u/Buck11235

Thanks for the feedback. I don't see it done often so it does kind of stand out, but it's good to know it's an accepted choice.

It would be weird to put an apostrophe in place of a dropped final 'f'.

Sometimes apostrophes are required for grammatical reasons, like /vowel/ + 'yr' (i + yr = i'r) or similar cases where the words are attached to another. Those you need to use.

Otherwise, apostrophes are mostly used to indicate a contraction. Sometimes the apostrophes get dropped in more casual spelling.

Also don't overlook the audio files that go with the book. Here's the Northern audio: https://www.learnwelsh.cymru/learning/resource-library/resource/?ResourceId=d788379a-70a4-40b4-be20-1d18b16c5efb

This playlist from Welsh Plus is a good resource on pronunciation.

Progress in learning a new language comes from consistently putting in time and effort on learning every day and getting as much exposure to the language as you can. I recommend a minimum of half an hour daily of active study to make noticeable progress, along with listening to, watching, or reading as much Welsh media as you can. More time spend on study can help you progress quicker, but it's likely going to take months to acquire the skills for even basic conversation, reading, or listening and years to develop greater fluency.

There is one sort of shortcut I can recommend - using flashcards with a spaced repetition system like Anki to memorize the new vocabulary you come across in your studies. Expanding your vocabulary is as important as learning grammar when learning to understand a new langauge, and there's a lot more vocabulary to learn. Flashcards are very effective at helping you quickly learn and retain new vocabulary. You can also use flashcards to drill grammar patterns if you like.

In Welsh, when you've got noun X followed by noun Y that means '(the) X of (the) Y'. You can make that explicit with o'r or drop it as noted above and the meaning doesn't change.

If you're looking for beginner courses that are free, then Now You're Talking on YouTube is good. BBC Catchphrase has a series of audio lessons with accompanying documents.

Dysgu Cymraeg/Learn Welsh classes might be free for you depending on circumstances and are excellent.

Duolingo is not good for learning Welsh. It's a lot of time spent for very little return, and I've heard the quality of the course is degrading.

For a good free resource, you'd probably get more from looking through the Dysgu Cymraeg introductory textbook which you can get here (click Launch for the 2025 Edition) along with the audio files here. Even better if you can take the course, which might be free for you if you're 16-25 years old.

Feel free to stop if you find it too frustrating, it's not worth wasting your time on a method that doesn't work for you.

It's defintely a different method from what you're comfortable with. It works best if you're willing to go with it despite being overwhelmed and confused and making lots of mistakes. If you can embrace that, it's really a great way to improve your speaking skill in Welsh.

SSiW isn't asking you to guess blindly at grammar you don't know, it has already provided examples of the grammar pattern it's asking you to use. You can use those examples to come up with the answer without ever needing to know the full details of how the grammar works. Let yourself guess without needing to know the answer ahead of time. It's fine if you're wrong, just note the correct answer and move along. Repeat that process enough and you'll learn the correct pattern. It's really useful to be familiar with the grammar patterns that SSiW teaches even if you can't explain why they are expressed that way. You can fill in the grammar later as you encounter it in your studies.

What you're running into in SSiW right now is not as complex as you think, but it is challenging. Mostly because the sentences are longer and involve multiple subjects and that can be hard to keep straight in your head. I assure you there's no conditional tense yet as that comes much later. Lesson 11 in Colloquial Welsh contains more information on using bod to link subordinate clauses, in addition to the links that have already been posted here.

Dropping final ‘f’ is very common in colloquial speech for all words, not only for comparatives.

Ar ôl can also mean ‘left, remaining’ as in Mae dim ond un gacen ar ôl (‘There’s only one cake left’)

Good choices! SaySomethingInWelsh and Gareth King's Modern Welsh: A Comprehensive Grammar were basically how I learned Welsh. SSiW is great at getting you speaking and pronouncing things correctly by copying their examples, but it doesn't explicitly explain grammar. Having a grammar resource to explain why things are said the way they are in Welsh can really help in understanding and using the patterns.

Dr. King's big grammar covers everything you need to know about spoken colloquial Welsh. It's also quite expensive usually, around 75 pounds. It's not a course or workbook, just discussion and examples of Welsh grammar. I found his Colloquial Welsh textbook to be a bit overwhelming without a tutor. He's also published Basic and Intermediate Welsh, with a grammar course and exercises. They are good but also usually expensive. Welsh in 12 Weeks by Phylip and Julie Brake is another good grammar with exercises.

Duolingo isn't worth paying for, it is not an effective way to learn Welsh.

For larger ordinal numbers, you can switch to a different pattern where you put the cardinal number after the thing being counted, with or without rhif ('number').

'The 93rd row' would be rhes (rif) naw deg tair.

I don't think their quality control on the Welsh entries is very good. Most sentences that I looked at were fine, but there were a good number of entries that weren't good. Basic grammar errors, translations that didn't really match, translatiions that looked very AI, and very formal Welsh phrasings were not uncommon.

From what I can tell about the two books you mentioned, I think that you're having an easier time reading Arian am Ddim because it's written for Welsh learners while the Pump Prysur books are written for Welsh-speaking children. Books for learners deliberately use simplified and standardized grammar to make them easily understandable. Children's books are simpler than material written for adults, but the language in them is generally pretty advanced from a beginner's perspective. I'd say leave the Pump Prysur books until later if it's a real struggle to understand them now. As a good source of material designed for learners, you might like Lingo360, a magazine for Welsh learners with news and feature articles with vocabulary support and graded levels of content.

For grammar books, I highly recommend Modern Welsh: A Comprehensive Grammar by Gareth King. It's not a structured course, but it covers all of the grammar you'll need to know in a very clear way with lots of examples. Unfortunately, it is also pretty expensive new, around 75 pounds. If you're looking for more of a coursebook for grammar, Gareth King's Basic and Intermediate Welsh are very good but also overpriced. Welsh in 12 Weeks by Julie Brake is good, reasonably priced, and mixes North and South dialects.

To further clarify, the ei ('hey') pronunciation occurs when ae is in the next-to-last syllable, which is stressed. In single syllable words it's pronounced ai ('eye').

ae in Welsh changes pronunciation depending on whether it is in a stressed syllable or not. When it's stressed it's pronounced like ei in Welsh, rhymes with 'hey' in English. When it's not stressed, it's pronounced like ai in Welsh, rhymes with 'mine' in English.

You might enjoy books by D. Geraint Lewis. He's very focused on written Welsh, as well as more formal Welsh. D.I.Y. Welsh is a good one to start with as a beginner.

I'd recommend building your own deck. It's a chore, but the process of creating the cards will make the words much easier for you to memorize in the end. Take words from your learning materials, or look at frequency lists of the most used words like the one HyderNidPryder posted or from Geirfan.

Paid â phoeni gormod, mae 'na lawer o siaradwyr efo cymysgedd o De a Gog yn eu hacennau nhw. Er mwyn datblygu dy acen di, gwranda ar siaradwyr efo acen ti'n licio. Rhoi sylw i'r ffordd maen nhw'n siarad, a tria defnyddio yr un geiriau a patrymau pan ti'n siarad.

Check out all the resources in the wiki here.

SaySomethingInWelsh and/or online courses from Dysgu Cymraeg/Learn Welsh are the main resources if you're serious about learning Welsh.

“ymlacio i’r traeth” (relax to the beach) doesn’t make much sense, I think you want “ymlacio ar y traeth” (relax on the beach) instead.

In general it’s very good! Prepositions are tricky.

To get a feel for how people actually speak, you can watch shows on S4C at https://www.s4c.cymru/clic/. A lot of shows have subtitles in Welsh which is really helpful in learning and understanding. There's also a lot of Welsh content on YouTube, check out the S4C and Hansh channels especially.

I'd encourage you to give it a try with a short story collection or novel that you're really interested in reading. It is slow going at first, especially if you're learning a lot of new vocabulary, but that can be fun if it's a genre or topic that you're interested in. First time through a section just read for context and let yourself keep going even if you don't get the exact meaning. Then you can go back and dig into the stuff you don't understand as study time. It gets faster with practice.