@sara-peacock-1 How’s the Irish going by the way? 
I believe I saw that Irish schools do the equivalent of GCSE Welsh (about A1) by the end of primary which interesting
The statistician in me wants to know what Ceredigion & Gwynedd are doing differently to the rest of Wales, to get so many learners - defo outliers.
“Cardiff” I can understand - all those trendy metropolitan types!
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I would so love to dig into their data!
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I wonder if it’s a work thing? Gwynedd council operates through the medium of Welsh, I believe, and all primary schools in that county are Welsh medium - so there might be a lot of work-based courses going on there.
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And also Gwynedd has Bangor University and Ceredigion has Aberystwyth University, so that probably boosts the figures above the non-university counties too.
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To clarify, this data was labeled as “Learners by Their Local Authority of Residence.” I.e. Where learners say their home council is, rather than where they’re learning. So I’m doing a course with Dysgu Cymraeg Abertawe, but I’d be listed under Caerdydd.
I’m sure it probably has something to do with the patterns of use in the day to day. And potentially the universities advertise the courses around the area better? Who knows 
Me too! I actually used to work as a Data Analyst in between acting jobs. They clearly have this data, I’d love to have access to the raw numbers to be able to draw other comparisons. Even something as simple as knowing how the breakdown of course levels compare between each local authority. I.e. Are there a higher percentage of learners on Uwch courses in certain areas? What percentage of users continue their learning (through Dysgu Cymraeg) after completing a Mynediad course. How much variance in that data is there between Local Authority, or between age groups (i.e. do residents in one Local Authority/age group tend to have a higher retention that those in another).
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I would also consider that even though the chart makes it look like Ceredigion has crazy high numbers compared to other authorities, it’s really 1,34% of the population and less than 1000 learners, in an area that’s one of the top 3 for Welsh speakers (44,32% of the population), and as Siaron has said including Aber University!
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Reflecting about this, got curious, checked the full results, and noticed a couple of details, that I don’t think have been mentioned in the thread before:
There’s a couple more numbers of learners not included in the list above:
Outside Wales 1885
Outside the UK 510
Compared to some regions especially, they seem quite high, and makes me wonder if they’re any good at advertising their courses locally. 
What also seemed interesting to me is this sentence regarding number of learners by learning levels:
“The learner numbers total does not reflect the total number of unique learners as it is possible for a learner to follow more than one course at different levels during the period in question. For example, a single learner following an Entry course and a Foundation course within the same year is considered as two learners in this instance.”
Considering how much they do push leaners to do more than one course, with huge discounts and even free courses if you enroll to 2 or more, I wonder how reliable percentages are.
In my experience this is way more common in levels Uwch and Gloywi, and sometimes Canolradd. This would mean that there’s even fewer people who are attending those courses and reaching fluency!
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The number of unique learners is 20445, and the total number of learners by learning level is 22125, so 1680 or fewer people took two or more classes.
If an hour-long, day-long or weekend course is counted as one course each, then it’s possible that the number of repeat students is actually quite a bit lower than 1680.
But we’d have more clarity on this if the raw data were released so that we could dig into it.
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Yes I had seen the difference between total unique and total learners enrolled.
What I mean is that it’s true that 1600-1700 is relatively small percentage when you compare the total number of learners.
But there’s only about 3000 in the highest levels. So if it turned out that most of them are among those, it would make quite a big difference!
Of course we don’t know more than that but just a reflection.
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Aye I can’t speak for most people, but for those on my course, a good 30(ish)% are based in England. One lives in London but is Welsh, and a few of the others in England either have Welsh family or some sort of connection to Wales. And then there’s one or two that just like languages and found Welsh interesting.
There’s also one person from California who has friends (from Scotland and America) who met on a Dysgu Cymraeg course and eventually got married and said their vows yn Gymraeg. And he said they inspired him to do the course.
Interesting point. I’m not sure? Anecdotally, there seem to be quite a few non-Wales learners here too. I love that others are taking an interest in Welsh and contributing to the survival (or thrive-ival) of the language. @gisella-albertini I’d be interested to hear what inspired you to learn (and to take it seriously enough to get to the point that you’re at)Was it a case of advertising, or did you seek it out yourself?
What I would say about the numbers seeming high is that the poolsize for “Outside Wales” would be dramatically bigger which would skew the numbers a bit. A population of aprox 66,700,000 (UK excl Wales) vs Wales’ aprox 3,200,000. Which would mean only 0.0028% of the UK (excl Wales) population are learning. So on pure numbers, seeing 295 in Torfaen vs 1885 in England, Northern Ireland and Scotland seems crazy, but is deceptive based on the poolsize.
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On pure numbers, of course this is true.
However, I see in a Yougov research about language learning in England (can’t tell how reliable it is, but we’re just chatting about an interesting and enjoyable topic here) that only 1% of those who would be interested in learning a language (that was 74% of the responders) said they would be interested in the Welsh language.
Then we all know that between “would like to” and actually starting to learn, there’s quite a distance. Even more if you consider carrying on for at least a few months, and way more for reaching fluency.
Putting the numbers in some sort of context are they really so tiny?
In all my classes, a good 30ish% but sometimes 50ish% or more were/are based in England.
When I did the Uwch exam, it was 6 of us, 3 from Wales, 1 from England, 2 not from the UK.
(by the way, that’s so lovely about the international couple who met at the course and got married, yn Gymraeg!)
Overall I have to say that I find more surprising that so few in Wales are learning Welsh!
Oh and to answer you question about me learning Welsh, there happens to be an old post here in the forum explaining probably too much in detail why and how it all began:
Why I carried on to the point I’m at, well…I don’t really know myself. 
I guess a combination of coincidences, accidents, and curiosity just like how I started!
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Great post! So it all started from music!
This is one of the (many) reasons I’m so passionate about arts and arts funding here in Wales! I wonder what the ROI would be (in terms of getting learner numbers up), if we were to invest more in the arts here in Wales, and specifically yn Gymraeg.
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