I am on Course 1 and still a long way to go and a lot to learn! Living in South Wales I agree with Jon not often you hear spoken Welsh. My two grandchildren attend Welsh schools, and I speak, or shall I rather say try to speak with what I have learnt, when they come to visit. They love to hear what I have learnt and they speak to me in Welsh! I find the listening sessions hard and I think will I ever get it, nice to hear I am not the only one.
What are your biggest challenges?
Keeping motivated when it is so apparent that the language is seen as pretty irrelevant round here in the South. Even the welsh speaking mums at school speak English to each other. I constantly feel like lām asking a rather odd favour if I ask to practice with people and itās getting a bit wearing.
This is quite different to my experience learning German, when I arrived at college in September unable to speak or understand, except on the most rudimentary level (but with a good grounding in structure etc) and came home at xmas functionally fluent in almost all respects.
What has come closest to stopping you learning?
Nothing, thankfully. Weāre in this welsh education business for the long haul so I need to have a handle on whatās going on.
What makes you think you might not succeed?
Iām finding it hard to envisage getting to the stage when I can just slip into a conversation, mainly for reasons mentioned already. I would be sad to put in all this effort and not become a"fully fledged" speaker.
Are your main challenges different now to what you felt at the beginning?
Iām feeling less enthusiasm for the project. Whatever way you look at it, learning a language is a serious commitment, ideally taking up a significant chunk of headspace even when youāre not practising with other people. When I was on course one, I used to wake up in the night monologing about dogs and windows and so on. Nowadays I tend to have to remind myself to make up sentences from time to time, but the initial magic has gone.
I guess when my life is just slightly less challenging - hopefully in Sept when littlest starts school - Iāll be able to build in more āfunā activities like watching TV etc. I have a secret ambition to make it to bootcamp one day, and would love to test how much difference that makes, but the chances arenāt looking good at the moment.
Did you mention a permanent google + hangout? Iād love to be able to drop in on that. Even the effort of arranging Skype sessions with strangers is beyond me at this particular stage of life.
Was there anything that held you back from getting started?
Yes, I had been getting so frustrated that I couldnāt get to a class, and didnāt have time to try and teach myself. Then I found ssiw, which I do on my way to work. So that solved that problem anyway - thank you!!
What are your biggest challenges?
Having a welsh language that I can use in everyday real situations. Most people I encounter on my journey into welsh are patient. However, the few that stick in my mind are those that tell me what I said is wrong and they would never say it like that, or those that listen to what I said, something of the level of āmae hiān braf heddiwā and then rattle off a big long sentence or two in response. That can be disheartening.
What has come closest to stopping you learning?
For me running before I can walk is how I seem to learn. I only ever got as far as C1 lesson 7 or 8 with SSIW before life got in the way of being able to have the time and energy to practise. What I did do though was read grammar books and the old wlpan book that I bought in a charity shop. The thing that has almost stopped me is that none of my friends speak welsh so I have no one to spend good quality practise time with.
What makes you think you might not succeed?
Since I discovered the SSIW way, I know success is possible due to how rapidly I picked it up. Commitment to putting in the spade work is my only real enemy. Laziness.
Are your main challenges different now to what you felt at the beginning?
Yes. At first I didnāt have the confidence to speak and when I did it was unfortunate that it was with someone who laughed at my attempt. I have got over that little hillock. Now when someone asks me ātiān iawn?ā by the time it takes to translate to english and to select an appropriate response, my mouth takes over and answers in english, then annoyed at my mouth the first phrase that come out is invariably āwedi blinoā and thus ends the conversation 
Was there anything that held you back from getting started? (In general, I mean, not specifically with SSiW).
I was never able to get to classes, they were always inaccessible as they were either evening or too far away to be practical. I can only get to the one I attend at the moment because my wife has carers sitting with her for the two hours I get off.
I imagine a world where places like our local community hall have informal learn welsh groups a couple of times a week, where our welsh is accelerated because for some time every week we are living welsh and not passive receptacles of verbs and structure. I have already introduced my family to welsh, little phrases of welsh are becoming the norm in our house and it makes me smile.
I hope my answers make sense, there is so much to say, but everything clamours together at once to be said and seems to me incoherent.
Thank you for SSIW. I love Level 1. It has the long sentences that push my brain into overdrive
What are your biggest challenges?
My biggest challenge is finding enough time to learn and practice. At the moment, I do my lessons to and from work. It is a 40 minute walk each way, so enough time to get an entire lesson and maybe 1 practice session (usually a listening practice). I donāt usually get much time to do ALL the daily practices, and I donāt get the time, or the privacy, to do Skype/Google+ chats. This said, I donāt really feel that any of this is hindering my progress at all. The only challenge I have right now, in course 3, is getting my head around the short forms. Iām fine with them, just getting words like āWedais iā and āWelais iā confused. The same with āWnei diā and āAe diā, and when to use āWna iā, āWneith e/hiā etc.
While I try not to use the pause button AT ALL, I am finding that Iām using it a fair bit for these future-future constructs covered in depth in lesson 8, and this has slowed me down somewhat. I have started to move on to lesson 9 with the view of coming back to the last 2 lessons before moving on to lesson 10.
I am also following the New course as well, where āDywedaist tiā has been introduced, so this is helping with the distinction between āWedais iā and āWelais iā, but only a little bit at the moment (Iām at Challenge 9 in the Southern course).
What has come closest to stopping you learning?
Nothing (yet!). Every day Iām learning new words either from the lessons or from words I pick up from radio, TV or at meet ups. But then I come to look for words I want to learn (to describe my work, for example) that isnāt covered in SSiW, where I may need to refer to a dictionary or translator. The problem with this is that I will need to learn these words from the written word, so to hear how the word is pronounced isnāt so easy, and can be much harder for anyone who hasnāt learned to read, write or understand the alphabet or basic grammar. I canāt see how this would make people want to stop learning, but without understanding the basics of the written word, it could lessen their chances of moving on if the learner feels theyāre not learning to talk about the things they feel they should be specialising in.
What makes you think you might not succeed?
Iām a determined soul! If Iām struggling with something, I leave it for that moment, then return to it later on. Usually taking a break helps me to progress and allow what Iām learning to sink in. For this reason, I donāt really feel like I wonāt succeed, but I do feel sometimes that the path to success will be a longer one than I might originally anticipate.
Are your main challenges different now to what you felt at the beginning? Was there anything that held you back from getting started? (In general, I mean, not specifically with SSiW).
Before I started with SSiW, I was learning mainly written Welsh, and didnāt really give any attention to speaking Welsh. This is very much down to shyness, and not being able to find a course that was engaging enough to encourage me to speak the Welsh I was learning. The wonders that are smartphones has helped me to change this, since it was through discovering that SSiW had an app available for iPhone with lessons designed specifically for learning how to speak Welsh, which made me decide to give it a go (and a New Years Resolution I made at the time!). While following the SSiW course hasnāt really diminished my shyness, it has given me a lot of confidence to use the Welsh I have learned. As well as starting a monthly meet, attending more established meets in Swansea and Brighton, and the forthcoming Bootcamp I will be attending, my ability to use my Welsh grows with each experience and will continue to do so.
So, are my main challenges different now to what I felt at the beginning? Absolutely! At the beginning, I decided to try a new approach with the aim of becoming a confident speaker within a couple of years. This happened MUCH sooner than I expected, and now my biggest challenge is to achieve conversational fluency where Iām not thinking too much about what I want to say before I say it, or ācrossing the bridgeā from learning to using, if you will.
I feel like a successful learner of Welsh (started in 2009) and an unsuccessful learner of Spanish (started in 2013). Iāll answer your specific questions below, but what I think the difference boils down to is:
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With Welsh, I had a clear way forward step by step with SSIW until it āran outā at the end of Course 2 (before Course 3 existed), but at that point I was able to keep teaching myself from grammar books and reading books and such. With Spanish, once I ran out of SSIW lessons, I was thrown on less-useful and less-fun resources like Pimsleur, which were made even less fun by repeating what Iād already learned in SSIS.
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With Welsh, I felt part of a community of learners on the forum. With Spanish, I havenāt had that.
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I never set out to do more than learn a few words of Welsh, so for a long time I had no great expectations of what I wanted to achieve. For me that may have been a more productive attitude than āIāve always thought I should speak Spanish.ā
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This above all: I fell in love with Welsh but havenāt with Spanish. The weirdness of Welsh made me laugh from the start; Spanish is too familiar, like a cousin. I donāt have any particular āinā to the vastness of Spanish-language culture, or any country I am predisposed to be highly curious about. I could use Spanish every single day ā in fact, I do exchange a few words every single day with someone at work ā but wanting to better at that hasnāt been enough, so far.
What are your biggest challenges?
When I started with Welsh, an obvious challenge was finding anyone around Washington, D.C. to practice with. But I dug hard and bothered everyone I could think of, and ultimately solved that problem. There are advantages to having a minority interest: birds of a feather are excited and eager to flock together. Another challenge was knowing how to pronounce words Iād only seen written ā especially knowing how to pronouce diphthongs (ie versus ei) and knowing where syllables split. The word llyfrgelloedd baffled me for ages.
In the middle, the challenge was moving forward when I ran out of SSIW lessons at the end of Course 2 and still had a lot to learn. That was tough, and I wouldnāt have moved forward without Gareth Kingās grammar reference book Modern Welsh, which I still use constantly.
At my current stage of Welsh, my challenge is to learn to write āproperā Welsh, including literary Welsh, which is crucial in the Twitter-based Welsh poetry course Iām doing if only to fit meaningful statements into seven-syllable lines. I screw up mutations and sentence structures and have a ludicrous patched-together knowledge, and sometimes I feel like Iām moving backwards rather than forwards, because I have no organized system for learning.
With Spanish, the biggest challenge is not having enough SSIS lessons yet to take me forward. Pimsleur and Michel Thomas arenāt good enough substitutes. I was also discouraged by all the irregular verbs in Spanish, after the simplicity of verbs in Welsh, and by the five million rules about the subjunctive tense. After putting a good five or six months of steady effort into Spanish, I just petered out early last summer (to work on Finnish for a bit before going to Helsinki) and havenāt gone back to it.
What has come closest to stopping you learning?
With Welsh, I donāt think I really have come close to stopping learning. When my enthusiasm has flagged, whatās gotten it up again has been finding something new to work on ā reading, now cynghanedd.
With Spanish, well, I have stopped learning, for (a) lack of a clear way forward, (b) lack of a forum or other community, Ā© lack of excitement and love. Surely Ā© is the most important, and I donāt know how to manufacture it.
What makes you think you might not succeed?
I canāt ever be a part of an ordinary Welsh-speaking community, and I canāt ever speak and hear like somone who is, or have the vocabulary and flexibility Iād like. Sad but true. I donāt know if Iāll ever be able to follow mumbled bits of Pobol y Cwm.
With Spanish, Iāve got to get over the sense of being a dropout learner before I can move on at all, and I donāt know if Iāll even try until thereās more SSIS available. Also, with Spanish, I have frighteningly many accomplished second-language speakers around me ā it was easier to feel like a successful Welsh learner from the start, since I was the only Welsh learner I knew.
Iām of two minds about whether my experience with Welsh will help me with Spanish. Learning Welsh has shown me that I can get comfortable in a second-language . . . but also shown me what it took to get where I am. Iāve spent part of almost every day for the past five years doing something to improve my Welsh. I canāt see myself wanting to do that with Spanish ā and I resented Spanish a bit for taking time from Welsh. I was cheating on Cymraeg! So, what level of time and commitment am I willing to give to Spanish? I donāt know. To be honest, I kept yearning to be working on Swedish or Norwegian, both of which appeal to me (at least in the abstract!) for no sane reason.
Are your main challenges different now to what you felt at the beginning?
With Welsh, sure. Iām not trying to build the dike now, but to patch a billion little annoying leaks. (Does Du y bydd y nos make sense? If a question starts with Bethā¦, do I mutate the immediately-following verb form?) Beyond that ā like a lot of SSIWers, I found speaking easier than listening for a long time, as I built up vocabulary word by word. Now, though, my listening (and reading) is better than my speaking ā there are quite a few words that I recognize and understand but donāt have under enough control to come up with in a conversation.
With Spanish, Iām still at the beginning!
Was there anything that held you back from getting started?
Nothing held me back from starting with Welsh because I didnāt intentionally start with Welsh! I just came to learn how to pronounce place names, and stayed.
Inertia is all that held me back from starting Spanish. Inertia, and the time I spent on Welsh.
Whatās holding me back now from starting Swedish or Norwegian? Mainly the sense that either would be another ridiculous language for someone who lives in DC to study. Well, that, and not having SSISwedish or SSINorwegian available, which means Iād have to try inferior methods, which inevitably run out before taking you very far.
@Diane - * snap * to everything you said!! Having a clear way forward, being part of a community of learners, not having great expectations, and falling in love with Welsh - total recipe for success.
And ālearning Welsh has shown me that I can get comfortable in a second-language . . . but also shown me what it took to get where I am.ā That is exactly how I feel - I know itās possible, but looking back at the effort it took, it almost seems harder now - terrifying, even - to do it again with another language. Ignorance is bliss!
Iām inspired by this thread into adding my musings. (BTW, how do you get the bold effect in the text?)
What are your biggest challenges?
āChallengesā may be an exaggerated term, but this is what I think about often re my learning Welsh:
- There is no need to hurry
- There is much to learn still
- When and where can I have a chat next? (thank heavens for Skype and Google Hangout)
- I need more time
- On the road to fluency (however that is defined) my problems are surely akin to those of Sysyphus and Tantalus
What has come closest to stopping you learning?
Iāve never really thought about stopping, but I do slow down from time to time - which I find actually helps my learning in some weird way.
What makes you think you might not succeed?
I donāt think about that, mainly because I believe the notion of success in learning a language is irrelevant. By which I mean that no one ever succeeds fully in learning any language, languages change continuously, so one can never really stop; and no one ever fully fails in learning a language: thinking of my first SSiW lesson, I felt successful then, because I had Iearnt a little bit of Welsh.
Maybe the notion of success in language learning is like success in learning to swim: if you donāt drown when you fall in, youāre doing extremely well.
Are your main challenges different now to what you felt at the beginning?
At the beginning, I knew nothing, and after, I did not know how much I did not know; but now I know how little I know, and how much I still want to learn, and I am quite comfortable with that. At the beginning, I had no challenges, really.
Was there anything that held you back from getting started?
Very luckily, no. I had no pressure whatsoever to learn Welsh, but I canāt help but wonder if, were I living in Wales, there would have been pressure, and might that have affected my learning.
1 Like
@Louis: You can make a word bold by using two asterisks either side of it.
@Gavin: I am in exactly the same place as you with regards to trying to get my head around the short forms. Weāre even on the same lesson! Perhaps we can Skype and get them nailed! 
@Aran: Diolch yn fawr iawn for your reply. Sorry Iām a bit slow with the response. The stuff you were saying about connecting speakers sounds really interesting and useful, and Iāll definitely do my best to try and ignore those painful-sounding rās!
Louis van Ekert: (BTW, how do you get the bold effect in the text?)
With asterisks. Put * on either side of a word to italicize it, and ** on either side of a word to bold it.
What are your biggest challenges?
Understanding spoken Welshā¦when listening to programs or during my weekly chats. Looking up Welsh words I hear. Being unable, in conversation, to say exactly what Iām thinking, as Iām thinking, the way I can in English.
When listening to Pigion or Beti aāi Phobol for the first time, it was shocking to me how little I could understand. I was listening for patterns Iād heard in lessons and couldnāt hear any.
Itās getting easier, but slowly, which is because of my second challenge: looking up Welsh words that I hear but donāt know. Thereās three hurdles to overcome in this challenge; the first is finding an accurate and complete reference, the second is getting the spelling right and the third is getting the correct meaningā¦if the word has more than one of them
What has come closest to stopping you learning?
Nothing so far.
What makes you think you might not succeed?
Nothing so far.
I do think that I wonāt be able to really obtain fluency unless I throw myself in the deep endā¦aka Bootcampā¦and while Iām planning and scheming when I can, Iām concerned I may not make it there.
Are your main challenges different now to what you felt at the beginning?
Yes. I remember not understanding anything I heard in Beti aāi Phobol. Now, thereās a lot I still donāt understand, but thereās a lot that I do. In the beginning I felt as though I had so much to learn. I still feel the same way but with that feeling is the sense that Iām on the verge of really understandingā¦if I can just ācrack the code/patternā, so to speak.
Although soon after I have my weekly chat and I feel as though Iām right back at square one
Was there anything that held you back from getting started?
No. I stumbled across SSiW while searching for a pronunciation of a word in a book I was reading. That plus curiosity means I was sucked right in.
What are your biggest challenges?
My slap-dash, disorganised way of learning. Forgetting to tell myself when I havānt understood something that: āItāll comeā
What has come closest to stopping you learning?
For me distance and thinking is it worth learning when I can only spend two weeks a year in Wales.
What makes you think you might not succeed?
Not now but when I started thinking Iād never be able to pronounce the masses of Welsh vocab abundant in my head. I clearly can remember thinking Iād never be able to pronounce - Sylweddoli - after trying for weeksā¦That was truly an Everest for me.
Are your main challenges different now to what you felt at the beginning?
My main one is to try to tune into more regional accents. I meet-up with one old gentleman when Iām in Caernarfon, who has only ever spoke to me in a strong Cofi Welsh accent and it was a nightmare to understand even a few words he said several years ago. Iām up to about 50% comprehension nowā¦
Was there anything that held you back from getting started?
Before SSIW: grammar and mutations; too much English in the evening classes and lack of good distance learning materials.
Forgot to add that whenever I get frustrated while learning Welsh, I review the verses here:
http://www.spellingsociety.org/news/media/poems.php
Reminds me of just how horrible English isā¦
EDIT: Also forgot to add to the āBiggest Challengesā listā¦the availability of Welsh programming to America, i.e. S4C and BBC4. Iāve got a āworkaroundā but streaming is still unreliable.
I hadnāt heard of SSIW until Iād already started taking Welsh classes and had probably made it through the Sylfaen level before trying any of the lessons.
What are your biggest challenges?
Pronunciation. I have an excellent Japanese accent (and the Japanese are really overcritical of non-native speakers), so Iām confident that thereās hope for me with Welsh. But, I just donāt get the same listening/speaking opportunities as I did when I learnt Japanese. (This is probably one of the main reasons that Iām going through the SSIW courses)
I think itās been really helpful to my Welsh learning to already know a second language, but I canāt help but compare my mediocre proficiency in Welsh with my ability to have academic conversations and write essays in Japanese. (which Iām quick to forget didnāt happen overnight)
What has come closest to stopping you learning?
Nothing. Iāve mostly learnt my Welsh through intensive courses and that style of learning works well for me. Spending 8 hours/day learning Welsh for a month and then just fitting in whatever I fancy the rest of the time. But really, living in Wales, I encounter at least written Welsh every day.
What makes you think you might not succeed?
Tahl said exactly what I was going to say about starting to learn Welsh with no expectations. I still donāt have any real goals for my Welsh study, I just do it for a bit of fun. (And yes, Iām the sort that finds going to Welsh class from 9-4:30 for four weeks in the summer to be fun). So thereās no reason at all for me to feel unsuccessful.
Are your main challenges different now to what you felt at the beginning?
Keeping motivated when Iām not following a course is probably my biggest challenge. In terms of aspects of Welsh, itās really just the nitty gritty grammar things that are a challenge nowadays. My classes have had a fairly grammar-free approach up until recently (Iāve just finished Canolradd), but now weāve started to learn all of these tedious things and theyāre not introduced very well. Someone thought it would be a good idea to teach all of the pronouns that conjugate in the same lesson. Whereas the ones Iāve learnt with SSIW were just picked up naturally through the course and never seemed daunting.
Was there anything that held you back from getting started?
Thinking that the only option for Welsh learning was classes that met once a week for a couple of hours. Iād found some online learning as well, but really just the things on the BBC website, which I found overwhelming more than anything else.
Someone thought it would be a good idea to teach all of the pronouns that conjugate in the same lesson.
:faint:
This thread continues to be absolute gold dust, even though there are now too many contributors for me to thank everyone by name - but diolch, diolch, diolch, because your kind and detailed contributions in here are having a huge influence on my thinking in terms of the āhow toā materials I want to put togetherā¦
***What are your biggest challenges?
Not being able to understand what I hear. My reading is quite good and I performed well in any written work in the courses I have taken - but hearing and understanding is hopeless.
***What has come closest to stopping you learning?
Still cannot follow Radio Cymru, S4C programmes or understand when people talk to me after trying to learn for 10 years.
***What makes you think you might not succeed?
Getting past this hurdle of hearing and understanding.
***Are your main challenges different now to what you felt at the beginning?
No - this has always been my stumbling block.
***Was there anything that held you back from getting started?
Believing I was no good at languages.
Hi Norādzin, and thank you very much for your responsesā¦
Itās increasingly clear to me that there just arenāt good enough resources for listening skills - particularly not compared with all the other parts of learning a language.
Can I ask - are you using our courses, and our listening exercises at all?
Sorry, I completely missed this when first posted ā¦
What are your biggest challenges?
At the moment my biggest challenge is to complete course 3, I have no idea what is blocking me from doing this and I have no doubt that it will be of benefit to me but I canāt find the motivation to get it done. Everything else I do revolves around practicing Welsh so Iām still motivated to my goal so I donāt really see it as a huge problem.
What has come closest to stopping you learning?
Probably after my father died last year. I took a couple of months off anything Welsh and I think it did me a lot of good to be honest. He was my main inspiration for learning so I didnāt see the point of carrying on at the time.
What makes you think you might not succeed?
Nothing now, to be honest I think I have already succeeded in a way. With 2 bootcamps under my belt I know I can get by in Welsh and Iām adding new words to my vocab every day. It feels good. 
Are your main challenges different now to what you felt at the beginning?
Without a doubt. At first one of the biggest challenge was to convince other people that itās a good idea to learn and not a waste of time, also trying to get my dad to bite his tongue and not correct everything I tried to say.
Was there anything that held you back from getting started?
Laziness, which is why SSiW was/is perfect. Letās be honest, we are all lazy to a degree and these courses require no effort at all ā¦ just motivation.
Diolch yn fawr, Geraintā¦
With Course 3 - I think your best bet would be to leave it for the time being, and push on with Level 1 instead. That way, youāll be well placed to use the new listening exercises for Level 1, which I think are going to be game-changingā¦
I tried posting this comment on the blog, but it wouldnāt let me so Iāll add it here instead:
As much as Iāve heard about the necessity to make a fool of yourself before, there was still an eye-opener in here for me. Iāve read your post on the forum (Iām very good at reading things, thinking about them for a few days and then never writing them down). But one of my thoughts was that itās a challenge for me to immerse myself in the language because of the whole not living in Wales thing. Your comments about the inner child made me realise that listening and observing was (and still is I suppose) one of my favourite ways of learning, it was definitively a huge part of how I learned my second and third language, Norwegian and English.
Wow, I canāt believe I never made these connections before! After moving to Norway at age 10 I hardly said a word for the first year and I did most of my practising in my head. I started to really learn English around the same time and that was mostly through TV and such and again I would try conversations in my head.
So I guess what I really want is Welsh āadultsā in some form or another (whether actual people or TV) where I can use context and other cues to make sense of things and learn. And I want it all the time, which brings the circle back to not living in Walesā¦
But one of my thoughts was that itās a challenge for me to immerse myself in the language because of the whole not living in Wales thing.
Yup, making a fool of yourself is a LOT harder if you canāt track down any fluent speakers.
In terms of listening, Iām hoping that our new approach to listening practices will help people get more quickly to the stage where they can enjoy radio and television (which is one route to a kind of immersion) - but otherwise, weāre not really going to crack this until we can really push on with the whole local groups thing, and help people find clusters of Welsh speakers they can spend social time with. Theyāre out there, itās just very tricky tracking them down!..