February 17, 2016

Helo, dych chi'n siarad Cymraeg? My quest to learn Welsh.



Okay, I know...

I should write more. I keep telling myself to write at least once a week. I have a head full of ideas, but I feel limited by my weak writing skills and laziness. What to do? What to do?

Well, I might try to update you once a week about my new language project. It is not really a project, but I have started learning Welsh at the beginning of February, so I will start writing a journal where I tell you about my struggles with the language and even give you tips if I come up with something revolutionary.

I started learning Welsh recently after the Duolingo course came out. I was already interested in Celtic languages for some time so when the course got released I decided to take a look at it. After doing the first lesson and playing around with the language I still wasn't sure if I want to study it seriously, but then I watched a great documentary called "Make Me Welsh" on YouTube that follows a group of school kids on their journey to learn Welsh, and decided to learn this language.

So far, I have learned quite a lot. I am familiar with the general structure of the language, I am able to create sentences in three tenses, I am not bothered by mutations at all because they come quite naturally and learning vocabulary isn't problematic to me even though Welsh doesn't share a lot of cognates with other languages that I speak.

My main goal for now is to acquire a basic vocabulary of 500 words or more and get used to the verb "to be" which is complicated in all tenses. I would like to learn more grammar too, especially how to make longer sentences using subordinate clauses, and also start writing a little bit of Welsh in the form of a diary or even a blog.

I am mostly using Duolingo and Memrise. I have also found other resources to learn Welsh which I will share right here:

Websites:
https://www.duolingo.com/ (The most amazing invention ever, if you don't know it yet then don't wait and check it out!)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/learnwelsh/bigwelshchallenge/ (Interactive course, very nice, possibility of choosing a desired dialect)
https://www.saysomethingin.com/welsh/course1 (Really recommended!)
https://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/fun/welsh/TOC.html (I like the grammar explanations)
http://www.learn-welsh.net/ (Seems cool!)
https://speakwelsh.wordpress.com/ (A lot of useful stuff for different levels)

Memrise courses:
http://www.memrise.com/course/700159/no-typing-welsh-conjugation/
http://www.memrise.com/course/425639/cymraeg-2/

Make Me Welsh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke10rMOX-u8

Are you learning Welsh? Do you speak it? Tell me in the comments!