I am from the midlands with a Welsh mother (from the Llyn Peninsula) who speaks Welsh and until a few years ago, Welsh grandparents living on the Llyn who also spoke Welsh (and many ancestors from the Llyn going back hundreds of years). Unfortunately I was never taught how to speak Welsh, although I have always been fascinated by it and had a longing to learn it.
Fast forward to now and I have a house on the Llyn because I desperately needed to keep roots in the area after my grandparents passing and the more time I spend up there with my family, the more I feel I need to properly learn Welsh to honour my relatives and keep this wonderful language alive.
Why SSiW? Learning by speaking is clearly the best way to learn a language, especially when I will be speaking it myself 95-100% of the time. The course seems really well structured and I’ve amazed myself that I can reel off the long sentences already.
I’m looking forward to utilising my new found skills soon and pushing myself past the embarrassment of potentially getting it wrong and adding more than ‘diolch’ !
Well Huw, I’m a Herefordian born, but have lived in Llangadog for over 25 years and I’m going through the ssiw lessons again so that I can chat to the villagers - trouble is they know me as a saisneg and chat to me in English!
Prynhawn da!
My journey toward Cymraeg began with music – though the music wasn’t Welsh. My parents have a CD with Irish songs which I got to listen to once, and I think that the memory of this influenced me when I decided to try to learn Irish on Duolingo after having lost my drive to learn Italian. (I had learned how to read Italian text for sound in classical singing lessons, then wanted to be able to also say and understand things, begun learning but plateaued at some point, and finally met and befriended an Italian person who hated their own language)
On Duolingo I unfortunately found that sound files for Irish text were basically nonexistent, so I began exploring other Celtic languages before circling back to Irish and starting to practice for real making extensive use of the webpage abair.ie – especially its phonetic transcription feature, for I often wasn’t able to pick up on the distinctions between similar consonants just from hearing and I didn’t trust in the normal Irish spelling after knowing that as common a word as “is” could be pronounced with a consonant different from the one it was spelled with.
Unfortunately the phonetic transcription feature was removed from abair.ie a while ago and I now don’t know where to get phonetics for the dialect I started learning. The audio situation on Duolingo has improved, but I still don’t trust my ears. And well, Cymraeg has the distinct advantage over both Gaelics that I can tell all its sounds apart. (At least I think I can)
Also, this course is just great.
Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus pawb! My name is Andrew and I started SSIW about a month ago. I grew up in Wales but moved to London a decade ago for work and can often be found at the London Welsh Centre on match day!
I learnt some Welsh in school but have had several short/failed attempts at learning using various books over the years mainly owing to a lack of discipline or regular practice. I am currently on an extended period of parental leave until May and as our little one largely refuses to let me put her down for a nap in her cot I am forced to put her in the carrier/pushchair and walk for hours every day! Perfect for listening to podcasts or - as it dawned on me last month - trying to learn Welsh again.
I really have surprised myself at how quickly I seem to have picked things up from the challenges so far. It has been hard going at times but I’ve trusted the system and been amazed when the right words come out of my mouth when a day or so earlier my mind was a blank. Having said that I did challenge 13 today and it really was a struggle. I made up for it by finishing the national anthem short course which I also found really useful. It would be great to have more like this. I’ve done the one for Calon Lan too.
However I’m very much aware that I need to be speaking with others in order to establish a deeper understanding and to improve more. So if there are any fellow learners in the Hammersmith/Chiswick/Shepherds Bush areas please shout!
Anyway, thanks for reading and I’m sure I’ll be posting some questions on here again soon!
I was born and raised in Wales by an English Father and Irish mother they settled in Wales as it was in the middle of the two.
I learnt Welsh in school and wasn’t very good.
I now live n Ireland where I work as a tour guide, I have become very interested in the connection between Ireland and Wales in Ancient times and I have decided to try and learn the Celtic languages so that I can understand the cultures and history a bit better.
I am starting with Welsh as this is my first time trying to learn a language and it is more familiar to me than Irish.
Who knows I might learn Cornish and manx how as well
Hi Andrew, Llon-dain has been a little quiet over the past few months but we are planning another walk in London on Sunday 23rd April. We haven’t agreed the route but it is normally quite central but accessible. If you follow the Llon-dain thread you will see the updates. We generally start about 2.00pm and walk for a couple of hours and then sit down in a pub. All levels of Welsh are welcome. Hwyl, Peter (@andrewh)
I originally wanted to learn it because I have no contact with family and my siblings and I were never really taught any family history - and since as far as I know, our main ancestry is Welsh, I figured learning it would be the best way to actually feel some kind of connection to the past.
The reason I’ve stuck with it is that the language is just so beautiful and fun to learn, and also because the way that SSIW teaches the course just works so much better for me than other language learning things I’ve tried. Ever since I was a kid, I would spend pocket money on books to learn all kinds of languages - Latin, German, French, Russian. I listned to Pimsleur audiobooks, and someone gave me a copy of some old Rosetta Stone software. But something about SSIW is just so effective for my brain, keeps it fun and interesting.
Five months ago something must’ve happened. I can’t remember what but I started learning Welsh on Duolingo. I live two hundred miles from Wales. I’ve no Welsh-speaking relatives. I didn’t know anyone here who spoke Welsh. I haven’t learned a language since French at school yonks ago.
So I surprised myself to find, after a couple of weeks, I was enjoying the experience and, to be honest, a little bit interested to discover how much of this seemingly bizarre language I could learn.
I’d been totally seduced by the suave and subtle Duolingo challenge. It was an online game I could justify playing because it would boost my brain and delay senility.
I realised I’d become a Cymraeg addict. The app toyed with me, prompting ever more complex responses while promising ever greater virtual rewards.
But I began to feel unclean.
I could shuffle keywords around on screen, tap characters to form grammatically correct nonsense (Spoiler alert: “The dragon is eating Celyn’s parsnips”). I could get a quick hit by quickly hitting matching word pairs against the clock. Yet, afterwards I was left with a sense of, er, ennui.
There was something missing. I needed to hear, to speak, to converse. That would give me the rush I’d experienced months ago, I told myself.
I started watching S4C with English subtitles. I attended a handful of online conversation gatherings. I met a Welsh neighbour’s Anglo-Welsh friend and we exchanged polite greetings in unconfident Welsh but chatted in English. I booked an online course of spoken Welsh with a college but it was cancelled due to lack of interest.
I wanted to talk the talk but couldn’t find where to walk the walk.
That’s why I’m here. Lost in Lloegr, wanting Welsh. Is this the right place?
Thanks for that suggestion, John. I looked into it and the closest group is some sixty miles away. I’m told there’s a lone Welsh speaker just seven miles away so I might trouble him in due course.
But if you think there may be other Welsh speakers/learners in your area, feel free to start a New Topic in the Meetups/Events section mentioning whereabouts you live and asking if others would like to meet up. Tag me @Deborah-SSi in the post and I’ll include it in the following week’s newsletter - here to opt in if you don’t receive it already.
I was hoping to buy a beautiful farmhouse in SW Wales (moving from England) and should be living there now with my young family - but the sale fell through Anyway I gad decided to learn Welsh since it would be our new home, and I’m carrying on, even though we are not going (yet!)
Hi Caitlin, I couldn’t work out how to post in the forum and that’s coming from an ex ICT teacher who can’t remember much of it anymore!
My husband is from South Wales and never learned to speak Welsh. We moved to Carmarthenshire in 2020 just before lockdown.
I took early retirement from Teaching and my aim was to volunteer in our village school. Our village school is Welsh speaking so for me it is impossible to help out there unless I can speak Welsh.
I have met a lovely group of ladies from our village who are fluent Welsh speakers and would love to join in with their Welsh conversation, though they speak English when I am present, I don’t believe they should have to!
I find learning new things very difficult since having a stroke a few years back but am going to try my best.
I fell in love with Wales while visiting from Southern California as a teenager. I stayed with a lovely host family in a small village near Cardiff while my parents were off doing something on their own.
Over tea in the afternoons the Grandad would tell me about Welsh History, mining, colonization, and everything he thought necessary to connect me to my heritage in some way.
When I went back home, it was the 90s and learning Welsh wasn’t an easy thing to do in the States.
Only in the last year did I discover an online program, which I threw myself into. Then I found a local Welsh Society in Minneapolis, where I live now, and they have a group that meets for classes and conversations. I started buying Children’s books to translate and listening to music in Welsh.
At a convention over the weekend I met a Welsh author, and after exhausting my pitiful well of conversational Welsh, he told me I’m not a new learner, but a new speaker, and encouraged me to download SSiW (which has been challenging and delightful!).
My joy in learning this language will be the same no matter how many words I do or do not have. Each one feels like a little gift. I don’t know how often I’ll get to use it. But it’s like having a piece of Wales with me all the time.
I’m curious as to who the author was! It’s very considerate of him to point you to SSiW!
Did you know there is an open Slack group called Welsh Speaking Practice where you can chat with others in Welsh online? There is a channel there specifically for those in north American time zones. If you’d like an invitation, send an email to admin@saysomethingin.com with WSP as the subject.
and that’s coming from an ex ICT teacher who can’t remember much of it anymore! 