I felt quite panicky Sam! I had a nice telephone operator, when I asked yn Cymraeg if I could speak Welsh with her she said, in English, that her Welsh wasn’t very good! That relaxed me a little, a lot of it was just reading out reference and debit card numbers and the conversation was fairly predictable so quite straightforward really. It was good to use Welsh - speaking council services (Sir - Gar).
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My next breakthrough hopefully, as I’ve just reached Challenge 12 on Level 1 @margaretnock … is to do the SSiW / Agored assessment early in the new year!
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Just had a Skype conversation with @ChrisTaylor … one hour, 98% in Welsh! I surprised myself again with how much I could talk about and understand.
Thanks for speaking slowly and clearly!
SSiW am byth!
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Da Iawn @Howard.
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of info on the forum from people who have actually done this, so you may be one of the first. Make sure you post to tell others how it goes.
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Just curious - What is the SSiW / Agored assessment?
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There are at least two threads, but SSiW one seems to be…
Click here
Hope that is useful!
In case you want it, the other thread is:
The more general thread
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Diolch yn fawr, henddraig!
Diolch yn fawr, Howard!
I went to a Plygain last night, and afterwards the man I was sitting next to asked if I was Gog. Counts as success to me.
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Yn wir!! Da iawn ti!!
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Went to Snowdon Books in Bangor to see if they had a copy of a book I was after. It was raining quite heavily, and after I commented on this in Welsh and the shopkeeper replied in Welsh, I didn’t speak a word of English the rest of the time I was in the shop (including asking about the above mentioned book, being told that they didn’t have it in stock but might have it in the warehouse and explaining that I was going home that day and so couldn’t wait). First time I’ve ever had the courage to even try that outside of being on bootcamp - especially given that I had barely encountered any spoken Welsh during my four days there (was a little disappointed by that, but not overly surprised).
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Well done hecorgrey that’s a great achievement . Bet you felt buzzing afterwards . Maybe you were just unlucky in regards to not hearing much Welsh spoken . I find that I hear quite a lot of Welsh spoken around Bangor ( a lot more than where I live anyway )particularly when walking around the supermarkets there .
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It may well have been just where I was going, since I was largely just wandering around the shops near the Menai centre, but I only heard Welsh used three times over the four days I was there - once was when a woman at the Red Cross charity shop was trying to teach her colleague (who I think might have been Chinese; I didn’t ask) how to say Nadolig Llawen, once was when the staff at Pontio who had defaulted to English with us started to speak Welsh among themselves and once was the above where I started off with Welsh. I think it largely comes down to people defaulting to English with strangers; neither one knows whether or not the other speaks Welsh, and neither one necessarily feels comfortable asking.
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Well done!
I can imagine so, too.
Plus this thing where many older speakers had it inculcated into them that it’s extremely impolite to speak Welsh in the presence of English speakers.
I wonder whether the badges are helping here! Did you see anyone wearing one?
I can imagine that this might smooth things over – if you see someone unfamiliar in a shop wearing one, you can be confident that they won’t mind being spoken to in Welsh and don’t have to start speaking English to them (just to be polite) even if the two of you are both native Welsh speakers…
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I think you have hit on something here.
I wonder if the powers that be ever think about it in those terms?
It’s much more of a human problem than a language problem.
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Hi. As Welsh is phonetic just have a go even if your understanding is patchy. I used to read to both my children and years later they expressed utter suprise that I didn’t understand all the text. In fact even today my son doesn’t believe me. It’s lots of fun and will support their reading. All the best
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I’ve often wondered how widespread this is. Many organisations want to support the language by having Welsh speakers available on their phones. In areas where Welsh speakers are few, often fellow learners are given the jobs, such as young people with a 2nd language GCSE. When I booked my Eisteddfod tickets in Y Fenni, i realised that my Welsh was probably better then the lady I spoke to (I did just go straight into Welsh, there not being separate Welsh/English options). I think it’s worth always going for the Welsh option, 99% of the time you get a Welsh speaker, I imagine they will be sympathetic to a learner.
It is nerve-wracking though, just like waiting for a lady to answer when you wish to ask her out, indeed Welsh is a very beautiful lady. I think this is partly it, we fear being rejected by Welsh (perhaps especially so if you’re Welsh yourself), which is daft really, although we are already in love! Yet, we say stupid things and our brain works at less than 1% of it’s usual capacity, just like when we speak to people we are attracted to [Erm…O’n i’n meddwl…ah…er…Sut mae’r tywydd…erm… efo chdi heddiw? [phew…hang on, I must have sounded like a fool]]. This partly explains why using Welsh in such situations is such an achievement.
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I’m now the proud owner of a Cymraeg badge thanks to @faithless78! We met for a sgwrs today and chatted away for over an hour. I had to throw in the odd bit of Saesneg but had a marvellous time - a fun challenge! My phone calendar is also now yn Gymraeg after Gav showed me how on earth you do it , hooray!
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