I’ve just spent far too long on Twitter, looking to see whether Welsh accounts I follow there are still active (I’m not, so no shade on them for quitting - lots of people have and for good reason).
Of 17 accounts, only one was still active, and only 3 have moved over to Bluesky where I am now.
Other Welsh communities online - Reddit, Discord, WhatsApp groups - that I’m in are pretty quiet, without much activity. So… where have all the Welsh and Welsh learners gone? Or has everyone just abandoned social platforms?
The list of accounts I checked is:
GlobalWelsh - GlobalWelsh (only account still active)
DoctorCymraeg - CymraegDoctor
Sgwrsio - sgwrsio1
Tyfu Cymraeg - TCymraeg
Awr Y Dysgwyr - AwrYDysgwyr (is on Bluesky)
Cymdeithas Madog - CMadog
SaySomethingInWelsh - DailyWelshWords
Parallel.cymru- Neil - parallel_cymru
Lingo Newydd / Lingo360 - lingonewydd
Say Something - SaySomethingin NorthWales.com - northwalescom
Gweiadur - gweiadur (is on Bluesky)
hir-iaith - hiriaith (is on Bluesky)
S4C Dysgu Cymraeg - S4CDysguCymraeg
Nick - NickYeo1
Cariad@Iaith - s4cariad
Sketchy Welsh - SketchyWelsh
The most active virtual groups I can think of are definitely the two @nigel-28 mentioned, on Facebook, and that’s really where I usually hang out.
There’s also Handy Welsh with Nia Llewelyn, Marcus of Garth Newydd, Stuart and a few others.
Then, not really a community, but DoctorCymraeg is very active on Instagram and Tiktok, where there are quite a few more in a similar vein (some also on Facebook and/or YouTube) like:
S4C can be found on all social media mentioned above, and pretty active.
Then I don’t know or never followed most of the accounts you mention, so I don’t know what to say about them, except Parallel.Cymru: I remember talking to Neil years ago and he was already, sadly, about to stop publishing (although keeping the site on), so I’m sure that’s not active anywhere else.
I can tell you that S4C Dysgu Cymraeg is very busy on Insta and Facebook; slightly less so on TikTok and YouTube. We’ve given Twitter up as a bad job!
We have a good deal of interaction from learners in those spaces (particularly Insta and Facebook), and I think people like Dr Cymraeg and Marian do as well.
I definitely sympathise with that point (not on Facebook either). I think even this forum has become quieter, though as someone who lurks more than contributes I perhaps shouldn’t complain!
But that’s a serious point though, in internet terms we’re a small community and where elsewhere we could wait around for content to be provided, perhaps here we need to be more proactive and provide more of that content ourselves. That’s not aimed at you Sue, as I see you contributing on here regularly - just more of a note to myself perhaps I should follow yours and others examples.
For social media I’m only on FB and already spend far too much time there so I’m not joining anything else. I don’t follow any Iaith Cymraeg groups there.
But @charlie-o is right, here used to be really, really busy. I suppose I’m talking 10 years ago. Not everything was language related, and there were enough strong characters to lead to arguments and even one or two people being thrown off the forum. I met at least half a dozen people in Europe face to face for siarad Cymraeg that I met first of all here, and Skyped with people from Australia and America, and had three or four visitors to Wales staying overnight, or two or three nights, all via the forum.
This forum was very active and lively when I started learning Welsh, in the summer of 2018.
I didn’t know anybody in Wales at the time, and apart from a Datblygu-related handful, all my contacts came from this forum.
And I’m still in touch with some of them (I won’t tag them all, you know who you are! )
At the time it was here that all SSiW learners came to look for explanations, help and also just hang out with nice people!
When SSiW added support and live sessions for subscribers on Slack, I think it was a great offer for learners - but at the same time new learners stopped coming here.
I’ve met quite a few who don’t even know that this forum exists!
And at the same, groups on Facebook seemed to become more and more active, so I guess many of us just started going there more than here - I must admit.
I guess we’d be all happy to quit Facebook. but it’s a fact that it’s the only social media where you can create groups, and events.
And people who are learning with many different methods just meet there, rather than looking for specific forums or joining Discord or Reddit.
(it’s mystery to me how none of the big companies behind social media ever considered doing something similar, I mean groups and events - probably not enough of a business)!
I don’t think the Slack is particularly busy though, so I don’t think people necessarily went there.
I suspect that what’s happened is what has happened elsewhere – people have hived off into private social spaces, their own WhatsApp groups or Slacks, instead of being on these larger platforms. So everything has fragmented.
One of the Discords has had a recent influx of new users, but it’s not a great tool imho.
Yes, of course, there were other factors involved.
However I just did notice quite a big change when SSiW learners just stopped having this forum as basically the only place to get support in their learning.
I guess I’m one of the new users who joined one of the Discords group a couple of days ago, but from what I see there’s not much going on!
Here like Margaret said, it wasn’t only support, it was a sort of community of new learners, more experienced learners and fluent speakers. People would carry on chatting about various things and then often then also meet in person, organize events and so on.
That’s probably what made the big difference, and I can’t see anything like it anywhere on line at the moment, unfortunately.
I think we’re very much in agreement, I just wanted to point out that it’s not just Welsh communities, it’s all of them.
I had a look at the old Mae-E forum a few days ago, which still exists, and has been online since at least 2003 (not sure what date it launched), but it hasn’t seen any activity for about a decade!
There’s a natural rise and fall to online communities, but perhaps we notice it more because there are so few alternatives and no obvious alternative that’s thriving where we can say “Oh, everyone went there.”
Forums were the place to be at the time. Then social media were quite a game changer. Not always in a good way, but that’s how it is.
I believe Maes-E was really important at the time for the Welsh language even though I never really used it myself and even though it’s also thanks to its founder that I started learning Welsh!
But by then he had just moved on to other projects, and the Forum was already pretty much just an archive.
Well after all it seems like yesterday to many of us, but 2002 or 2003 is more than 20 years ago!
I guess part of the problem now there’s probably too much going on at the same time, and newer platforms are more focused on individual success than creating virtual communities - so there’s probably many more options, but scattered all over the place!
I’ve found the Facebook Welsh Learner groups too busy for my taste. I always enjoyed the discussions here and I still check the forum daily. Personally I’ve found Mastodon (toot.wales) helpful for writing and reading in Welsh. It’s the only social media site where I’ve felt there was any point in posting in Welsh. If you follow the #DysguCymraeg or just #Cymraeg hashtags, there are quite a few people from fairly new learners to first language speakers just using the language. It’s not much of a place for asking for help with the language though.
If you’re on Reddit, there is an active group r/learnwelsh. As well as being a good place to ask for help, the group has built up a big library of notes on grammar, usage and other points.
Hi, I’m a new learner and although I’ve had very prompt responses from admins (diolch!) I haven’t seen any recent threads… maybe I’m looking in the wrong places but I find it a bit hard to get my head around.
)
