Breakthroughs: Does anybody have small successes/breakthroughs speaking Cymraeg they want to share?

Well done Howard!

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Thatā€™s a huge achievement! Well DONE!

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Iā€™ve been doing this about 3 years now. I just was reading a short story and it had a Welsh line. I read the Welsh without thinking about it. It was only after I was a few lines later that it clicked that it was a foreign language. I was ecstatic! I have been noticing a few words slipping into my thoughts, but this was the first real application! Thank you all!

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That sounds like an awesome momentā€¦ :star: :star2:

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Wel, mae wedi bod yn amser hir ers dwi wedi postio 'ma gyda rhywbeth yn diddorol neu gyffrous, ond oā€™n iā€™n meddwl bo fiā€™n trio i wneud y geirfa oā€™r hen gwersi, heb hoe. Wel, dwi newydd cwpla popeth ac mae fy mhen ddim yn troelliā€¦ falle mae eisiau i fi wneud mwy o heriau heno i gwpla fi bant?

Well, itā€™s been a long time since I posted here with something interesting or exciting, but I thought Iā€™d try to do all of the vocab bits from the old content without a rest. Iā€™ve just finished and my head isnā€™t spinningā€¦ maybe I need to make sure and do more of the challenges tonight to finish me off?

(Okay maybe it is just a tiny tiny bit from being very tired now, but I canā€™t really tell the difference. Still, llogyfarchiadau i fi! Pretty sure it would have been the end of me had if Iā€™d attempted that a few years ago!)

:slight_smile: :rabbit2:

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Argh - we need to find a way to make you suffer more!.. :wink: :star2:

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So there I was in a slow-moving queue at our local bakery while this couple behind me chatted nineteen to the dozen in Welsh. Yes, I eavesdropped, and was so engrossed almost missed my turn at the till. Like an idiot I then gave my order in Welsh to the utter confusion of the server and amazement of my queue-mates. This was after allā€”in Vancouver :blush:

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Oh, what a lovely vignetteā€¦ :slight_smile: :star: :star2:

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Do tell more! Did you get chatting to the Welsh couple who were, presumably, on holiday? Did you get to know them? If not, oh why not? Iā€™m sure theyā€™d have been delighted to meet you! I have got chatting to folk from Wales in the Co-op in town here and had a lovely chat! (In English, they werenā€™t Welsh speaking and my ā€˜helloā€™ was based on accent!) If you were too shy/confused to speak to your Welsh couple, I can sort of understand that, but next time, do please smile and say, ā€œShmae, helo!ā€ :sunny:

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Yes indeed I did chat to them in Welshā€“quite forgot where I was!

One was on holiday, the other had retired here recently, so I told them about the Vancouver Welsh Society and about SSiW and the goal of 1,000,000 speakers, andā€¦ I have not reached the point of parading downtown with a sandwich board handing out leaflets, butā€¦ one step at a time :slight_smile:

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On re-watching an episode of Rownd a Rownd with Welsh subtitles, I understood a pun that one of the characters made ā€“ and not only laughed but felt a bit proud of myself for understanding wordplay in Welsh! (Even if I only understood it with the help of the subtitles rather than the first time around with just listening.)

  • Pam bod y bacwn aā€™r wy ddim yn siarad?
  • Am eu bod nhw wedi ffrio!
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I teach GCSE English (language and literature), but Iā€™m always trying to get the students to recognise the teachers have to learn new things too - and that everybody can achieve if they just try. So, today, I told my year 10 class that I was learning Welsh; I felt confident enough, having only got up to introductory course lesson 5 admittedly, to demonstrate some Welsh to them. I explained that dwi newydd ddechrau siarad Cymraeg a dwi wedi bod yn ddysgu am biti mis. For the next 95 minutes, they were golden.

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Superb achievement, and a thoroughly well-deserved 95 minutes of goldā€¦ :star: :star2:

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A night to rememberā€¦ in Vancouver all thanks to SSiWā€¦

Last night, needing help with recording and uploading audio questions to the Forum, I met a great young musician friend in a pub. She worked through the process with me over a couple of glasses of wine, and some fancy cocktail needed to lubricate her memory how to do this apparently. (Really? Well I fell for it).

We had arrived around 5:30 pm, occupied a cosy little corner by the bar, while there were just two other tables taken. Donā€™t ask me where the time went, but around 7:30 pm she pulled all this gear out of her rucksack and set up a mini recording studio then talked me through the process which I wrote down on a beer matā€“like where else eh? By this time the place was filing up, but all inhibitions gone, I did indeed record five questions in Welshā€“in fact a whole ā€˜albumā€™ and learned how to upload them. What I didnā€™t learn about until this morning was how to separate and label themā€“but thankfully, in stepped Philip, right here on the Forum. So that is yet another valuable lesson learned.

But back to last nightā€¦ Our Welsh recording efforts were clearly the best entertainment in town last night. And the only reason I got home so late (you understand) is that all these folk kept sidling over, glasses of beer in hand, settling in and of course offering all kinds of helpful advice. Naturally, there was the woman whoā€™s gran came from Ponty-something-or-other, the guy who once went to a rugger match at the Arms Park (going back a bit) but remembers nothing about how he got home, and then the couple who remembered my young friend singing beautifully and playing the harp at a funeral. By the end, the barman remembered he had Welsh roots, as just just about everyone else, so I taught them all how to ask (in Welsh of course) ā€œWhat are you drinking?ā€ā€“and for the more discerning palate ā€œWhat kind of beer do you want?ā€

Cheers,
Marilyn

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What a delight :heart:

But what a pity that your technologically-inclined friend didnā€™t think to film the entire eventā€¦ :wink:

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Next time :slight_smile:

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Iā€™m taking that as a formal, written contract :slight_smile:

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Absolutelyā€”wrth gwrs,
Marilyn

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I guessed the Mam Pwy on RC2 this morning before Huw Stephens :slight_smile:

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Just wanted to say that Iā€™m really proud of myself today because Iā€™ve just ordered two t-shirts from Cowbois in Bala IN WELSH! As Iā€™m quite phonophobic and find it difficult to psych myself up to make a phone call in English, I feel this was quite an achievement. :blush:

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