u/bwrlwm

I'm English but I have a niece & nephew who both speak Welsh. I originally learnt a few words on Duolingo just to make them laugh (I believe the first sentence I ever uttered was 'dw i'n hoffi coffi').

Something about it resonated with me & I carried on with Duolingo before finding Say Something in Welsh. Six years later & I'm not exactly fluent (probably early B2), but I'm pretty functional & can have a conversation with my niece and nephew.

I've always loved visiting Wales, and a massive bonus has been discovering a whole side of Welsh culture that I knew nothing about. Plus I've made friends that I've really only ever spoken to in Welsh. It's honestly been one of the best things I've ever done.

You'll be fine until you ask for milk ;-)

As a Welsh learner from England I would be most grateful for directions to any pub where people immediately switch to Welsh upon my arrival.

Diolch yn fawr iawn.

I'm English but learning Welsh (I've got Welsh speaking relatives in the North). My experience is that as all Welsh speaking adults are bilingual they tend to respond in whatever language you start with (with perhaps an expectation of English in the more touristy areas).

I've found that starting in Welsh tends to lead to more conversations in Welsh. As others have said the worst that can happen is that they look confused and reply in English*.

*except perhaps in Caernarfon where the trickiest outcome is a reply in 1000mph Cofi!

I think that's a very colloquial way of saying 'oedden nhw'

If you have a look at the wiki for this sub there are lots of suggestions. For reading I'd suggest the Amdani series of graded books for learners. After Duolingo you should be able to cope with e.g. Ffenestri by Lois Arnold. Pob lwc!

I don't know the specifics of this interview, but I've interviewed a fair few people over the years so I can offer a couple of things. The first is that any decent interviewer will make allowances for people being nervous, and will give you a lot of chances to show what you can do. The second is that they are looking to find someone to fill a position, so generally are looking for reasons to hire you, not rule you out. No candidates are perfect, so if you can talk positively about your previous experience then that would strongly mitigate any slight weakness on the language front. Particularly if you can show that you're motivated to improve. Pob lwc!

I haven't used it much recently so have missed any recent AI additions. It was sort of useful as a secondary comprehensible input resource (I only used it on listening mode). I found it rather tedious but occasionally I would put in on in the car for long journeys & grind through it. I can still remember quite a few of the sentences so it must have done some good. They seemed to have used a northern speaker for the recordings, which was fine for me but might make it less attractive if you're aiming for the southern dialect.

I certainly wouldn't recommend it as your primary means of learning.

Yes. Partly it's because get up -> meditate is an easy proposition, but I also find my mind seems much quieter and I don't have any issues with sleepiness compared to the evening.

Yes, to an extent. I had a 'something' happen during meditation last summer. An initial high faded after a couple of months (although not completely - I've continued to feel much happier than I was before, and it put rocket boosters under my meditation practice). What has persisted is that my interactions with other people seem to go way better than before, even though it doesn't feel like I'm doing anything different. I assume it's because I'm giving out a more positive energy, or something.

Hmm. One of the reasons I left the language learning sub was that every third post seemed to be someone looking to write the next Duolingo.

I would humbly suggest that the world is littered with language-learning apps, most of which are terrible. The sad fact is that writing a technical platform is easy, but creating content is hard, requiring deep knowledge of the target language & linguistic pedagogy in general. That's expensive, and unlikely to be profitable for small languages that few people want to learn.

However, it may be that you're a Linguistics PhD with Musk levels of wealth, in which case here are a few observations.

I've always been interested in languages, but until fairly recently was very bad at actually acquiring them. The turning point was realising that learning from grammar books doesn't work for me. The only thing that does is audio-based methods like Pimsleur, Michel Thomas, Paul Noble & (especially) Say Something in Welsh. The latter is particularly good at teaching language chunks and getting you to combine them in novel ways, and reinforcing them using spaced-repetition. I speak Welsh at a reasonable level now largely due to it.

The thing about these is that the delivery is pretty simple (basically just an audiobook) All the work has gone into the course design, and recording native speakers to model correct responses.

I've looked at a couple of 'minority' languages in the past, specifically Basque (found one terrible app which was basically unusable), and Northern Sami (found an app that had a little bit of vocab on it). I would have loved to have had an SSIW-like app for either of those.

What doesn't work for me: - Gamification - Cheesy graphics & animation - Grammar-based learning - 'Cultural insight' filler - Podcasts with too much English - Vibe-coded AI slop bots

Particularly the last one.

They're out there if you look. I live in the south of England and started learning Welsh a few years ago. I go to a meetup every couple of weeks (and have made friends that I've only ever really spoken to in Welsh!). It's a fairly common occurrence that someone in the pub will hear us speaking in Welsh and come over for a chat. Before I started learning I had no clue that there were any Welsh speakers outside Wales.

Ouch - hopefully things have improved since then!

I'll definitely keep an eye out & feel free to message me if you have something to test.

Yes that does sound familiar! I did Duolingo & SSIW and occasionally looked in a book when really puzzled. Other than that I've mostly learned by going to a speaking group regularly plus the occasional residential stay at Garth Newydd (don't live in Wales, unfortunately).

I feel like I've been stuck at the 'reasonably functional but not quite fluent' stage for the last year or so. Looking for something to help get unstuck.

I'd be happy to pay for structured practice. I'd also be happy to be a guinea pig if you want anything tested out.

I would be very interested in that. Having learnt in a fairly unstructured way for a few years, I'm slowly filling in bits of grammar etc that I didn't cover or glossed over.

I don't really get on with classroom-based learning, so something I could do at my own pace would be perfect.

I'll second the recommendations for SSIW if you want to get some basic conversational ability fairly quickly. They do southern and northern dialect variants - pick the one nearest where your friend is from.

You'll need to do additional work on vocab and (especially) listening comprehension.

You'll also need to practice speaking with other people. It looks like there is a learners meetup in Manchester:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/DysgwyrCymraegymManceinion/?locale=en_GB

That would be a good option once you've picked up a bit of the language. I've been to a couple of similar groups elsewhere & they've all been very friendly & forgiving of early stage learners.

Pob lwc!

Hurry, hurry has no blessing (Swahili proverb).

You have to make physical changes to your brain when you learn a language. It's like training for a marathon if you've never run before. It can't happen in a fortnight, no matter how hard you try.

Take it steadily & enjoy the process. If you do something every day then you'll be amazed by where you've got to a year from now. Pob lwc.

I think if you're not in the UK then finding face-to-face opportunities might be tricky. It might be worth checking if there is a Welsh society where you are, though.

Alternatively it might be worth joining one of the discord servers listed in the wiki to find people to speak with (and I believe Say Something in Welsh offer something similar).

In respect of listening, the only thing that will help is lots of practice (and acquiring more vocab). If you can access BBC Sounds then the Sgwrsio podcast is a good place to start as it's interviews with advanced learners and quite easy to follow. I also like listening to audiobooks along with the original text.

Pob lwc!

You're most welcome. My first year looked a lot like yours (I didn't do Sylfaen, though). After that I had a similar problem in that I could say a lot of things, but could barely understand anything anyone was saying back.

I came up with a (possibly half-baked) theory that after doing the basics, the next vital thing in language learning is to develop listening comprehension. You can get away with a lot if you understand what people are saying. By which I mean your spoken output can be rudimentary/incorrect and people won't care so long as they think you understand them.

In my second year I stopped doing quite so much SSIW and concentrated on listening as much as possible, and it (slowly) got better to the point that I can generally understand everyday conversations pretty well. I think people routinely overestimate my language level because they can tell I understand them even if my responses aren't perfect.

Anyway, it sounds to me like you've made great progress in a year and that there's nothing wrong with your ears. Stick at it and I think you'll be amazed where you'll have got to in a year's time.

I'm about five years in and this is still a work in progress. For me the two main factors in improving were: accumulating enough listening volume and increasing vocabulary. It takes time for your brain to learn to pick out words from the stream of sound & in the first year I was doing well to pick out a few words when listening to Radio Cymru.

After that it slowly 'came into focus' and I would start to understand entire sentences, especially repeated or formulaic ones e g. the traffic news or the weather. I could (and still do) get derailed by unknown vocabulary words, so I tried to make a habit of looking up any unknown words I managed to hear, as soon as possible.

Stuff I found particularly helpful was repeated listening to short bits of audio e g. news items on S4C, trying to hear as much as possible before resorting to subtitles. Audiobooks of books I'd read were also good, either just by being familiar with the story, or occasionally reading along while listening.

If you've got access to SSIW, they have a section of audio articles & interviews with transcripts in Cymraeg and translations into English. IIRC they recommended listening to each one three times: just listening, reading the Cymraeg and then listening again, then reading the translation and listening a third time following along with the Cymraeg. I found that helpful if a little time-consuming.

The very best thing is being able to talk with people face-to-face, because you can get them to repeat things and get them to explain what they meant!

It's a lot of work, but stick at it & after a while you start having the odd (but wonderful) experience of having understood whole conversations without really trying. It's definitely worth it so dal ati & pob lwc!

Hen dro - what a nuisance/what a shame. My friend from North Wales uses this a lot.

Diolch yn fawr iawn

I'm not the OP, but I'd be (grimly?) grateful for any info about omitted syllables in speech. It's always useful to bridge the gap between 'learner Welsh' and how people actually speak.

No you're probably hearing 'nes i' if it's informal speech. Possibly the periphrastic past tense construction? eg 'nes i wagio'r bin'

IIRC 'Gwnes i ' can also be said as 'mi wnes i' in the North where the g drops due to soft mutation. In casual speech the 'mi' can get dropped and it gets pronounced 'nes i', very often as 'neshi'.

Same thing happens to 'cael' in the past tense and you hear 'ges i'.