First one’s free, kids.
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Here’s mine:
I met this fabulous woman from Snowdonia. And she would be on the phone speaking Welsh and it sounded so gorgeous. Then when I met her family they all spoke Welsh as well, as did other people we met when we went to visit north Wales. We were living in England at the time, but I liked languages and I thought I would give Welsh a go. I got her to teach me a few useful words and phrases (the usual: ‘panad?’ ‘diolch!’ ‘ach y fi!’ ‘caru ti’, etc.) Then I started looking around at ways of learning Welsh in England.
I mentioned that I like languages. I’m also a little arrogant, I think - I thought I could do it on my own using books. (Short answer: no, I couldn’t.) I kept hearing SSiW mentioned, but I thought: ‘Oh, that’s not for me - I like to read and I like grammar … I need something more serious than that.’ But still it went on and I got no closer to being able to speak Welsh. I could understand simple bits and pieces, but that was about it. None of the other online sources were really any help - they were far too slow and I got bored very quickly (note: arrogant, above).
So I thought I’d give SSiW a go - just as a stopgap until we could fulfil the plan to move to Wales when I could go to a proper class.
Well. That’s when I realised how stupid and blinkered I’d been. Once I started, there was no stopping me and in what felt like no time at all I could speak Welsh. The rest (the reading, the grammar) fell into place pretty easily after that. I am a complete convert to the system, and I can’t imagine trying to learn a language the ‘traditional’ way now.
Apart from the way the learning is structured, which works brilliantly, I found the fact that I could be doing something else at the same time (e.g. cleaning, walking the dog) meant that I was able to slot it into my busy life quite easily - I was doing some Welsh every day.
Thanks to SSiW I am a fluent Welsh speaker, I’m about to sit the Uwch exam (less than 3 years after starting with SSiW), and I will be looking for a new job where I can use my Welsh in the near future. If I hadn’t found the site I’d still be on the basics right now.
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I don’t quite remember how I came across SSiW. I started to learn because I had bought a caravan in Wales to have somewhere to get away from the stresses of work at weekends and I thought it was ‘only polite to learn the language’. Of course, on the caravan site itself almost everyone spoke ‘brummie’ or had various other accents from the West Midlands. The owners of the site, (Welsh-speaking) seemed a bit surprised that anyone there wanted to learn Welsh and were very supportive of my initial attempts (and a bit bemused too). Now I have retired, moved to Wales (and sold the caravan, because it is only three miles from where I live).
I looked around on the internet and did a few of the lessons on The Big Welsh Challenge and bought myself Teach Yourself Welsh, from which I think I learnt the alphabet and did one unit, maybe two.
When I did find SSiW, I was initially a bit (very!) sceptical, because I thought that I wouldn’t learn without writing things down – preferably with a fountain pen, and then trying to actively learn them, in a similar way to revising for exams! However, after listening to the introduction and doing the first one or two lessons, I was amazed at what I could do – actually say whole sentences!
Languages were my worst subjects at school. I have to admit that I have ‘O’ levels in Spanish and French, but I hated learning them at school and I can’t remember any sentences, just my verb tables that I learnt by rote. I’ve never really used them either.
I did feel (still do to a lesser extent) that I’m not any good at learning languages but, through SSiW I came round to the view that I’m not any good at learning languages taught in the traditional way. So, the fact that learning with SSiW is different from what I went through at school, was a big advantage – I realised that it was the way I had been taught, not my own failings with languages that had held me back!
Plus, everything that Aran had said in the introduction about learning in the same way as you learn your own language or the words to songs, etc, etc all made sense!
Other factors that made me want to continue with SSiW:
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No pressure! There was no one saying you really should know this because you were taught it two weeks ago – weren’t you paying attention?! Everything that’s said is encouraging, not criticising. If I haven’t learnt something the first time, then there will be more opportunities coming up.
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There’s no one correcting you in front of everyone else in the class, rather the next time that sentence, or something similar comes up, you just realise it’s not quite right.
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Learning to pronounce things naturally at the beginning, the first time you hear a word, rather than in a formal lesson, where you have everyone else’s accents and pronunciation interfering – it’s so easy to adopt an anglicised version.
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The emphasis is building on what you learn and you can construct your own sentences from the building blocks. You can say things that you haven’t actually been taught!
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I know I’ve said this before on several occasions, but one of the things that is a major discovery to me, is learning with SSiW is all about what I know, what I have learned already. On traditional courses, with a text book, it seems to be that what you don’t know is made very clear. For example, say you’re half way through the beginners’ course, with another 15 units to do (there in the book, so you can see what’s in front of you). Also, you’ve already forgotten, not understood, not picked up on 50% of the first half of the course anyway – it’s so disillusioning. Whereas, with SSiW, you don’t know what’s coming up next and you’re encouraged by Aran (or Iestyn) saying how well you’re doing and how much you’ve already achieved. Traditional lessons and exercises seem to be designed to find out what you don’t know, rather than what you are capable of doing.
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The Forum! – The Forum! – The Forum! – for encouragement, feeling part of a community, getting over setbacks, laughing at mistakes, etc. It’s the most wonderful resource. From time to time, when I have become fed up with the formal courses that I still do alongside SSiW or feel that I am not making the progress that I want to, then it is SSiW, and the forum in particular, that has made me carry on. Otherwise I’m sure that I would have dropped out by now.
Sorry for the long diatribe - probably more information about my own insecurities than you wanted to know!
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Diolch o galon @netmouse,
I’d love to take you up on that really kind offer and I definitely will. I might procrastinate for another week or two – I can’t help it. I haven’t done any SSIW for a month or so and I’ll try to crack through a few of the Level 2 lessons, to get the brain engaged again – I did the first three lessons of level two a while back and stopped for some reason.
I write too much on this forum sometimes and I know that I am over-thinking something very simple I’m looking for excuses to justify why I don’t do the most obvious of things - which is to go for it and talk to people. I am basically and quite annoyingly for someone of my age, running away and behaving like the shy little kid I once was – avoiding gold-plated opportunities when they come up.
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I’d been dabbling in studying Welsh on and off for years, then decided to become a bit more serious about it, and started doing the BBC’s Big Welsh Challenge, a refreshing change from my previous attempts with grammar books and the like. This whetted my appetite, and I started searching around for more online Welsh material. I just stumbled upon SSiW thanks to Dr Google, really. I remember thinking that the SSiW site was a bit unusual (almost dorky?) compared to other language resource sites: low key in terms of visual presentation, total lack of grammar and other language theory, but the format appealed to me because I could do the lessons on my daily walk to work. I gave it a try, without really expecting anything better than the above-mentioned BWC, but from the first lesson, I was pretty well hooked, because of the (to me) almost magical way in which the lessons managed to instill a new language into my head. The rest is history, as they say.
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I have lived in North Wales all my life and although the village I live in was completely Welsh speaking 50/60 years ago , unfortunately you very rarely hear it spoken here at all now. The majority of the older people (over 65) speak it but at some point it got lost and me and all my friends grew up not speaking any Welsh with each other at all. This didn’t use to bother me at all but a couple of years ago something inside me changed. My daughter became fluent in Welsh having learned it in school and my new job had me travelling around North Wales and it comes as quite a shock when traveling just 10 miles in land or down the coast from where I live you hear a lot more Welsh being spoken and it made my day when stopping for my lunch in Llanrwst and hearing a group of kids all playing football with each other in Welsh. I started feeling more and more ashamed that I could not speak it myself and didn’t want to be a diluter of the language any more. I knew I had to learn and would learn but didn’t know how to go about it. I certainly had no time for evening classes .
I came across SSIW by chance when doing a Google search on the best way to learn Welsh . I ended up on a forum where someone recommended SSIW and posted a link for it. This was 2 months ago . I read through the FAQ section and it seemed ideal for what I needed . I could fit it in around my busy life and the extensive free part of the course meant I could try it first before I had to sign up for a prescription ( which in my view is a very fair price ) but in truth after I tried the first lesson I was so impressed with the method and speed I was learning I knew 100% this was the course for me and by the end of level 1 I would undoubtedly be signing up for level 2 . I did start on course 1 but switched to level 1 half way through when realising it was the preferred method. I am half way through level 2 now and still really enjoying it. I am managing to have conversations with people in Welsh now and although I am still a long way from fluency I feel that if I carry on with SSIW , listening to radio Cymru and try to speak it as often as I can then I am ( I hope ) odds on to become a comfortable/ fluent speaker eventually .
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Well you always get an amazingly impressive set of testimonials! I wonder if you have got any (wild) idea of how many people have been through the system so far, @aran?
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It can be incredibly hard to take the plunge. My personal shame is that I can’t speak French, despite having a (rather good) A level in it! But it’s a dead cert that speaking will get easier every time you try!
Pryd bynnag ti’n barod… 
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Maybe could try to revive the French as well one day - I never did A level French, but got quite confident speaking it once upon a time. It’s now completely waned and I recently used Google translate to find out what “white” was in French - aaahhh!. If I went to France tomorrow I’d probably start off with a bonjour, ca va, but in my mind I would follow it up with a shwd ych chi y bore 'ma.
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My story is a lot like Louis’, as best I remember back to when I started SSIW in summer 2009. Initially all I wanted was a resource to teach me how to pronounce Welsh place names for a trip. I first found the Big Welsh Challenge, and a Teach Yourself book/CD. Within a month, I must have found SSIW by Google, and I suspect I tried it because:
- No video (I’m not a fan of video-based language courses like Big Welsh Challenge);
- Free (so what’s to lose?);
- First sample lesson available without signing up to anything, as I recall (a big deal, especially when you don’t know who to trust with your email);
- Lots of lessons that built on each other available beyond the first one if I liked it.
The BIG THING, though, that excited me may be something I didn’t learn until I did the first sample lesson: SSIW is unlike almost all beginning language lessons in NOT being structured around stupid tourist situations like asking how to get to the hotel or trying to book a train ticket. I really, really dislike that approach (because I’ve done my time standing in Viennese phone booths trying to book a room and not understanding the German reply!), and really, really admire(d) SSIW for immediately teaching usable verbs and structures from everyday life.
By the end of the first lesson, I was over the moon because I’d learned actual normal language, and every time I finished a new lesson, I knew what I’d learned and could see incremental progress.
As strange as it seems in retrospect, I think I was also a little wary of SSIW and the Forum at the very beginning because I didn’t know the “politics of language” in modern Wales, and I didn’t want to align myself with anybody who was anti-English, or anti-anybody, to be honest. (Pro-Wales and pro-Welsh, fine.) I’m trying to remember what got me past that hump. Aran and Iestyn, I think it may have been your active participation in the Forum, and explicit openness to everybody.
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Oh wow. This has turned into a more emotional thread than I’d expected! So many powerful stories - I can’t begin to thank you all enough for sharing them - hugely moving and hugely motivating - diolch o galon 
The insights in here are enormously important for us - it’s getting more and more clear what we need to emphasise on the first page that people see - and I think (if you’re all okay about it?) that we should have a link to this thread itself!
It’s also obvious now that word-of-mouth is just massively, massively important - so we need to try to find a way to nudge/remind people without being irritating - not sure what the right way forward is with that…
@netmouse - the figures aren’t very easy, because we’ve moved systems a few times - but I think our current estimate is round about 40,000 to 45,000 contacts of some kind (which includes people who’ve just downloaded lesson 1) - we’ve probably had somewhere on the order of 10,000 to 15,000 more serious students, and about 1500 to 2000 who’ve actually paid something…
I’m now clearly going to need to keep coming back to this thread for the next few weeks until I’ve managed to answer everyone individually - I can’t possibly not answer such interesting comments, not even with a ‘thank you everyone!’ post like this… 
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I was comfortable teaching myself grammar and written Welsh as I am a retired teacher of ancient languages but I had little access to hearing Welsh in a controlled teaching and learning context. I could have joined a class but I travel a lot and can’t commit to regular sessions. SSiW was a perfect solution as it provided a means of developing a grasp of everyday speech at a pace to suit me and at times that suit me. The availability of course notes was invaluable to me as my studies of written Welsh meant I could not rest until I saw on the page what I was learning audibly. I also wanted a course which was not tied to a system of accreditation. I don’t at the moment feel the need to take examinations and progress through the standard academic routes.
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When I was working I did the Big Welsh Challenge because I didn’t have much time - I found the videos useful and it was a good place to start. It gave me a lot of the information which you leave out at the start of SSIW (the “Introductions” stage etc).
If I had a little bit of extra time I listened to SSIW (which I had heard people mention), but I found it a bit more difficult and it wasn’t as easy to leave off after doing just a little. The drawback was that, whilst I found this regime enjoyable, I wasn’t really progressing very far.
Then I retired, and moved to Wales. I realised that I had even less time - but, as I now walk the dog for about 3 hours every day, I have this time which I can use to listen and answer. So I downloaded the SSIW course and bought an i-pod. SSIW has been wonderful and meets my needs very well.
One thing which I would like is someting on dogs and dog walking - I might as well talk to my hen gi in Welsh because he has to listen to all of my poor attempts at speaking Welsh to nobody in particular. Just a few commands and words like puppy and bitch would be wonderful!
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For me, it was seeking something I could engage with at my own convenience.
Something that involved speaking and listening, but didn’t expect you to listen at speed early on. In some lessons teachers think too soon that you are ready to be talked at in Welsh, this is counter- productive and saps confidence. Something fun and forcing a rapid responses, rather than studying dry grammar
Something that allowed me to progress instantly (rather than go back again to an ‘introductory course’)
I found SSiW simply searching for Android apps on Google and it came up. and I liked the logo!
Once I started what kept me hooked were:
Firstly and probably the main thing was the friendly forum, (mods and fellow learners) where you felt you could ask anything and not be told off for not extensively searching through older posts to find a similar answer.
The other information on this site about the methodology, creating the sense of real people behind SSiW who were passionate about the project. Then listening to these actual people in the lessons. I think this human link is quite rare these days.
The sense, early on that you really are making rapid progress,that things do stick a bit from repeating lots of similar phrases, that you trust the methodology early on and can see that trusting the methodology bears fruit.
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I suspect I’m an unusual case, but here’s my answer in case it helps.
On Amazon, I was looking for books about high-intensity interval-training - i.e. physical exercise
and among the suggestions was Aran’s ebook, “High intensity language training”.
Luckily I’m interested in learning languages, so I bought it and read it.
That book lead me to SSiW. I tried the Rugby Welsh course and enjoyed it and thought that I might give
the Welsh course a go “some day”.
Time passed and then 2 months ago, I started level 1 of the Southern Welsh course and I’ve just started
on level 2.
Most challenges get done while I’m driving to work - a useful side-effect of the audio-only format.
It must take a lot of hard work to create a language course that is this enjoyable, so many thanks to all involved.
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I stumbled on the youtube stuff initially about 10 months ago and was hooked. So after the first few lessons on there I looked for the website and found it. I thought thought “OK so it’s free for the first 20 odd lessons so what’s the catch?”. I signed up expecting a catch like heaps of spam in my email in box etc. (which of course did not happen). I guess when you see an offer which seems too good to be true it usually is, however this is not the case with SSIW because the offer is true!!
Anyway 10 months in, I am up to Course 2 lesson 18 and really loving it, though living in Australia I do not tend to use it at very often at all and have never tried to speak with a Native Welsh speaker which I would love to do.
One other thing is people always say “Why Welsh” and generally I say “why not!!” So now my mother is trying it as I have taught a fair bit to my 1 1/2 yr old son (he had no choice as I use him as my practice) and she wishes to be involved in that… We will see how that goes
Awesome work people!!!
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What spurred me into learning Welsh was finding myself with nothing to do and after a couple of weeks I thought I could have used that time to learn a language. So a simple google got me onto SSIW. The fact that it was free was good and once I had this Welsh addiction I was happy to start paying.
What makes me continue? The course itself, the emphasis on listening and speaking - I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, writing out senteces in the traditional way is like doing algebra, and much as I rather like algebra, you can’t speak algebra.
The fact that there are no obnoxious characters saying banal things, I used to sit in French classes wanting to kill Marie Clare and Pierre in the textbooks and decades later I found it was not a personality defect on my part and that everyone thought the same way about poor old Marie Clare.
The voices, Cat and Catrin and Aran and Iestyn have great voices, how lucky is that?
It’s relaxing doing the lessons, no matter what else is going on in my life, it’s so good to disengage from things for a while and do a lesson, it’s like using a different part of my brain.
I once saw criticism of SSIW, someone said it’s all verbs, and so it does, but perhaps that’s part of its secret.
I like how it gently introduces things, like giving us just one day of the week to start with, whereas traditional lessons throw the other six days of the week at you at the same time and you stress trying to pick the right one, and that applies to verb introductions etc too.
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I think that’s a really important element for a lot of people - which is interesting, because we also suspect that there are people who think it can’t be any good because it’s free - so we probably need to do more work explaining why the free bits are free… diolch o galon, very useful… 
[for ‘programmers’]SEO[/jk]
That sounds very interesting - I suspect I might agree with parts and disagree with parts - if you happen to remember what it was called at any stage, I’d love to see it. Good luck in the restaurant - that sounds like a great challenge! 
Fab, diolch John! Were you ready to try anything you found at that point, or did anything in particular tempt you to SSiW?
Very interesting input, Steve, diolch yn fawr. Anything in particular stand out to you as why you went back to SSiW when your frustration levels got high enough - was it just lack of options?
Catrin would say you’re much faster to listen than I am… Thanks for the extra vote for the importance of word-of-mouth, and in particular repeated word-of-mouth - and diolch to your tutor!
Diolch - it’s very interesting and valuable to hear why people didn’t start using SSiW! Diolch o galon
I know exactly how you feel - that was my life for the first 32 years too - delighted to know that you feel as though you’re on the road now And thank you very much for that helpful feedback.
Ooh, it’s lovely to hear that, diolch yn fawr iawn! And thank you very much indeed for your very kind words
Maybe we need ‘This is not a dubiously trendy elearning resource!’ somewhere nice and clear… Diolch yn fawr iawn - another vote for word-of-mouth, but very interesting insight into your reservations, which is hugely helpful…
That’s fantastic, Raymond, thank you! Was it just desperation that made you try the first few lessons, or were you trying a bunch of different things at the time?
Diolch yn fawr, Lynne - really helpful input, and great to have another vote for the importance of free!
And that is absolutely awesome… Llongyfarchiadau mawr iawn! [Go for the week, a day won’t be tough enough for you, but a week will really make some big differences!].
I know this is a bit meta, but can you remember anything about it that made it stay in your mind?
Another vote for word-of-mouth-ish - diolch yn fawr, Ow! What were your main reservations about giving it a go? Or were you just quite properly trying out everything on the list with equal enthusiasm?
That’s really fascinating - it’s possible we learn much more about what we need to change from stuff like this - maybe we need some kind of ‘what sort of learner are you’ quiz somewhere nice and obvious… diolch o galon
Fascinating feedback, Helen, thank you so much - I’m starting to think we maybe need a separate landing page which speaks specifically to people who are convinced they need to write/study grammar/etc… diolch yn fawr iawn!
Ooh, that’s really valuable. Diolch o galon!
Thank you so much, Sam - that’s a very powerful and moving story - and you definitely will get where you want to if you keep on keeping on
All of your post is very interesting and helpful, felly diolch o galon i ti - but this bit is particularly interesting, and real food for thought
I think that’s a very common experience - and very interesting what you say about accreditisation - diolch yn fawr iawn for your input, really appreciate it
Maybe we should have some kind of tie-up with pet shops… Thank you very much - always particularly interesting to hear from people who didn’t get going with SSiW straight way…
Oh, I’m really glad someone said that! Connary, who did it for us way back when, would be really pleased…
They’re often the most helpful! And it’s great that the booklet brought you from physical exercise to Welsh - I rather love that… and thank you very much for your very kind words
Oh, that’s very interesting - I think the stuff you’re talking about was an unauthorised set - we tried to engage with them to say that if they could make some changes (so that the Welsh text wasn’t actually prompting the response!) we’d be happy for them to stay up - but they weren’t willing to do that. We’re going to be adding some of our own stuff to YouTube thanks to the volunteer Video Team in the next few months…
Hey, I caught up! Thank you all so much - this is hugely helpful - and now Helen has offered to do a ‘Content Analysis’ day in Machynlleth of all the different responses we’ve had so far - if you’d like to come along and lend a hand with that, just PM me… Diolch o galon, Helen!
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Ooh, thank you - might be a good idea to make it clearer in advance that we don’t do that…
Very interesting input, Polly, thank you so much…
http://www.fluentin3months.com/hours-to-learn-a-language/
Have a look here aran, although if you do a google search you get some interesting results
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