The Queen of mistakes has just finished Challenge 10 - and this truly IS a great thing for me! 
Why only did I hear this song playing in the back of my head during the Challenge…? 
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Fantastic! And I loved your other post, that you deleted (admin can see all posts) - it would lovely if you undeleted it! 
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Oh…I’m sorry, it’s just that sometimes, I’m afraid that I’m talking too much. But if you like this post, I’m going to undelete it right away! 
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This may well be something that we need to emphasise more - because the two are deeply connected…
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This may well be something that we need to emphasise more - because the two are deeply connected…
Oh, yes, they are deeply connected, I couldn’t agree more! I don’t think we have different ways of learning for different topics…the approach and the attitude towards learning in general stays the same.
In school, one of my best friends was a gifted boy, and even then, as a little girl of 7, I noticed his incredibly relaxed and calm way of learning. He enjoyed studying new things…he was curious, open, and, very unlike his dumb friend, not scared or intimidated at all, even by difficult mathematical problems. On the contrary, he welcomed difficulties, because for him, difficulties were challenges…and challenges are fun and bring you further. Goodness, how much I admired him! When the teacher announced that he was going to explain how to solve a complex equation, my friend sat back in his chair, closed his eyes while listening to the teacher, took a few deep breaths and smiled…whereas I sat on the edge of my chair, tense and fearful, gloomily predicted that I’ll never understand this shit.
Yes, our very different approaches formed by experience, but thank God experiences can be changed, (and the bad ones can be “overwritten”) by a brilliant method like yours, Aran…and such a change can initiate the forming of positive patterns in all aspects and levels of learning in life.
P.S. What connected my clever friend and me was our being both geeks…
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Sigh. Every time I think I’m starting to get a handle on when to mutate and when not to, along comes something to make me think I don’t know anything about mutations at all.
I’m doing some strengthening exercises in the Duolingo unit that taught me es i and est ti. It has given me two sentences, seemingly identical except for the final noun:
I went to the bank.
I went to the pub.
For the first, I responded Es i i’r banc. You are correct! said Duolingo.
For the second, I responded Es i i’r tafarn. No, said Duolingo, it’s Es i i’r dafarn.
Can anyone explain why tafarn mutates to dafarn, but banc doesn’t mutate to fanc in what seems to be exactly the same linguistic environment?
I could ask this question on Duolingo, but they’ll probably tell me to read the course notes again, like they did last time I asked a question. I already did, and I don’t see the answer there.
Thanks in advance.
If you really want to know the reason, it’s a gender thing. Tafarn is feminine and feminine nouns mutate after the definite article (“y” or “'r”).
Banc is masculine, and doesn’t mutate after the definite article.
However, in a way, knowing this isn’t going to help you much in speaking. (It might help you in writing, when you have time to think about things and look them up). If you have to stop and ask yourself what gender a word is before you speak, the conversation will have moved on, and you won’t get a word out.
And this is why SSiW is superior to most other courses (probably including Duolngo), because we just learn things like this in spoken phrases, naturally, much as a child learns its 1st language.
I think some SSiW lessons / challenges do touch on grammar indirectly, but generally, we “paid a phoeni” about grammar. There will be time to learn a bit of grammar (if you want to), when you’ve got all the courses / levels behind you.
There is however, one handy piece of “grammar” that you can use as a rule of thumb for mutations, not in the situation that you describe, but in another one that comes up frequently:
If the word that comes after the subject of a sentence begins with one of the mutatable letters, then it mutates. This is why “mynd” mutates to “fynd” in “(w)nes i fynd”. (Note that it’s not just because it’s “i”, because it also mutates in “(w)nes ti fynd”.
(This “rule” is courtesy of Gareth King).
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I suppose I should add that according to every online dictionary I have looked in, “tafarn” is both feminine and masculine, i…e. can be treated as either. I’m not sure why that is, and I presume that not mutating it in this case would also be correct, although my guess, and it’s only a guess, is that most Welsh speakers would mutate it after the definite article.
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As mikeellwood said, it’s to do with the gender of the word. If you’re writing, you need to look it up to check if you can’t remember whether a noun is masculine or feminine, but if you’re speaking, don’t worry! The word will have whizzed by and no one will worry whether you got the mutation right or not. After a while, you’ll realise that you start to remember that people say “i’r dafarn” and “i’r banc” and so you’ll say it naturally without worrying about the rules of grammar.
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I have another question…and I think the answer to it is “yes”, but I’d like to be sure. Does the same advice apply to the Cornish course, too, to push on as far as one can, without worrying about the 80% rule, the pause button and repetition of the Challenges?
Merasta…thank you very much! 
Diolch to both @mikeellwood and @margarethall, not only for your very clear explanations, but also your encouragement. I think I was in need of a bit of that when I asked the question, probably more than I realised at the time! Much appreciated.
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Could I please try the patience of all you lovely people in this community again, and ask why Duolingo told me I got this next sentence wrong? I was asked to translate “I had curry and salad for supper” into Welsh.
I don’t understand why it suddenly wants the unmutated “Ces”, especially when Duolingo itself has given me countless sentences of its own in the format “Ges i [foodstuff] i [meal]”, such as the one below that it asked me to translate into English:
Is the “Ces” a mistake on Duolingo’s part, or is there a reason for it that I don’t understand?
“Ces i“ is the correct form when the affirmative particle “fe“ or “mi“ is not used. So correct are either Ces i or Fe (or mi) ges i, because the particle triggers the mutation.
However, it is not uncommon in spoken language to omit the particle but to keep the mutation. If Duolingo allows the more colloquial forms in other places (and even shows it in examples), then it should allow your answer as given.
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Yes. 
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Good to know for sure, thank you very much!
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Use of “Man” for (a) place, eg. a nice place to live, a busy place, a poorly lit place, etc. Are man and lle fully interchangeable or can man only be used for a special place?
Will it ever be confused with the emphatic English “man/mun” at the end of a sentence?
Here is the context. “Carnarfon: Cymraeg man”
Would you mind me asking you another question…pretty please? 
I’m now a bit more than 6 minutes into Challenge 12 (level 1) and I’m afraid I’ve reached a limit. I could only come up with one single sentence (the shortest and easiest one) before the teachers. Another problem is my inability to remember expressions like “well i fi, mae dal rhaid i fi, mae gyda fi, dw i wedi bod yn dysgu, etc.” - and not being able to memorise them, it gets even harder when talking about other people.
I’m not frustrated, because I’m used to such problems. Being frustrated doesn’t help one bit, but trying to find a solution to fix them does. Aran said that, with a poor working memory like mine, I probably need to slow down a bit and make sure my brain gets enough time and repetition to finally memorise the expressions. Do you agree that this could be the right moment to repeat one or two Challenges a couple of times before tackling Challenge 12?
Diolch yn fawr, I’m so glad to be in this forum and very, very grateful for the help I’m receiving here! 
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You are doing this course in a different way than I did years ago so it’s difficult to say, back in the day it was all about getting 80% correct before moving on, now we encourage pushing on regardless. This change wasn’t just a crazy idea someone had, it was brought about after a lot of trial and error and some thorough testing. I would say trust the process but, and this emphasises that there are no hard and fast rules, only recommendations, if you really don’t get it pushing on will just cause more frustration. Personally I would say to repeat the lesson, maybe even go back 2 or 3 lessons and take a run up at it.
Rest is also your friend though. You’ve done amazing to reach lesson 12 so dont let this little hiccough put you off. Keep us posted on your progress.
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Personally, I would take a day off. Sometimes it feels (to me) like there’s just too much to remember! If I take a break and return when I’m more fresh, it often seems to make it go much better. If, after a bit of a break, you still are struggling as much, you might go back a challenge and see if that helps.
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