@Marie - Louis’ proposed permanent Google hangout thingy may be very useful for people like you that struggle to find real people to spend time using Welsh with.
clusters of Welsh speakers they can spend social time with. They’re out there, it’s just very tricky tracking them down!
Yes, it turns out there are a few fluent Welsh speakers, and some leaners who know much more than me, in my singing groups but they keep very quiet about it unless pressed. I think the learners are shy of making mistakes or not understanding and the fluent speakers just don’t really think about it or feel that it would be rude to converse in Welsh if there are non Welsh speakers present. They are delighted with my efforts though and each session I go in with a new phrase to say to the group in Welsh. I never understand their replies 
Thankfully it’s such a friendly environment that none of this matters
I’m told that when speaking to a whole group I should use ‘Chi’ instead of ‘ti’ - can I just use chi wherever I would have used ti or are there other changes that happen when you change the ‘you’ word?
I’ve also learned that to learn and to teach are the same word in Welsh - this has set my mind in all kinds of philosophical musings about not distinguishing between the process of learning and the process of teaching. I like it
Just to get on topic for a moment … I haven’t really faced any problems with learning yet, other than years of apathy and resistance, once I decided it was time I found Say Something in Welsh and it all seems to be quite smooth. I have a bit of a feeling that even with a lot of practise and a lot of Welsh radio and S4C it might still take me years to be able to really converse with someone who is a fluent Welsh speaker. I suppose as a first language English speaker I’m very rarely in the situation that I can’t make myself understood so the idea of struggling to communicate feels unfamiliar and not very nice! I understand though that to get really good at a language you maybe just have to go through this stage so this is a comfort zone issue! Communication is very important to me so the idea of struggling on in Welsh when we could both understand each other so much easier in English seems quite alien. Maybe it’s an opportunity to become comfortable and familiar with long silences and more non verbal communication
Communication is very important to me so the idea of struggling on in Welsh when we could both understand each other so much easier in English seems quite alien.
It’s a long-standing, extremely tricky problem for Welsh learners (or most other minority language learners) - we’re hoping to add some interesting situations to the mix by translating the course into other languages, which should start to make it possible for people to find new friends who don’t have English as a common language…
Re: chi - it’s pretty much just a straightforward swap - not exactly sometimes, but people will always understand you, so you’ll get feedback/correction any time it needs a minor alteration…
we’re hoping to add some interesting situations to the mix by translating the course into other languages, which should start to make it possible for people to find new friends who don’t have English as a common language
Ahaa, both sneaky and genius 
I think this might be the biggest hurdle in Welsh learning. I might have to create some situations for myself that force me into speaking only Welsh.
I might have to create some situations for myself that force me into speaking only Welsh.
Of course, saying loudly ‘I swear by all that is holy to me that I will give everyone in this room ten pounds sterling if I say anything in the next hour that is NOT in Welsh’ can do the trick quite neatly…
More genius and comic advice I love it Or maybe a less costly version could be like a sort of swear box, where English words are like swear words and you have to put 50p in the box for each one…
People always seem to think I’m joking when I’m being deadly serious…
We’ve tried swear boxes on Bootcamp - they seem to encourage people to feel that they can afford a couple of words of English, and then the rot sets in! Make it something you genuinely can’t afford, and you won’t backslide at all…
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Yes I can imagine - just a few English words could seem so worth paying for I’m only on challenge 7 of the new course and lesson 5 of the old course 1 (swapping back and forward a bit) so not really ready for Welsh only but I’m definitely mulling it all over for the near future
Kev: I’ll look forward to getting to that stage. 4000 words seems like quite a lot.
Thanks to the generous help of Bronwyn and other SSiW members in the US, I’ve been able to create a Memrise based course of 2500+ words and short expressions based on Harri Potter a Maen yr Athronydd. Of course, read/written, not spoken, and not even close to as good as the SSiW approach, but it may be useful if you want to read Harri Potter, or play Quidditch!
It is available as Geiriau Harri Potter in Memrise, and it is free - so you get what you paid for, including the mistakes
It is available as Geiriau Harri Potter in Memrise, and it is free - so you get what you paid for, including the mistakes
Will take a look, thanks.
Louis: It is available as Geiriau Harri Potter in Memrise, and it is free - so you get what you paid for, including the mistakes :-
I’d love to try this but can’t find it on Memrise (have searched on Geirau, Harri and “Geiriau Harri Potter”). Any idea what I might be doing wrong?
Reason I’m so excited about the idea of reading Harri Potter is that I’ve just got a group of 10 Welsh speakers together at work, each of whom is helping me translate / pronounce Welsh texts for 20 minutes a day. (That way I only bother each person once a fortnight, and the time spent is only equivalent to a coffee break). It’s been brilliant so far, and has been a good way of accelerating my vocabulary acquisition (amongst many other benefits).
We’re reading “Gareth Jones: y dyn oedd yn gwybod gormod” at the moment and I’ve been putting the tricky words on memrise so I can rehearse them after each session. Be lovely to try Harri Potter next, and if there’s a memrise course already put together, even better!
I know that learning written words isn’t the same as putting them into your spoken vocabulary list, but it’s the best idea I’ve had so far as a way of reaching the 4,000 word level - especially when it’s reinforced by conversation with a Welsh speaker who then tries to explain the word and its derivatives for you. But I look forward to trying out Aran’s next set of ideas as soon as they’re available.
As another aside, the vocab list at the back of “eFfrindiau” is about 800 words, so anyone who can make their way through that relatively accessible book might be very pleasantly surprised to find out that they already have a pretty substantial vocabulary.
Oops - my bad . I forgot to save it as public, it should be OK now.
Okay, I am half way through Hari Potter. I pick it up and put it down so it is taking forever. I’d be interested too but…what’s memrise?
@Louis this looks amazing!! I’m sorely tempted to use your list to create chapter specific decks for Maen yr Athronydd now
Thanks Amy, I am still tinkering with it, changing word order, adding gender, plurals, etc.
But to help you, the orginal spreadsheet that Bronwyn sent me has all the words listed by page/chapter, it is in my Dropbox: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15858436/Harri%20Potter/Harri_Potter_vocab.xls
@Louis- just had a go on it. Excellent! I’m by no means a fan of Harri Potter, far preferring Artemis Gwarth (or, indeed, the “Tir Tywyll” books by Elgan Philip Davies) but I think you’ve converted me to an admirer of memorise!
A good thing of course would be coming across the words in context in the book as well.
Must have been a lot of work, and very useful. Thank you and well done!
I’m a big fan of memrise. The repetition really helps hammer words into my rather dense head. And I have the Harri Potter book so a marriage made in heaven. The only thing I would prefer is the vocabulary listed by chapter, ie one level per chapter. Very satisfying to work on the same level as the chapter you’re reading. But I know others prefer to work alphabetically. Just my 2p worth. Well done all the same, that’s a terrific amount of words to put together.
Diolch @Gruntius for that tip! Sounds like the answer to all my problems (well a fair few anyway :))
@Marie, have you already got a Skype partner? One on one may be a less scary way to do it. There’s a thread for that too.