I, too, find I always need a skeleton of grammar but, like @RichardBuck, my fluency has come in with leaps and bounds since I started using SSiW in my second year of trying to learn Welsh. Hand in hand with SSiW I’ve used as my ‘bible’ @garethrking’s Modern Welsh: A Comprehensive Grammar which focuses almost entirely on spoken Welsh and which, for me, perfectly complements SSiW - if you haven’t seen it already, do try and get hold of a copy 
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By the way, there’s almost the new one ready, and I have the feeling it’s going to complement SSiW even better. 
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Thanks John. I also use Gareth King, but it isn’t a link to SSiW. I’m happily working my way through his “Colloquial Welsh” Course, as it supports what I’m learning through DysguCymraeg. He incorporates both North and South, and I can easily select the southern version from his work. But SSiW (De) can be like a different language again sometimes. SSiW is good for ‘Pobl y Cwm’ - where in the South is Cwmderi supposed to be? Who speaks like that all the time? I’ll be controversial and ask if this is slang?
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Cwmderi is set in Ceredigion. There are many, many people who speak like that all the time because that’s what their first language sounds like, and whilst the script does contain some slang (it wouldn’t be true to life if it didn’t), it is by no means all slang - just natural spoken Welsh.
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Thanks Siaron. I’ll be able to check it out in the Summer school at Aberystwyth this year.
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Excellent - Aberystwyth is lovely in the summer (I went to Uni there). Do check out the town after classes for true ‘immersion’, there are enough cafes, pubs, and shops where people will be only too pleased to chat in Welsh, but also bear in mind you may come across a few Gog (North-Walian) accents as well as Hwntw (South-Walian) ones! 
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Thanks again Siaron, that was my experience of Aberystwyth last summer, an interesting melting pot and lots of friendly locals. Which is why I’m going again this year. Thank you to everyone that has joined in this conversation. I don’t think there’s much more to add, except that I will look out for Gareth King’s new book. Everything he does is brilliant.
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Yup - I’ve already put my pre-order in! 
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Ô siýcs / Aw shucks.
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Because that’s the natural spoken Welsh of Iestyn and Cat. In other words, how they actually have conversations and raise their children. They haven’t chosen a fabricated dialect invented for Pobl y Cwm, it’s the living language. It’s also how my teaching friends from West Wales speak and teach.
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I politely disagree with this assertion 
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Say Something in Welsh? I think the clue is in the name!
I know that people can have different learning preferences, but SSIW has certainly worked for me.
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I understand your frustration Megan. But, I ask you, have you ever had a conversation in English with someone speaking formal, grammatically correct English? I have with a Hindu, but never with a native English speaker …
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