I live in the USA in the mid-atlantic, so I obviously won’t be joining your group. I wanted to share my experiences as they may help you. I’m in a similar situation; wanting to speak Cymraeg but the nearest speaker to me is 1.5 hours away, and that’s only two people. Even meeting in the middle requires substantial time just to speak. What I did was to have an online group that meets weekly and I opened it up to everyone here in SSiW living on the East Coast. We have people from Maine to Florida…and cross fingers, one person from the West Coast. We have 3-7 people who show up each week. Maybe there are others Siradwr in the same time zone as you in other countries? Just a thought. Pwb lwc!
We’re currently checking if March 9th might be a possible date. It works for me and Lena, and I received a message from Richard today saying that it seemed to work for him as well and that he was looking forward to it already.
Would March 9th work for you as well, Jessica?
Checking timetables for the trains, and there seems to be trains arriving more or less all the time on the 9th. Starting around 11:30 (there are trains arriving around 11:25) seems possible to me.
Shwmae i bawb! Sais dw i, ond dw i’n byw yn Göteborg (yng Ngöteborg?!) a dw i’n dysgu cymraeg hefyd!
Did the meetup discussed above actually happen? Would be lovely to be able to join a future one in any case. Växjö is a bit far for me but I could maybe get to the Ullared area…
(Would also be great that when the inevitable happens and Swedish comes out when I’m trying to speak Welsh, you’ll actually understand what I mean )
Yes, the meetup happened and was a good one (and lasted almost 7 hours!). I thought I had written something about it here, but obviously I hadn’t…
We all agreed that we should have more of these meetups, so I guess we ought to start planning for a new meetup. Having it during the summer is probably a bad idea, but how about September? I know two more learners in Göteborg, so if we can’t find a single place that works for us all perhaps we could do double meetups and have learners coming to any (or even both) of them?
I was in Göteborg 10 days ago - speaking Welsh with an Irishman and a Welshman. With some luck I might be able to coax the Welshman into joining (at least once in a while), as he’s a native Welsh speaker who is studying Swedish in Sweden. If we want to, that is…
I don’t think Göteborg is mutated in Welsh, but using the made-up name “Caergoth” would cause a mutation (though I doubt any Welsh would be able to figure out that “Caergoth” would be Göteborg).
I must admit I’ve been busily taking it for granted that there couldn’t possibly be anyone else learning Welsh in Sweden…
It’s perhaps not too late to write a quick summary of the previous meetup, if you have the energy.
I’d definitely be up for a meetup in September, other commitments permitting. Probably hard to nail down a date now though, suggest we try to fix something after the summer break. Although it also occurs to me that I know I’ll be at a loose end in Vetlanda the first weekend in October, that’s kind of somewhere in the middle of everyone I guess…?
Would be brilliant to have a native speaker present. I know quite a few Irishmen in this city, can’t imagine any of them speaking Welsh though… where do you find these people?
Will remember Caergoth, my Welsh word for the day…
Sometimes it’s pure luck when you find a native Welsh-speaker outside Wales. The Irishman was my teacher for the Welsh courses at the university of Uppsala, and he had bumped into this Welshman at the university there. Those courses are also the reason I got to know the other learners in Göteborg.
First weekend in October… That would be October 4-6, wouldn’t it? I think I’m available that weekend as well…
As for the meetup, there were 3 of us present - all learners, but with somewhat complementing skills. One was good at grammar but had never spoken Welsh at all, one was used to reading Welsh books but unused to speaking, and one was used to hearing Welsh and singing in Welsh but having a limited wordbank. We introduced ourselves in Welsh and explained why we were earning Welsh and how long we had been trying to learn (also in Welsh), and then we kept discussing things about the Welsh language and culture (mixing English and Swedish) for quite a long time (and could probably have been doing it even longer if there had been time).
There was also time for a few Welsh songs and sharing internet based material and strategies on “how to keep improving”.
Sounds great. I’m from Shropshire originally, on the edge of Wales, and still visit several times a year. My Welsh consists of Duolingo (about 2/3 of the second course so far), bits and bobs I picked up when growing up, and song lyrics pretty much… have always loved Welsh music and have found it a good way to learn. Am also very unused to speaking, beyond a lot of “Bore da” and “Diolch yn fawr” when I visit. Have lived in Sweden for 20 years now though and am fluent in Swedish.
Hope we can organise something for the early autumn, sounds promising!
I visited a learners group in Wales last night, and my head is currently full of dreams and wonderful visions (though I doubt any of them will come true ). That group met once every week (which will be hard for us at the moment, but who knows what might happen if we get more speakers in Sweden?), and it was very interesting to notice how chatting in Welsh came natural to them (even to those who recently started) just because they were trying frequently.
Hopefully we’ll manage to sort something out. If we (in early August?) could have a couple of possible dates for September or early October there ought to be enough time for everyone to plan the trip and to prepare for Welsh chatting.
Ok, I’m currently checking my calendar to see what possible dates I have…
I will be in Göteborg on the 21st and 22nd of September (singing in concerts in the evenings, but I don’t think I’ll have anything scheduled until 14:30 or something like that)…
The 6th of October would suit me perfect for a session in the Växjö area, in case it works for the rest of you.
21st in the morning would probably work, I’m free until about 1400. 22nd looks pretty hopeless apart from the evening, but you’re busy then.
6/10 in the Växjö area would only work in the morning for me and might be a bit tight, will need to pick up the kids in Vetlanda around lunchtime… 5/10 would work much better for me, pretty much any time.
btw maybe we should discuss this some other way, perhaps get some kind of mailing list going if you have people’s contact details? I didn’t notice your message here until now.
You can send private messages to a group of people. When you open the forum your picture is likely to be in the top right corner. Click there and one of the things you will see will be an envelope. Click there and you can send messages to one or more people. To highlight their names put in a @ sign followed directly by their user name, hence @geoffbache
Sounds like 21st in Göteborg is a good start. I can probably be there at ten (perhaps earlier as well), but we’ll need to figure out where to be. Any ideas?
I believe it’s possible to start quite early on the 6th in the Växjö area. 10:00 should work, and if we do the Welsh speaking part from the start you would be able to get the most important part before moving on to Vetlanda (1h drive from where we meet).
I work 7am to 8pm on the 5th.
The contacting part is a bit tricky. I use email to stay in touch with the other two in Göteborg and facebook for the Växjö area group (I don’t have emails to any of those who come to those meetups). I still haven’t managed to figure out how to send private messages through this forum unless I reply to a message sent to me.
Click on your avatar and that should show you a little envelope icon. Click on that and it takes you to your messages where you can start a new message and add people’s names in.
There have been two meetups just in the past two weeks, one at my home in Gothenburg (Caergoth), with 3 of us attending, and one near Växjö (Llynffordd) at Lena’s place with fully 5 people attending! 2 of us were at both, myself and Martin. It seems the latest meetup went on for fully 8 hours this time, though I didn’t manage to stay until the end, unfortunately.
Hope we can keep this going at least a few times a year. Off to the UK myself next week and hope to join up with the group in Shrewsbury (Amwythig), if I can find out how to contact them…
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