Oh, I enjoy a challenge:) Otherwise I wouldn’t probably even attempted at trying to learn a Celtic language - they’re considered terribly difficult.
This is wonderful, I’m sure I’ve seen people on Russian forums asking for a Welsh course in Russian. And I’m trying to talk someone into learning it with me:smile:
I’m actually reading your topic right now, with your progress reports, and find it very motivating.
O boy! 
I’m blushing. Surely @aran’s posts and those of other members who posted in “my” topic are those motivating ones, not mine. - hehe 
Siriously enough, thank you. I’m honoured if at least someone finds something motivating and inspiring in those posts of mine. However I can confidently say I feel much better with all lately happenings in my life what concerns being on here and learn Cymraeg too. There are people on here and on @clecs who made me happy and that includes Clecs themselves.
(ups, flown away again, joyfully).
@tatjana So glad to “hear” the joy in your voice in that last post, and to know that you are feeling better about things lately
Well, actually I find motivating all of them, but also just the fact that someone’s writing a honest account of her battle with perfectionism is very helpful! It’s my big problem, so I find your postings very familiar and reassuring at the same time (because I know you’re still here and that you’re learning and happy with it)
Oh, and clecs seems like a great place, I hope I’ll be able to join one day, just when I’m able to put together something more eloquent than “dw i’n mynd i siopa achos dw i’n moyn prynu bwyd”
Don’t wait until then. I admit I can’t understand half of things written there, probably because they’re written and not spoken, but Google Translate is fair good helping tool so I’m just pushing on.
My strategy of Clecs-ing: I try to read a “clec” then I try to (quickly) establish what I understood out from written,. Then I copy the “clec” and put it into the Google Translate to establish if I really understood it correctly. Most of the time I matched at least the context of it. When replying I write the reply into Google Translate Welsh to English way what means I write it in Welsh and see the translation of it. If I want to use the word I don’t know I either check into dictionarry or go for translation with Google Translate but I NEVER copy/paste this new word into my sentence but rather manually type it into it so I can memorize it in time. The same goes with the whole sentences. Even if it doesn’t go Welsh-English way but rather oposite way I first check if there can something I already know be used and when sentence is ready to write it down I type it manually into the clecs box so I create a possibility of remembering it in a time. You can of course save your favourite translations into Google Translate if you have Google acount and use them later but even that way I’d type them manually to ensure I would be able to type/write things in Welsh without that one day.
Might seam complicated and takes a bit of time but it’s rewarding at the end. So, join us before you think you’re really ready. You know this “when I’ll be ready” is also part of our (yours and mine) common problem of being perfectionist. Let’s get rid of this silly problem! SSi way praises mistakes so should FINALLY we, too!
(Gee, who would tell, my inspiration goes high today.)
Dych chi’n iawn:) You’ve convinced me to join, even just to read the things that people write, without writing so much at first. After all, we learners should get all the exposure to the language that we can, especially if we don’t live in the country where the language is spoken!
By the way, you have a very interesting way of using google translate. I must admit I’ve always tried to ban it in my classroom, because some students just use it in the lazy way - translating everything and copypasting it into their written assignments (which results in very clumsy and funny sentences sometimes). But the way you use it seems much more helpful, more like using a real dictionary.
Da iawn! That’s the spirit!
When one among your students will learn a lesson of Google Translate copy/pasting the hardest way ever, resulting into even loosing some friends forever (if even online ones) then they’d retreat from copy/pasting forever. Actually I didn’t do anything wrong but just had written on twitter something about policy and stuff in my native language - Slovene - the hardest way one could ever do. However publishing that I only realized that someone of my foreign online friends might be interested in what I’ve written and would want to translate the tweet with Google Translate. Actually one of them did so and it was to late to retreat the tweet as he already got rid of me, blocking me all the way because he was insulted due to Google Translate false translation. The text was not personally aimed to anyone but when you translated it with Google Translate it appeared as if I want to insult the whole universe not just people on the Earth because google understands word to word translation many too often and doesn’t take context of the word structure into considderation. For that matter when I aim to publish something like that again on social media I always translate things into English by myself so that there could not possibly be missunderstandings. This way I’m always afraid I tend to write the wrong structure in Cymraeg too so Google translate is only my helping hand in understanding things and ordering words into right way possiblly using the words and structures I already have learnt. If something looks suspicious to me I’d go and search more resources to asure I am writing what I want to tell to the people the right way.
And, to all who say Google Translate is clumsy for Cymraeg translations, yes it might be, I’m the last to judge that, but I know for sure for the Slovene language it’s not just worse but horrible. So, if you have any doubt what I’ve written somewhere in Slovene, better ask me then translate things with Google Translate. Well, “prosim”, “hvala”, “dober dan” and such tiny thingys you’ll surely get right translated, no fear for that though.
I have reason to communicate with someone from Thailand on a fairly frequent basis. While her English is better than my Thai (SSIThai anyone?) it isn’t that good. When she uses Google Translate it is even more incomprehensible and a 30 second voice mail via FB is much better.
Oh, I’m sorry you’ve had such an unpleasant situation because of google translate. I’ll warn my students. I’ve only had some funny situations myself: I have mostly Russian-speaking friends on facebook, so all my news and the things I post, like quotes from books or news I found interesting, are all in Russian of course. But I have a British friend, who, as he doesn’t know Russian, has to read the automatic translations of my postings. He sometimes sends these translations to me, and they always look very funny and clumsy, just because the system can’t take into consideration the context and sometimes chooses the wrong meaning of the word (if it has multiple meanings). Translators have lots of jokes about automatic translations! But I don’t consider google translate a universal evil, of course:smile: It can be very useful, especially if you don’t want to carry around some heavy dictionaries.
I think Google translate is pretty good these days (Bing isn’t too bad either). However, the advice I’ve seen given, and it makes sense to me, is that the way to use GT is from your target language(s) into your first language (or at least into a language that you already know extremely well).
The reason for this is that unfortunate, clumsy, or downright “wrong” translations immediately show up in your first language, and then using your existing knowledge of the target language, and perhaps a dictionary or two, you can then refine the translation into something better.
Using it in the other direction should only be done with extreme caution, if at all.
BTW, from here, http://gweiadur.com/blog/en/gweiadur-helps-improve-google-translate-for-welsh
the people at Gweiadur.com ( D. Geraint Lewis & colleagues) have been working to make GT better for Welsh.
That’s what I wanted to point out, but I even was not guilty for anything (if you read my previous story of GT experience).
GT is settled one can help in any language to improve it but mostly I’m too eager to form a reply to something when using it I usually don’t bother + it mixes Slovene and Croatian-Serbian words together and I found improovment atempts a bit hopeless for Slovene. I’d have to sit through the whole day, putting all sorts of things i’ve encounterred them wrong once and correcting things, then work woudl maybe be fruitful otherwise it’s hopeless. It seams like FB sometimes where Slovenian version was once upon a time up to 95 % translated but now it’s only 69 % according to the data FB reports to us who are in translating programe. No matter how you try to improove things they kept being mixing with English phrases and one sentence looks something like this: “Vaš/a prijatelj tagged you in the slika you posted.” Prety cool. isn’t it? GT stucks into Slovenian-Serbo-Croatian way like this …
Just that much. With English it’s always easy. If I’d translate things from my native language into Cymraeg … oh, God, I don’t recommend this at all!
Just to be clear, I wasn’t aiming my comment at you specifically; it was meant to be very general. But your experience seems to illustrate the dangers. To re-phrase what I was trying to say, GT is a great tool for personal use in understanding a foreign text (“breaking the back” of the translation, as a first step before a proper “refined” translation or at least understanding). But it obviously has limitations.
I understood you perfectly, don’t worry and … do you remember “Babblefish”? That one was the best for me and it even translated the whole texts quite properly, however it didn’t contain Slovene, but since I can English quite well it wasn’t a problem. I believe this translator doesnt’ exist anymore unfortunatelly or it renamed to something else and changed …
As a translator, I am very glad that Google Translate is still not perfect! It’s hard enough to find work as it is, with the recession!
I’m sure it will never be perfect or replace the human translator:)
Millie, can you tell me if the TV sometimes uses some sort of recognition software to make subtitles, because I’ve seen errors which seem to be as if the translation was mis-heard. I can’t think of an example off hand, I’m afraid!
They do sometimes use such software, but sometimes, it is just down to a really poor translator! (Not me, obviously! 
Hello, how are you people? Well, this is my story!
One day I was doing the dishes and it came a text from my best friend telling me that put the chanel Espn on the tv. I was so confused because I didn’t expect to find what I actually found! It was a rugby match, from a certain tournament called Six Nations and the teams playing were Ireland and… Wales. At first, I was fell in love with the anthem! And then I felt so curious about the sport, (even knowing that we have a national team “Los Pumas”) and for the welsh team actually… ok, gonna be honest, it was because I was feel attracted for some players . So, when Wales won the tournament I actually felt different from how I felt on the first match. I started to desire to know more about this nation and the culture. The moment when I found on internet about a group of welsh people that came to Patagonia in 1865, and actually there are descendants. I was so happy and I couldn’t believe!
Finally, I want to learn welsh because I consider it is a wonderful language and some day I want, sooo much, to LIVE in Wales 
Thanks for reading, for ask and this is my weird story!
Cheers! x
Ps. Feel sorry if there are orthographic mistakes! I’m from Argentina and we speak in spanish.
Then you’re more then happy to face the victory of “Los Pumas” over “Springbox” yesterday for the first time ever, didn’t you?
My story is prety much the same just a bit different beginning it has … and I live in totally (now I can say this) different world from not only yours but Cymraig aswell … at least this is many times my feeling - like I would live on another planet though …