Hi everyone! (Apologies in advance for the essay that follows)
I’m Keith, and one of my long term goals has been to learn Welsh, but I was constantly frustrating myself with excuses as to why I couldn’t do it. I started with SSiW a few years back, but life sadly took over, and I wasn’t able to return to it at the time.
Now, having got a job where Welsh may be required (but not mandatory), I decided to pick this back up again, and I’ve already seen some encouraging things that I wanted to share:
My brain somehow kept all the Welsh I’d built up from my last attempt, so as I was going through Level 1 Lesson 1 for the first time last night, the “Welsh side” of my brain could already make some sentences using a combination of the vocab from the lesson I was listening to and the vocab that was stored away. That’s really excited me!
As I was in work today, I overheard a mother speaking in Welsh to her child. Instead of just smiling and carrying on, I opened my mouth, and the words (and forgive the spelling if this isn’t right) Dwyn moen dysgu Cymraeg came out. She immediately spotted the Welsh and we ended up having a brief conversation (in English) about how best I could develop my growing Welsh.
Thank you so much for giving me the confidence to be able to try that out, even at this very early stage in my SSiW adventure.
If this isn’t something the best to read when you just open your eyes in the morning!? This is gonna be great and exciting story to read as it continues, I already sense that!
[size=30]Croeso nol ar y fforum @keithcleaver![/size]
And … don’t mind about spelling. Paid becso! (for now) Your goal (I believe) is to learn to speak and I’m as happy as you reading that what you’ve already learnt is still there (of which @aran never doubts it will be though). And you did the most valuable thing at the very (ummmm … ) beginning (???) - you’ve opened your mouth and started to talk in the wild immediately. Da iawn ti!
Now to the next Challenge, Level, point of the journey! And you know already, don’t you?, when something doesn’t stick or you need a word of encouragement, the great beings of this forum are here for you to help - all of us!
I’m so glad that you’ve already had a confidence building experience!
Are you in a job where you will be able to use your Welsh easily (ha ha, you know what I mean - the opportunities are easy to find. Wouldn;t it be lovely if you could go somewhere where using your second language suddenbly became effortless!)?
@Iestyn It’s in a local supermarket here in Cardiff, and there are some Welsh speakers, so it’s a bit of a decent opportunity.
One of them uses the self service tills instead of the “normal” tills because it offers the Welsh Language option, and when I asked him if he was more likely to use the normal tills if there was someone there who spoke Welsh, he said yes. That was the catalyst I needed to jump back into SSiW.
That was absolutely how I felt when I lived in Canton, Cardiff. I used the self service tills as they ‘spoke’ very loudly in Welsh and I figured it was a good chance to let everyone else hear the Welsh as well. It also meant that when the till complained about something and a staff member had to come and fix it, I could identify the ones that spoke Welsh and after that at least have a brief exchange of greetings or ‘Diolch yn fawr, hwyl’ on my way out. But it would have been a lot better if I knew someone on the till could speak Welsh too! I only ever came across one, but she wasn’t there very often.
This is probably because I’m never on a set route. I never know what I’m doing until a week in advance. The first part of my shift I might have a few trips to Radyr and the second part to Barry, then the next day something completely different.
I know that tomorrow I have a couple of trips to Pontprennau in the morning and then a couple of trips on the City Circle with a trip to the Bay inbetween in the afternoon. Tuesday it’ll be Barry, St. Mellons and Llanishen, and Wednesday something else! One day in about 8 months time you might just find yourself on my bus!!
