Welsh with kids

Worth having a look here:

http://cymraeg.llyw.cymru/learning/cymraegiblant/?lang=en

:slight_smile:

Diolch Aran. Byddi i’n cael gwylio pan dw i’n mynd nol gartef ddidd Iau.
Thanks Aran. I will have a look when i go home on Thursday.

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I know this is an old post but I thought this may be the best place to put it. I have been speaking as much welsh as I can with my son and he now insists on calling his shoes his esgidiau, which is great!! So someone gave me some old Baltic pine cement boards so I made this to sit next to the front door and labelled it appropriately.

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What a wonderful idea! Your mab bach got a reward. He saw how much it meant to you, because you went to all that effort! He will want to learn more and you will have set yourself a hard ‘bench-mark’ to meet!

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Well we will see how he goes, as I mentioned before he has picked up a bit, but if he doesn’t end up speaking cymreag then the box may end up being curiosity for future generations.

Even if he doesn’t speak it, I’m sure he will understand you speaking it to him. Or maybe just something you two do together, even.
And as for the box, WOW! That is fantastic.

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Cheers mick, i got sick of their shoes being chucked in a small basket in the hall and invariably falling out. We will see how he goes, though my welsh is rapidly improving I still don’t have aywhere near the vocab to explain many concepts with him and i am the only one who speaks it with him, but it is an interesting process to be involved in none the less.

I’d like one of those!

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I’m in the same boat with my lad. There are routines we go through daily, saying good night, I love you, see you tomorrow morning etc. With just whatever else thrown on when I can. The daughters shown enough interest to start saying diolch to my mum and me, and I have bought a heap of school style posters that are Around the bathroom, toilet and bedroom walls that we go through couple times a week, too.

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Thank you for the comments, I am now going through it all again with my grandsons of my oldest non Welsh speaking daughter. I revise and try to broaden my vocabulary bob dydd, in only speaking Welsh to them they already demonstrate understanding, and voice the occasional gair Cymraeg. I am far less phased now as compared to when starting with my youngest children as my command of the language has improved and there is a greater push and acceptance of the language. My biggest problem since the girls left home is the chance to practice with others in particular grasping what is said as opposed to what I can say. I have today found a CYD group that meet in Llandysul every third week and dwi’n gobeithio i ddymuno dygwyr eraill yna. SSiW has neen a remarkable resource for me to listen to the spoken word in the absence of a live guinea pig and there seems to be no current local groups where I can meet up with others like me. Whilst SSiW is a listening and repeating course I am surprised how little Welsh is written by learners on the forum, I know it can be difficult in transferring the spoken word to the written but I find it helps consolidation even if writing the spoken is not grammatically correct. So pob lwc i pawb, gan bwyll a dalwch ati

That is because of a deliberate policy by Aran to make the forum as welcome as possible to newcomers who have no or next to no knowledge of written Welsh.

It also ties in with the SSiW basic method which is listening and speaking only in the beginning, and doing no reading or writing of Welsh at all.

There is one ongoing thread* which is dedicated to those who want to practice writing and reading in Welsh, and if we write Welsh in other threads, we are strongly encouraged to add an English translation.

(* called something like “Beth dach chi wedi bod yn gwneud” - I can never remember the exact title.

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It’s currently called

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I understand but just to confirm it wasnt a ciricticm just an observation. I think the course is a revelation and I so would have welcomed something similar when I started learning in the mid eighties. The closest was Catchphrase on BBC Wales for 5 minutes 5 evenings a week and a 30 minute magazine and consolodation on Sundays. It started with the learners being a father and son from Cardiff and ran for three years before the format changed whereby a celebrity became the learner. I think I still have 100 cassette tape recordings which I did diligently every week, trouble is no cassette player now!

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And a big thankyou for the link!:smiley:

I listened to a lot of those as well.

For a long time, at least some of the audio was available on the BBC website. I’m not sure if there is much, if any, left now, although I have a feeling the text may still be there.

Actually, if you search this forum for “BBC Catchphrase”, you might find some interesting links.

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Another weekend for the family coming up folks!
27-29 Hydref | October

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Very common for children outside of where a language wont be bothered.

Especially in places outside of Cymru , you need to give your kids a deep family context as to why you are using Welsh. For example your surname Hughes is about as Welsh surnamed as it gets (ap Huw original) … other more selfish reasons can help (i.e. learning language is good for your brain etc)

To give another perspective, I grew up speaking Italian and English at home and I do the same with my children (living in England, speaking as much Italian as possible). My daughter went through a phase, when young, of telling me to speak English. She used to reply solely in English (it has begun to change recently).

I told her “You can speak to me in the language you want but you don’t get to tell me what language I can speak to you. I speak Italian because I grew up that way and I want to hear it.” And that policy of ‘anyone may speak whichever language they like in our house’ has remained - and I have not been told to speak English for years.

Don’t worry about persuading your children to speak another language, just make it a thing you do. Even if they reply in English, they will hear you and will learn to understand, and that’s a gift you can give them.

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@julia-treen that is a fantastic way to deal with the issue, and I wish I’d thought of it when my children were small and very stubborn!

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