Came across a couple of interesting articles today (via the Language Learning subreddit). Wanted to pass them along!
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Very interesting. So what ARE the fillers for Welsh everyone?
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Good question Ruth ā¦ Iām waiting too.
A lot of that second article (almost all to be honest) seemed like common sense to me and is stuff that Iām already doing but then I thought about some people I know that have been going to lessons for years but shy away from having a conversation with me in Welsh. One guy even says that he knows how to speak Welsh and knows ātons of vocabularyā but lacks practice, all of which he says in English and just will not say anything in Welsh, we have a conversation with me speaking Welsh and him speaking English. So frustrating but what can you do? (rhetorical)
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Couldnāt agree more gruntius! Iām only up to Lesson 10, Course 1 Northern but I am v excited at the thought of actually knowing enough to codger up some kind of conversation with other Welsh speakers! I canāt see the point of all the effort spent learning it if I donāt give it a go , especially next time Iām in Walesā¦and Iām sure native Welsh speakers are like people the world over, and really quite pleased if a non speaker makes any kind of effort even if it is just ābore daā!
I agree the other article was largely what Aran tells us to do on this siteā¦make up sentences in your head each day, say them out loud, keep thinking how you would say things in Welshā¦Iām really trying on that score, and said to my puzzled dog just now 'Wyt ti eisiau mynd i āgrandmaās?ā!! ( i donāt know grandma yet!)
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And, of course, you already are at that point. Are you chatting in Welsh already?
Grandma 
is nain (nine 9). 
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If heās waiting for a golden moment, when itāll come together perfectly and, he can cover every base fluentlyā¦Well, heās deluded it isnāt going to happen.
For sixteen years, I could follow the gist of many conversations and use pat phrases; and had loads of vocab - which I couldnāt pronounce: but unless your prepared to, stumble,fall flat on your face, get up to fall over and over in the gladiatorial arena of,actually speaking the languageā¦forget it.
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Oooh! Thank you! I can ask him completely in Welsh now!! Im mostly chatting away to myself in Welsh as I donāt know anyone around me who speaks Welsh.
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Youāll soon be getting the Welsh speakers discount when your out and about in the shops of the Cymru Gymraeg. This can, and sometimes does, include: bigger ice creams, free taxi rides, the bus driver dropping you of at the door of the pubā¦Yep!!! Thereās loads of freebies and upgrades coming your way. 
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Oh, yay! So happy to see that this started a bit of a conversation.
Yes, I would love to know what the Welsh āfillersā are, too. Interestingly (maybe), I have a natural tendency to want to say, āEm,ā when Iām speaking Welsh (to myself, of course, deep in the heart of Texas). I have no idea if that is an āactualā filler that Welsh speakers use, though.
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On radio BBC Cymru, I often hear people say something like āchāmodā. I think it means āyou knowā but Iām not sure. But people use it very often, sometimes in every sentence.
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Yes, it does 
From āchiān gwybodāā¦
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When first started work in a drawing office there was a lovely Polish draughtsman, one of the previous Poles who were stranded here after the war, and he had some delightful fillers: āthat is to sayā, āso to speakā and āmore or lessā, and sometimes heās say all three fillers while looking for his next English word. In Welsh are we stuck with a quick chāmod or is there something longer?
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Yup, my Dadās best mate, also Polish, used to do exactly that interspersed with a fantastic selection of imaginative combinations of swearwords. He was absolutely great and bred my first dogš
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Or mamgu (mam ghee) in the South
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Fillers:
an obvious one is āwelā.
On RaR I notice āyliā a lot, which I think literally means āyou seeā.
Then there is ā(a) dweud y gwirā which is literally ā(to) tell the truthā, but Gareth Kingās MW Dictionary says is more like āactuallyā.
ā¦
Wonder how you would translate āGrandmaāsā colloquially? āTy Nain (or Mam-gu)ā would work presumably, but is there a more natural way?
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Is there an equivalent of ''uh" or āumā in Welsh?
I think youād usually hear just āyyyyyā (which sounds like a lengthy āerā) or just āumāā¦
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Haha, alright, cool.
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