Rwan, dw i’n aros yn Wlad Belg a heddiw wnes i ofyn am rhywbeth yn Ffraneg. Dim problem. Mwy na unwaith hefyd.
Felly pan dw i isio siarad cymraeg , pam ydw i wastad yn teimlo’n nerfus? Mae fy Nghymraeg yn well na fy ffraneg!
Liciwn i gwybod os mae pawb yn teimlo fel hyn.
Fi hefyd! Dw i’n meddwl, mae e’n achos pan dw i’n yn Ffrainc, neu Wlad Belg, pawb yn siarad Ffrangeg, a llawer o bobl dod i’r wlad sy ddim yn siarad yr iaith yn dda. Neb yn gwrando â fi. Pan dw i’n siarad Cymraeg, weithir mae hi’n teimlo fel ‘iaith gudd’ - dw i’n teimlo fel pawb yn gwrando - pobl sy’n siarad Cymraeg a pobl sydd ddim yn siarad Cymraeg. (Dw i’n sylwi bod llawer o bobl yn gofyn i fi pam dw i’n dysgu Cymraeg - neb yn gofyn pam dw i’n dysgu Ffrangeg!)
Fallai fod yn wahanol i ti, ond i fi mae e’n ddefnyddiol i hala amser mewn sefyllfa gyda grŵp sy’n dysgu, a siarad â phobl gyda safon wahanol - yn grŵp sgwrs, neu fynd i ddigwyddiad Cymraeg. Mae e’n bwysig i fi bod siarad Cymraeg (a siarad Cymraeg yn wael) teimlo ‘normal’. Dw i’n teimlo mwy hyderus mewn grŵp sy’n i gyd yn sefyllfa anodd.
Diolch
A fi hefyd. Pan o’n i’n yn Stuttgart, mi wnes i siarad cymraeg am awr a hanner efo dysgwr. Dim problem. Ond yng Nghymru dw i wastad yn teimlo’n nerfus iawn.
Fel arfer mi wnes i anghofio popeth a weithiau dw i di ffeindio does neb yn aros a felly fedra i ddim cymryd rhan yn y sgwrs.
Dw i angen ymarfer gwrando mwy a dysgu geirfa newydd.
Dylwn i stopio cwyno!
A fi hefyd. Dw i’m medru defynnyddio fy Ffraneg ysgol pan o’n i’n Franc a Affrica. Ond mae gwahaniaeth ydy wnes i angen siarad Ffraneg i bod yn dealledig.
Dw i’m meddwl bod mae o’n gwahanol i bob rhywun ond Cymraeg yn wahanol arnon ni. Weithiau, dw i’n teimlo’n nerfus hefyd achos mae Cymraeg ydy ein iaith ni a mae’n teimlo’n swilio am dan ni ddim medru siarad Cymraeg yn da iawn. Dan ni ddim dysgu er mwyn i bod yn dealledig ond i bod yn medru i siarad hi. Dan ni eisiau siarad yn well, nid bod yn dealledig
Wel y bore 'ma, wnes i ddarllen rhywbeth o “the spectator”. Diddorol iawn.
I most certainly can’t write in welsh about it. But it was from a fluent or fluent enough speaker who choses not to speak for fear of being told off if she makes a mistake. This forum is great. People tolerate and help my attempts at Welsh. Learners groups are great too.
Sadly though I agree with the article writer. Some people are so quick to correct and use phrases like “if you’re serious about learning the language you will learn its rules and its grammar”. Really?
I do feel there is s contingent who mock learners. Not here obviously. Any wonder only 1% of adult learners end up fluent. That’s shocking really when you consider how much money is invested in adult learning. Maybe aran and iestyn should be recruited by the Welsh assembly to run lrarning programmes throught Wales!
And for me this means i’m wary of having a go. It was refreshing to read how Baruch got on when we went to Llanrwst.
Ond ddydd llun, bydda i’n gweithio yn Lerpwl. Felly ai i gyfarfod pobl newydd yn nes ymlaen
Have you come across this yourself, Peter? I’m told it was a real problem back in the 70s, but I’ve not heard of anything (beyond the very occasional idiot who’d be busy finding some other way to be unpleasant if it wasn’t about the language). I’ve never met anyone who’d say ‘if you’re serious about learning the language you will learn its rules and its grammar’, which would imply that the vast majority of English speakers aren’t serious about English…
Don’t let articles like this put you off - they often come during the Eisteddfod season, when the London papers often spend a little time looking for people willing to say negative stuff about the Welsh language and Welsh speakers, like the researcher for BBC5Live the other day on Twitter who was looking for someone willing to talk about ‘why the Welsh language should die’.
If you get out there and use your Welsh, 99% of the responses you get will be pleased and encouraging… 
I’ve certainly never encountered anyone who would conform to the mythical stereotype portrayed in the spectator. These things are a bit clichéd, like English tourist walking into pub and everyone starts talking in Welsh nonsense that always does the rounds.
I think the judgemental native speaker that is portrayed is something that plays on our insecurities and projects blame onto someone else.
I think its psychology we need to work hardest on here in wales - I don’t like the learner tag myself - I’d much prefer the tag rubbish welsh speaker or improving welsh speaker, depending on my mood and confidence. I couldn’t wait to get those embarrassing L plates off my car when I was starting to drive, but I was still rubbish at driving and technically still very much a learner.
Sadly yes i have on a learners forum. Onr person said exactly that and another said of pronunciation mistakes “why would you want to come across as a learner”.
All very sad really. It can be quite off putting.
On a positive note the so called falling numbers of speakers are not. Falling as a percentage yes but roughly the same number as ever.
Sorry didn’t nean to sound negative. In real life i havent met anyone eho has mocked by welsh. Well apart from me. However as someone who grew up in the 70s perhaps my lack of confidence stemdw from there.
I have however encountered what i call the grammar and pronunciation police on learners forums and yes aran i agree. Trolls.
Anyway after giving myself a week or so off learning i will be back on the case tomorrow. Two meetings in the next week so i need to practice!
Ooops sorry it was in the new statesman
For…sake! I have been chided as a pedantic *** most of my life because I tend to cringe at what I was taught was bad English! Nobody now cares a jot for the rules of grammar! Oh, and I myself, back when, have been known to say, “That isn’t bad grammar, it’s style!” 
Ooops didnt quite remember the article correctly. The writer is fluent but explains why many dont consider themselves to be.
I can however understand where she is coming from.
But @aran @henddraig etc. It’s supportive people like you that will keep thethe language thriving and keep mistake ridden peopke like me going!
I can’t! I think she has a massive bee in her bonnet! OK it’s about 20 years since I was in Gwynedd, but there are those on this Forum who can vouch for folk being really welcoming to learners and not going on about mutations and grammar! Why did she go to the English school? Was her Mam virulently anti-Nationalist? Did she and her Mam move to England, as she now has a step-Mam? Or did her Mam die and she blames the local Welsh hospital? I haven’t a clue, but suspect more behind that article than meets the eye!
We have a lovely helpful grammar expert on this Forum! I haven’t noticed @garethrking being fiendishly pedantic! In fact he has gently chided me for being so!
I suspect the language police 
will be a lot harder on native speakers and kids educated through the medium of Welsh. I think they do exist and feel their role is to set a standard and encourage correctness and avoid perceived slovenliness. It’s the sign of a living language - there are more pedants promoting perfect English and French than you will ever find in Welsh t’mod, ch’mod and misuse of efo seems to drive the Welsh language police particularly infuriated in a way that apostrophes do to the English language pedant.
We are unlikely to attract their wrath, until we reach a level that they think we are being lazy at which point we could view their criticisms as a pat on the back for reaching a very high level of naturalness and fluency.
Oh as i said i have met some very supportive people.
Im just trying to explain why for me, speaking is so daunting. Internet forums for learners can be very intimidating places!
I sound like a learner cos i am. I get things wrong all the time. But phrases like the ones i have mentioned are not helpful when you lack the confidence to speak.
I do however now know a very good supportive tutor who had invited me to a learners meeting in nant geytheyrn. So i am getting better at speaking!
But like i said, i do find it very intimidating!
Yes but when you’re learning they can be very off putting when you lack the confidence to speak.
Yes, but we’re not their target and I can’t imagine anyone doing more than provide helpful suggestions to us. Languages do need standards, not to fossilise things, but to provide a benchmark. Languages like Breton ate struggling, because native speakers don’t know how good they are, because the standard form is so removed from their native speech it fails to act as a benchmark and they have a poor sense of what good actually means.
The trouble with the language police, and with aggressive pedants generally, is that they often don’t know what they’re talking about, but think they do. They get hold of half an idea, and then promote and defend it as God’s truth. What is noteworthy about them and their complaints is that it’s always other people that are the target - they never seem to have the slightest problem with their own way of speaking, do they? And ‘slovenliness’ is always something other people do.
And the other trouble is that people listen to them. Most of our English-language news media now call the British flag the ‘Union flag’ rather than the ‘Union Jack’ (Welsh: Jac yr Undeb!), because about twenty years ago a made-up story started doing the rounds that ‘jack’ is a specifically naval term for a flag (it isn’t), and that therefore you should only call it the Union Jack when it’s flying on a ship. Bollocks - it’s always been called the Union Jack in all circumstances. But this made-up story sounds plausible, and now lots of people wrongly follow the instructions of the pedants, and the media play along.
School-children in England are routinely told now not to split infinitives - sheer nonsense from the ignorant pedants. Welsh learners (I have witnessed it myself) are sometimes wrongly told that when you turn a neutral sentence like Maen nhw’n codi tatws They’re digging potatoes into a focused sentence by putting codi tatws at the start, you have to include the yn, because obviously (say the pedants, not knowing much about grammar but thinking that they do) you can’t drop it can you? so (they say) you should say Yn codi tatws maen nhw. Wrong wrong wrong. What you actually have to do is drop the yn (because yn is a linkword and needs something on either side, obviously), and say: Codi tatws maen nhw - correct. But the pedants - usually zealous learners - will even ‘correct’ native speakers on this (breathtaking arrogance!), and unfortunately some native speakers will accept the ‘correction’. Oh dear. 
I think that sums it up nicely!
These people confuse and put learners off. What they are doing on learners forums is anyone’s guess.
I’ve just removed myself from them and rely on fellow learners, a tutor i know who is not that bothered by mistakes and a few groups i have been to.
I also post nearly everything on facebook in welsh. Hardly anyone else understands but who cares!
I had picked up on the perfect learner criticising native speakers on forum wales threads and maes e com. The use of anglicised forms seems to particularly infuriate some advanced learners - this is a bizarre twist, which I’ve also seen on Irish language threads, where the perfect (not really perfect) learners seem become perfect know it alls