The SSi Growth Club

Dim ond dyletswydd gyrrwr oedd o. :blush:

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And as promised, Growth Club 28 - aka ā€˜the continuing travails of the Joneses and their search for a homeā€™ - is ready and waiting for you nowā€¦ :sunny:

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Sā€™mae pawb?

By any chance has anyone got the 1st to the 18th Growth Club files squirreled away somewhere that they could share with me? I have been away from the forum for a year now, and only have access to files 19 - 28. Aran suggested that I ask on this thread!

Hwyl,

Stu

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Welcome back @essenbee! Iā€™ve missed you already!

Now ā€¦ Youā€™ll get link to my dropbox folder where youā€™ll find everything you need in an blink of an eye. Watch your PMs for upcomming updates from me ā€¦ - hehe :slight_smile:

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Diolch yn fawr iawn, Tatjana! Dw iā€™n hapus iawn i weld boā€™ chdiā€™n gwneud yn wych efoā€™r Gymraeg! Dan ni 'di bod mor brysur efo ein wyres dros y flwyddyn diwetha bod rhaid i mi gymryd egwyl o ddysgu, ond gobeithio, dw iā€™n ail-ddechrau rwan. Mae gen i lot o stwff iā€™w wneud!

Hwyl,

Stu

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Diolch. Dw iā€™n hapus i helpu.

Dw i wedi gneud llawer ac maeā€™n rhaid i fi gwneud lot o stwff eto. Dw iā€™n hapus tiā€™n dod nol yma. Croeso un waith mwy. Dw iā€™n gobeithio fod bod yn brysur gyda wyres wnaeth ddim ond joy.

EDIT
I hope Iā€™ve written everything at least a bit right ā€¦ :slight_smile:

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Ahem!

Yes, weā€™re back in the saddle. Iā€™ve just posted GC#29 - and since I think I missed 3 weeks in a row, Iā€™m going to post GC#30 on Monday - and weā€™ll keep that up for the next 3 weeks, until we feel that weā€™re back in balanceā€¦:wink:

And youā€™ll see in todayā€™s content part of why our minds havenā€™t been very neatly focused recentlyā€¦:wink:

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And in a shocking burst of organisation - yes, GC#30 is up and waiting for youā€¦ :sunny:

For this Friday, when weā€™ll do another two sessions, do please save us (and you!) from ourselves - as you can see, weā€™re a little one-track-minded at the moment - so some requests would be a lovely change of gear! :heart:

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Only if you feel like it of course, but how about favourite welsh novels? (I need a new book!) And / or talk a bit about Welsh literature in general. (Is it just me, or is a disproportionate amount of it a bit on the depressing side? Iā€™ve even read several Welsh novels now that end with a suicideā€¦ donā€™t think Iā€™ve ever read a book from any other country that ends like that!) Iā€™d love to read something really positive and life-affirming in Welsh! (And just personally, not too much Manon Steffan Ros as Iā€™ve read just about everything now.)

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Ww, ffab, diolch o galon! Might be hard to stop Catrin talking about Manon, but Iā€™ll see what I can doā€¦:wink:

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Try some Slovene ā€¦ they end with death, despair, drunkness, parents ending homeless as their grown kids sends them off or oposite way, and whatā€™s more to it many times especially old ones so, no, Welsh are not the only ones like that (and I didnā€™t know theyā€™d be).

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Yes, actually I am forgetting the Russians! Maybe the Welsh are in good company!

Yes, a quick jaunt through the joys of Dostoevsky should prepare you suitably for the chirpiness of Welsh writingā€¦:wink:

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+1 for nofels, sorry nofelau, but I would also like to read something positive and life-affirming, perhaps with a laugh or two :slight_smile: ).

Related to this, and I donā€™t know if itā€™s possible to cover in a 5 minute talk, something about the kind of written Welsh that learners can expect when they first start reading.

It took me a long time to get my head around this (and Iā€™m still learning) - that there is ā€œproperā€ literary Welsh, and then there is colloquial Welsh in a written form, and then there seems to be a whole spectrum in between. And (so it seems to me) modern writers sort of choose a range of that spectrum to inhabit. It probably depends partly on how much dialogue there is (in a novel), and how colloquial they want to make the dialogue.

I donā€™t know if there is anything useful on that subject that one can say in five minutes, but maybe itā€™s food for thought.

Also perhaps, suggested authors for beginning readers to try.

Itā€™s a potentially interesting/complicated topic - maybe something we need to build into the work we will (one day!) do to help switch from SSi to readingā€¦ but it would be interesting to hear if anyone else would like us to mutter about it for the Growth Clubā€¦ :sunny:

Oh, Slovene are much ā€œdarkerā€ or equally dark as Russian but in more ā€œminimalisticā€ way. In our (old) stories the main characters are farmers, their wives, sons, the environment is little villages where everyone knows everyone and potentially everyone ā€œhatesā€ everyone or at least want something bad to happen to others ā€¦ literature full of fighting for the justice, freedom of one single person, suffering of all (mostly psychical) kinds ā€¦

I donā€™t believe Welsh literature would be something like this ā€¦

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Oh no, much more subtle! Just a lot of neurotic little girls reallyā€¦

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Richard Hughes Williams, one of the earliest writers of the modern short story form in Welsh, seemed to regard the medium as ā€œa piece of writing where people die at the endā€. One can imagine the inhabitants of his fictional world scurrying about hiding from his gaze, yelling ā€œfor Godā€™s sake, donā€™t write about me! Please!ā€

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Youā€™ve been reading Welsh literature on the sly, havenā€™t you! :wink:
Entire collections of short stories in Welsh can be summed up like that!

I donā€™t have a dog in this race, not being a member of the growth club, but I generally prefer short stories in Welsh to be better than novels. Generally speaking, as I say. And yes, they - generally speaking arenā€™t the jolliest of things, but the good ones stick in your mind and stay with you, becoming part of your experience of this world. Kate Roberts. Worth reading by any languageā€™s standard.

But plenty of others. Iā€™ve a fair few collections, all of which have stuff ranging from readable to compelling. Some very minimalist - some short enough for me to stick up a translation of the more compelling ones, but I canā€™t find out when the author died with one I was going to, so donā€™t want abuse copyright!

Hehe ā€¦ I donā€™t read much, even not our literature but since we had to read all old stories/authors and weā€™re re-reading them with our son again, here we are.

At the moment Iā€™m (more listening then reading) Martha, Jack a Sianco and slowly, really slowly going through the Pedair cainc o Mabinogi. Reading is a long process where (If Iā€™d have to read aloud) I canā€™t even spell words properly.

So, I imagine reading on the sly like Iā€™ve read already a huge pile of Welsh books and nobody knows about that (uff, Iā€™ve just disclosed myself - haha) which unfortunatelly didnā€™t happen. But your thought amuses me ā€¦ :slight_smile: