seemed to take too long to read. I listened for between 5-10 minutes and marked a certain phrase or unusual word to stop at and then used that as my marker for reading the transcript, relistened to the same point, read the translation and listened again. Sometimes I would read all of the translation and listened to the whole piece on the last run and sometimes I stuck to my marker.
I too live in the south and want to speak and sound like the people I meet on a regular basis. That said, most of my listening (apart from SSIW) is on radio and TV. I think it is good to understand a range of Welsh and especially enjoyed listening to interviews of Northwalians who i watch on tv, listen to on the radio or I had met through SSIW meets.
I think the plan going forward is to mark the interviews North or South. Once your comfortable with the welsh around you though it really is worth mixing it up a bit as there is much to enjoy in welsh as a whole.
Good luck with your welsh and I hope you find some southern interviews to enjoy.
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Hi Coralie,
The interview with Nan Humphries (Beca a’i Phobl 19) is a fully translated interview with a southern Welsh speaker, as is Rhys D Williams (Beca a’i Phobl 31).
Sioned Humphries (20) and Angharad Griffiths (13) are both originally southerners, though their accents have shifted a little with having lived for a long time in the north. They are also both fully transcribed and translated.
I must admit, even from the start, I barely used the translations. What I needed was something that told me what I was hearing when my brain wasn’t processing things quickly enough to separate out the words. From there I was generally able to understand the essence of what was being said, which was what, for me, what the most important thing. It also ties in with not using English subtitles when watching S4C, which I seem to remember Aran likening to riding a bike without training wheels!
In terms of translating idioms, I find the Geriadur Pryfysgol Cymru can supply the translations of an awful lot of them, which is really helpful. (I have been reading quite a lot of books in Welsh, so leaning on that for comprehension has been invaluable.)
Another thing I have enjoyed doing was reading the scripts for Un Bore Mercher - available from the BBC script library in both English and Welsh. They are written wholly in colloquial southern Welsh, so being able to read those and look at the translation when I got a bit lost, was brilliant. (Even better, of course, during the times when the show is available to watch on S4C Clic!)
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I would like to add a comment on this topic, because I have the impression that the fact that Ssiw makes a distinction between the two courses (as in general often happens with Welsh) is a bit misleading.
Let me say that I’m a fan of Southern accent, that’s what I’ve been practising more and sounds more familiar to me so I understand what you mean. (I took note of the southern accents interviews as @Macky wrote but I don’t have it here and I see @Catriona ha already listed some).
However having learnt English as a second language, I can tell for sure that accents and variations can be way more relevant than with Welsh, especially considering English is not even a phonetic language so figuring out what people say or making yourself understood can be a nightmare!
But with English you normally do not have any distinction: my first teachers spoke mostly British with strog Italian accent, then got one mother tongue from Liverpool and one from Yorkshire, did a study holiday in a family near Newcastle, while occasionally watching American movies and listening some BBC radio, and speaking with people from all over the world with strong native languages accents while travelling, then spent a month in Ireland, and 6 all over the USA and not a single one spoke the same kind of English!
But you just try to adapt and will naturally settle to the one you use the most anyway. Recently I’ve been to Britain again after many years and getting used to Welsh accent still no way for Mancunian and cockney though!
What I mean is that even though it’s easier and nicer to practice so e specific Welsh accent I don’t think you can really say that listening to other accents doesn’t help at all.
Just my point of view from my experience with languages, thought this might be worth a reflection!
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This has been a very useful discussion for me. I finished the deg y dysgwr series which i loved, then moved onto the Beca interviews which i am enjoying, but have to work hard at. For some reason i had assumed that because there was no translation for the new diary pieces, that these were a level further on and too hard for me. @gisella-albertini your comment earlier made me go and try Daniel’s piece and I loved it, I was giggling away as I was walking the dog 
although I didn’t understand every word first listen, I understood most, and then used the transcript. I’m really glad I gave it a go, and would encourage people at my level to as well.
I will try those South Wales Becca interviews too, thanks for flagging those up @Catriona . I agree Gisella about broadening what we listen to, I will just boost my confidence a bit more first with something more familiar. I can’t imagine how difficult learning English must be! I teach young children and when I teach phonics i think how it would be lovely to teach Welsh phonics instead
I’m really enjoying the content here @beca-brown , there is so much variety, I’ve hardly scratched the surface, so I’m looking forward to working my way through!
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Thanks for this Coralie - just a quick answer for now (and I’m going to go through all the items and note which ones are North and South Walian!)
I’ve just checked Luke’s piece and it works ok for me - have you tried it again?
Anyone else having problems with it?
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Hi Emma and thanks for the feedback. No, the new diary pieces aren’t more difficult as you’ve found, but I will add a more comprehensive vocab if I think there are spoken idioms that you might find difficult. The slight peppering of English words gives a few handy hints too, and that’s how many many Welsh speakers converse so it’s good to tune into that!
Hope you continue to enjoy the content!
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