Here are two statements: ‘I remember that you spoke Welsh’. ‘You said, five minutes ago, ‘I spoke Welsh’ at the meeting yesterday’. In the first statement it would be right, I think, to use the past tense for ‘remember’ and the present tense for ‘spoke’ because the reference is to an act of speaking (present). The second statement is about a person actually saying, ‘I spoke Welsh’ and in this case I would use the past tense for ‘you said’ and ‘spoke’. My point is that there are many subtleties within a sentence and I felt that, particularly in Challenge 20, Level 2, the single use of the past tense followed by present tense was pretty much universal for all meanings. Any comments would be appreciated.
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The single use of the past tense followed by present tense is just the way these sentences are usually done in Welsh. The subtleties that you see in English are just that - in English, and although we ‘translate’ from one to another, they don’t always match word-for-word or, in this case, tense-for-tense. It does mean that it’s hard to get your head around not turning the tenses around, because we are so used to doing it in English we think it has to be done that way, but the Welsh method does make sense - in Welsh!. 
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That’s really useful. Thank you. Just what I wanted to hear. In many ways it sounds very natural to use the tenses in the Welsh way and sometimes makes more sense than English. From the challenges point of view it is very compelling to use the pause button for ten minutes or so whilst working out what the translation might be. Much better just to go for it without too much thought.
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yup - overthinking it doesn’t help at all!
Absolutely! Plough in immediately with the start of the sentence and surprise yourself by finishing ahead of the allotted time.
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Interestingly I’ve read stuff that agrees with @siaron in that the first use of tense in a sentence sets up the whole sentence, eg past, then use present. Similar to this forum which says use present from there in as tense was present at time, similar to Saesneg reported speech he said " …". The one I’m not totally sure of is when tenses are mixed in a sentence. Such as: I went to Caernarfon and then drove to Bangor on my way home; I live in Skewen but will visit Ty Tawe after the lockdown. Sorry about this ooft! 
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This can also be expressed in English as I remember you( r ) speaking Welsh, which is more similar to the Welsh way of doing things.
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The little word that causes the most confusion with the present/past ‘mismatch’ is that - the trouble with it is that English often leaves it out where Welsh would put it in. So one trick is to see if putting a that in the English sentence where there isn’t one still makes sense, and if so, you’ve got the “set up tense” situation (and of course if there is obviously a that in there anyway). If there’s no that or putting one in doesn’t make sense, then you’ve got normal tenses.
So in your example John, it’s a straightforward mix of past, present and future, just as if they were separate sentences, because there is no that in there either actually or implied
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Great thanks, both of you.
Compounded by the fact that that that(!) is only one possible meaning of the English word. And don’t get me started on have .
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yup. The more Welsh you know, the more complicated English gets! 
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