I’ve been doing SSiW for a few months now & am doing reasonably well as far as learning vocabulary etc.
What is really holding me up is that I struggle to start a sentence. Such as ‘that is, you have, have you been, you said, etc. As soon as Deborah starts the sentence, I can complete it.
I’ve tried writing sentence starts down & learning them & even recorded myself saying them, (painful..)! & playing them on a loop, to no avail.
Can anyone help?
(Sorry, might have accidentally duplicated this post)
I think a trick you could try would be to start talking (out loud) to yourself/pets/inanimate objects - e.g actually say to the toaster things like “ti wedi llosgi’r bara” (you have burnt the bread) or to your cup of tea “dyna’r panad gorau heddiw” (that’s the best cuppa today) - just think of a sentence and say it out loud in Welsh, however absurd it is, and even if you only have the vocabulary you want to say after the ‘that is/you have/etc’ is in English (for now ) because the key to learning these ‘block bits’ is always to give them context rather than try and learn them in isolation from the rest of the sentence.
You can keep your written list handy to check on afterwards, but because there is no pressure to jump in before the ‘answer’, you can take your time. However, try not to overthink it. Try and let yourself say the first thing you think of, even if it turns out to be wrong, because eventually all those ‘kicking yourself’ moments will kick those mistakes away.
That’s good advice from Siaron James. It took me a long time to adjust to the verb (usually a form of the verb ‘to be’) coming first in standard sentences, then the subject. It’s the other way round in English and mentally swapping the order is challenging.
I do practice phrases and it’s really importan tto do them out loud thinkng about the meaning of the words as you go.. You’ll get there…
) because the key to learning these ‘block bits’ is always to give them context rather than try and learn them in isolation from the rest of the sentence.