I’m a newbie, my name is Nienke, I hail from the Netherlands and I’m here to learn Welsh!
So far I’ve done the first 5 challenges of Level 1, and the first listening exercise for a few days in a row. And I can understand maybe half of it. If I then read the transcript I can figure out the Welsh (mostly), and the English translation clarifies the rest, with a smattering of “But I knew that!” and “Oh, right, I remember.”
Rationally I know that it’s a matter of “keep on keeping on” but I do feel a bit underwhelmed with myself to be honest. And I don’t like feeling sorry for myself for longer than 5 minutes if I can help it, so I thought I’d see if any of you have any wise words for me. So my question to learners with a few more challenges under their belts is: how long did it take you to feel the shift from going “Oh right, I knew that” to listening along and just getting the gist, if not the whole story?
The toughest thing with this approach is the need for you to accept the process of partial learning - which means making a lot of mistakes and living with uncertainty.
There are two main ways to deal with it - on the one hand, you can repeat lessons until you feel happier with how much you’re remembering (this is emotionally satisfying until you get to the point where you’re repeating far too often because you want to get everything right, but of course it slows you down) - on the other hand, you can push on through to the end of Level 1, and then come back and revisit challenge 5 (and be pleasantly surprised by how much easier it seems)…
But being underwhelmed by yourself - that’s not based on anything real, because there isn’t some kind of external standard you’re meant to have reached - you’re just doing the classic learner thing of presuming that everyone else is doing better than you. It’s (virtually) never correct - and even if it were, it would be irrelevant - the only thing that matters is whether you end up speaking Welsh, and if you keep working through the materials, that will happen…
Nienke - if you genuinely can’t say ANY more than ‘dw i’ for ANY sentences for 30 MINUTES solid, then we have a problem! But if you’re just being a little hard on yourself, then you might like to look around the forum at some of the ‘progress update’ threads, and you’ll find people who’ve also found it tough, but managed to keep going…
Vicky - lots of people tend to repeat, but that’s usually because they have stuff going on with perfectionism, and don’t like making too many mistakes - we encourage you to push on through to the end of Level 1 without repeating lessons, as long as you can hold on in the emotional roller-coaster. Remember, you can always come back and repeat later on, if you finish Level 1 and still feel there is stuff you want to do more work on…
When I started to learn Welsh here I meant to repeat each challenge until I felt I knew what I was saying, but you can subscribe to some beginner’s emails from Aran (can’t remember where I did though) and in those emails he encourages you not to use the pause button or repeat any challenges. The idea being that that’s the quickest way to learn and assimilate new input. Even though it goes against my instincts I decided to give it a go. Since I only completed challenge 7 just now, I still feel that I’m not improving much but I’ve decided to trust the process. As you can tell from my first post in this thread, I move between frustration and hopeful anticipation.
I’ve worked as a language teacher myself and I do know that learning a language as I’ve been taught to teach it is a very slow, very unefficient and very frustrating business for students - with more emphasis and importance placed on reading, writing and grammar, where natural language acquisition is the way children learn: by listening and repeating until you’ve built up a feel for the flow and structure of a language. So my inner teacher is at odds with my inner Welsh learner, but I am taking it on trust that I’ll learn quicker if I ditch my old-school ways.
Take a breather and try again! Languages are hard (yet so much fun)! You’re just starting out on the journey so don’t be too hard on yourself and focus on what you did well instead.
Also, don’t forget you’ll always have good days and bad days. Sometimes I can hold a perfectly passable conversation in Welsh, yet sometimes even the simplest statement comes out as “Blewurrrrfff” or I manage to use every single verb form in the beginning of a sentence - leaving it up to the listener to pick the right one and ignore the rest.
You’ll also have good times of day and bad times of day. A few nights ago I opened up the Welsh novel(*) I’m reading for Welsh class, only to give up because I hardly could make sense of any of it. Today at lunch time I read 10 pages in 15 min.
(*) ‘Cai’ by Eurig Salisbury - definitely recommend for those who’s got to the point where they are reading books in Welsh.
Is it normal to say this? Well, yes, I’ve been doing so for well over 2 years (don’t ask me what I sometimes shout when I get frustrated in a lesson) and I feel that I’m doing quite well, towards the end of Course 2. If you don’t understand most of a lesson, you should probably go back a few and continue from there. But if you know MOST of a lesson (and only you can decide that) then remember the golden rule that you’re not aiming for perfection.
I’ll start a reading list and put this on it, thanks for the tip - it’s also something concrete to work towards!
True, I do notice good and bad times and days in practicing Welsh. It’s good to know I’m not the only one, because it can sometimes feel like it. There’s a Dutch expression that translates as “Shared sorrow is half the sorrow” which is a bit heavy-handed but it applies!
I think I probably shout something similar to you… If there were a “Creative Cussing” course I wouldn’t need to take it.
Thanks for the reminder that I’m not aiming for perfection. It’s quite a learning curve here, not only am I learning Welsh but I’m also learning to trust the process, sweet-talk my frustration out of quitting, and now being active in a forum as well - normally I’m not on social media so I hardly recognize myself today!
When you feel ready, have a go at the ‘Blodwen Jones’ series by Bethan Gwanas (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1446824.Bywyd_Blodwen_Jones)! They are short small books with some vocabulary at the bottom and even though they are using the northern forms, it’s perfectly doable if you’ve learnt the southern forms. Blodwen Jones is a librarian who’s learning Welsh and has a very Bridget Jones’ Diary type life, so half the time you want to slap her. But they are great little books for learners and not too intimidating.
Welcome Nienke - it is likely that you won’t have an ‘aha!’ moment as such, it’ll be more like a long walk in a forest on a foggy morning, with things becoming clearer as the sun shines the fog away while patches of mist still linger under the trees
So my question to learners with a few more challenges under their belts is: how long did it take you to feel the shift from going “Oh right, I knew that” to listening along and just getting the gist, if not the whole story?
