It’s actually a really funny story with me. I was watching one episode of Doctor Who which dealt with a space-time rift in Cardiff and they mentioned the words Blaidd Drwg. I was intrigued by this funny language and wanted to find out more. Since that moment, I’m a total Welshophile and I even wanna live and study in Wales 
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I’m a nurse and work in 2 local hospitals. I’m one of that fast dying breed of nurses who actually likes to talk and (sometimes) has time to talk with my patients!
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I have a lot of respect for those who are learning without someone in real life to ask (annoy constantly) about pronunciation, sentence structure etc. Mr eljay is going to rue the day he encouraged me to start learning Welsh! 
@margaretnock it’s so important to be able to just chat and put patients at ease. My husband’s grandma had a stroke recently and pretty much lost the ability to speak English, made me realise even more how important it is (IMO) for me to speak Welsh if I’m going to work in healthcare in Wales.
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I was talking Welsh just last night with patients. It’s worth it.
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I know our versions of Aneurin’s Gododdin weren’t written down for ages after he ‘said’ them, but I have always felt that the whole description of that campaign and who was there means that ‘British’ was pretty consistent across the land under Roman rule and people from, say, Cymru Gogledd would easily have understood those from what is now mid-Scotland!
I started learning the language of my fathers more years ago than most of you have lived. I lived in England all my working life with some time in the Marches during holidays. I retired to my favourite place in the world, Gower. Now, for reasons which seemed good at the time, I live in Scotland and came on this site to help with the hiraeth and brush up my Cymraeg. I realise just how much brushing it needs!!! I promise Aran, I’ll get to it soon!!!
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I was born in London but have Welsh ancestry. Wales being literally the Land of My Fathers, I felt I owed it to myself and forebears to learn the language. Also, to spare the local population from my ghastly pronunciation of place names when I holiday in Wales!
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When I was really little, I first read Susan Cooper’s series The Dark is Rising. I thought then that Welsh was the most beautiful written language I’d ever seen, however, I’ve spent the majority of my life in rural Australia and thus well out of reach of the very few Welsh related things I could find in this country, so I gave it up as a bad job for a long time.
About five years ago, I convinced my partner to learn it with me and, as her father has Welsh ancestry, she was interested enough to agree. Then we struggled for a few years with various stuff before stumbling upon SSIW, and here we are!
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I am Welsh but I have lived abroad for many years and learned a number of other languages. I am fluent in other foreign languages and one of them is even essential to my work (I am a translator). So it struck me as incongruous that Welsh, the native language of my native land, should have been left to the sidelines.
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I grew up in Cornwall but emigrated to Tasmania with my family when I was 17. I married into a Welsh speaking family (from Gwynedd) and heard Welsh spoken by my wife and in-laws without understanding a word. My first visit to Welsh Wales was a culture shock because my previous experience was limited to a brief stopover at Cardiff airport. I still remember some of my wife’s relatives calling ‘tyrd yma’ and ‘allan’ to sheepdogs but most of the rest of what was said was lost on me. After some years I decided to learn Welsh but I am largely self taught and my learning journey has been sporadic although far more intensive over the past 5 years and with plenty of support from my adopted family. It’s been a thrill to me that when we visit Wales or when Welsh speaking family and friends visit us in Tasmania, they don’t switch to English to address me. We receive Christmas cards, letters and emails in Welsh and it gives me pleasure to read and understand them. It also gave me a huge thrill when I could communicate what I needed to and understand most of what was said to me. I enjoy a good sing along and really respond to Welsh music, which I’ve explored thoroughly. It’s not only a good cultural experience but contributes to vocabulary. One thing that really appeals to me about Welsh Wales is the importance attached to cultural pursuits. A by-product of all of this has been that I now understand the meaning of place names in Cornwall e.g. Polzeath - 7 pools, Menheniot - old stones etc. Welsh is a beautiful language, which is a good mental challenge and fun to learn. It’s also amazing to be able to speak the language of the Britons before the Angles and Saxons had even appeared in the British Isles.
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I’m English and apart from going on a couple of holidays there didn’t have much connection to Wales until I went to University in Aberystwyth. I made an effort to learn the pronunciation while I was there, but although I picked up lots of individual words from just seeing it on signs all around, I couldn’t say even a basic sentence in Welsh. It didn’t occur to me to learn it, I probably thought it would have been too difficult and didn’t like the idea of spending extra time studying when I could have been socializing! I also didn’t know many people who could speak it, probably because many Welsh speakers were in the Welsh medium halls - which although I think is definitely needed it did mean that they were slightly separated from non-Welsh speakers, so only one person who I lived with spoke Welsh.
A few years after I left I was visiting the highlands of Scotland and noticed that the signs were bilingual - which they hadn’t been the previous time I’d visited - this made me think of the bilingual signs in Wales and got me thinking about Welsh. I thought I would try and learn a few phrases in Welsh just out of curiosity but no more than that, but this turned into doing the BBC’s Big Welsh challenge course, then their catchphrase course and I couldn’t stop! I was starting to realise that learning Welsh would not be impossible to achieve.
I also think the language sounds incredibly beautiful to listen to. Although it is an old language with a long literary history, what motivates me more is that it is also a vibrant and youthful language - seeing bands sing in Welsh, TV and radio, and as Wales is the country I most visit (I still meet up with University friends there) It is the language that I have most chance of actually using.
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It seems there are a few Welsh things going on in Australia…
http://www.welshaustralian.com/
…but of course it’s a huge country, so maybe all that is out of easy reach.
However, there are some other Australian SSiW members, so at least a chance to find some people in the same time zone to Skype with.
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Well, I learnt Welsh when I was in school, but I don’t feel like I can speak it very well. Frankly, I lived in Wales for twenty years and I consider myself to be Welsh, and I don’t think anyone can truly call themselves Welsh until they’ve at least tried to learn the language with some effort. Also, living in Chepstow, I’ve found that there seems to be quite a strong anti-Welsh feeling, which not only boggles my mind (since it’s quite clearly on the greener side of the bridge), but actually offends me a little bit. I often hear people protesting against there being Welsh everywhere! It’s as if they’ve forgotten which country they’re in or something! Anyway, after hearing all that I wasn’t having any of it and decided to set about reinforcing my Welsh heritage right away. So, here I am learning some more Welsh.
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I just started but I would say because I really want to go to the UK someday and I have always wanted to learn at least one celtic language and found the most out there for Welsh including books in Welsh and I love to read so hooray!
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Have you checked out gwales.com? It’s a great source for books and learning resources which are delivered overseas in good time. Children’s books are a good starting point because anyone learning another language is like a child beginning over again.
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I found that website once before, years ago, and haven’t checked it since. It’s less out of reach than it used to be, as I’m not ludicrously far from Melbourne (maybe four or five hours by train), although we usually only go then when we’re going to a theatre or something… and it looks like there’s a festival in a town fairly near me! Woohoo!
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Which kept the original British language as did Cymru and Cumbria!! The latter lost it first, of course, but Cornish lasted!
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Thanks I will definitely look into that once I’ve learned more.
Hi, I have just started and quite enjoying it so far. My mums family is from Glmaorgan for as far back as I have been able to trace so far and always wanted to be able to associate with that more. So that is why I am learning now. Hardest part is I do not know a single Welsh speaker here in Aus to talk to. Hopefully as I get better I can get my young son (3yo) learning it so we can speak it at home.
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There are actually quite a lot of us in Aus, look around the forums long enough and we begin to pop up everywhere! 
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Hiding in the woodwork, so to speak.