Important point that - I’ve found that I will now have a good go at speaking to anyone, just for the sheer joy of it (and sometimes, the poor souls are English and have no chance), but the ‘tipping point’ is not a change in my knowledge, it’s in my attitude.
I want to hear Welsh tumbling out of my mouth.
It might get a bit mixed up, and I might still struggle to understand everything on some days, but if I can say it, I will, and if I can’t, I’ll try.
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Hi Helen. Yes your story and background does sound very much like mine - with the slight variation that my very young years were spent moving round various military places outside Wales with my father. But by the 60s we were back in Cardiff where I completed my schooling & university, and in those days it really was a rare event to come in contact with anyone speaking Welsh. Even though, that is - incredible as it may now seem - my paternal Welsh-speaking grandparents who heralded from Ceredigion were also living in Cardiff but never spoke a word of Welsh to any of us, including to my father! And having now lived 46 years on the Isle of Wight (Ynys Wyth), I never had more than a couple of stock phrases of Welsh until the last few years.
Fast forward to the present and, due to the inspired methods of Aran & Iestyn, I can say that I now speak an increasing amount of Welsh. But that is completely different, for me at least, in being able to say that I am now a Welsh speaker. I see and hear Welsh on TV and radio and it is STILL utterly daunting to me, though of course I can now pick out a few words. Even the simple questions and answers posted on this forum I often struggle with.
Some of the folks on here are inspiring, as you say, but they are in many ways the exceptional ones, at least in terms of their commitment and linguistic aptitudes. There are no doubt others who may not show up on the forum or not even bother in the first place. And all of our starting-points are so different: for folks like you and me there are so many additional layers of half-buried responses to negotiate as well.
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Hi Nicky it was a really interesting question but I think you should have had a third answer button – sometimes – because even after bootcamp where I spent all week speaking welsh I still didn’t feel like a welsh speaker. My click moment was just before Christmas when I revised lesson 25 Level 2 and realized that I occasionally had time to spare before the next sentence started.
So my click moment has something to do with my own speed of response. Maybe I have reached a processing speed in some (definitely not all) responses which matches some internal measure that I never knew I even had till I got there.
However the feeling of being a welsh speaker varies a lot depending on how I’m feeling so sometimes I feel that I am and other times I just feel like there is such a huge amount to learn.
I am just hoping that the days when I feel like a welsh speaker become more and more and the days of feeling that I am a welsh learner will become fewer and fewer and further apart.
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I was in a meeting (in S Manchester) this afternoon and the person sitting next to me was reading my notes over my shoulder. I switched from writing in English to Welsh as the ‘spying’ was irritating me. The decision was instant and ‘cos I was a bit bored, I started to think, if the question here had been, ‘Could you live your life through Welsh?’, I would have answered that I could. If the next question had been, "Could you do that without 1st language speakers thinking you sound a bit strange?’, then the answer to that would be probably not.
It’s just a thought on how best to describe my own view of how I see my relationship with the Welsh language. For me, it covers the continuous learning piece too, just as living my life in English means I expand my use of that language every day.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about this “Welsh speaker or not” over the last few weeks, And years if the truth be told.
I’ve come to the conclusion that much of what we think of as “being a Welsh speaker” and the whole learner vs fluent thing is a dangerous distraction.
Even the “crossing the bridge” metaphor, which may have been useful in the past, is now just that - something that was useful in the past.
While I don’t think for one minute that we can influence “the establishment” when it comes to this kind of terminology, I would prefer a new set of terms.
Anyone familiar with my posts here and elsewhere may have noticed that I (nearly) always refer to SSiWers as “new speakers”, because that’s what you are. “Learners” are those timid souls who go to evening classes, learn all of the writing, and never say a word. That’s not even an option for SSiWers, so you are never “learners” in that sense.
You may be speakers who are too nervous to speak in public, but if you are able to say the Welsh in the SSiW regulation gaps, then you are speaking Welsh already!
But I understand that you don’t feel like a Welsh speaker, and what you feel is what matters.
But it’s not just a “learner” thing. I knew from-birth speakers in the Rhymney Valley who claimed that they “didn’t really speak Welsh”, and ticked the no box on the census. Which then begs the question “What is a Welsh speaker?”
So, I’ve come up with 4 categories:
Inexperienced Welsh speakers: 2nd language speakers who are able to speak some Welsh, may very well be comfortable in a range of situations, but get out of their depth in other fairly common situations, and so don’t feel confident enough to call themselves “fluent”. It’s a broad category, I know, especially as I know new speakers who are fluent in most common tasks, but still get caught out by their inexperience from time to time. It doesn’t make them “not speakers”, it just shows that they haven’t had the benefit of years an years of speaking Welsh. And the cure is simple and difficult at the same time - get more experience!
Non-habitual Welsh speakers. These are experienced Welsh speakers who don’t use their Welsh often. You can tell in after-match interviews on S4C which sports players speak Welsh regularly, and which ones roll their Welsh out for the cameras. The difference between this category and the inexperienced Welsh speakers is in the type of Welsh that trips people up. There are certain “2nd language variations” that 1st language Welsh speakers, even non-habitual ones, generally don’t make. On the other hand there are full bodied Welsh sentences and words and phrases that the inexperienced speaker uses with abandon that the non-habitual struggles with. Neither is better than the other - they are just different. And when you as an adult learner get mistaken for a from-birth-but-lapsed speaker, you know you are on the right track!
Habitual Welsh speaker. This is what new speakers call fluent. Habitual Welsh speakers use their Welsh often, tend to use at least some kind of dialect. They tend to sound lovely and natural, and speak far too fast, peppering their Welsh with English words as their speed of delivery means that they just use the first word that comes into their heads, rather than searching for the “correct” one. They very often think that because they use a bit of English in their Welsh (they are bilingual after all) they are “not very good” and “aren’t good enough to help a learner”. In fact, many of them will tell you that they aren’t fluent, and point you to one of the last category:
Cultured-Welsh speaker. By which I mean speakers of cultured Welsh. These are Welsh speakers who know a lot of the “correct” words, and speak absolutely beautiful natural (ie dialect) Welsh. This is more of a subcategory of the habitual speaker, to be honest, and the two groups blend into each other, so it’s unfair to single them out.
The more habitual your Welsh gets as a new speaker, the more you will hold this group up as the measure of your “fluency” so that you never actually get there. There is nothing wrong with that as long as you know you’re doing it, rather than beating yourself up for never quite “getting there”!
Going from “inexperienced speaker” to “habitual speaker” is just a matter of experience. Learning is only a small part of that experience, and you can gain enough experience in some categories to feel “fluent” and suddenly get knocked back by your inexperience in another situation.
That’s the problem with the phrase “crossing the bridge”. It suggests that there is some kind of mythical obstacle that once you pass it you are “A Welsh Speaker”. This is patently nonsense, but based on a “learn the grammar for 6 years, then try to speak on the street” model, probably made sense at one point.
But you SSiWers are not like that. You can use your Welsh from the off, and just need to gain experience and new variations.
So, could I respectfully ask that all of you that have posted “no” or “not quite” above consider where you are on the continuum, and then learn the important word “di-brofiad” [DEE BROV-yad, O as in yOb] = inexperienced, and when someone asks if you are a Welsh speaker, you can say “Ydw, ond dwi’n ddi-brofiad iawn”. (Yes, but I’m very inexperienced).
Because as far as I can tell, you are all pretty much Welsh speakers, just with varying amounts of experience in varying numbers of areas.
Edited to add - sorry, that turned into an essay. I’ve put another post on the “War and Peace” thread…
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I know. During bwtcamp we were walking through Caernarfon and I overheard people speaking English and it just sounded like gibberish, that was a real click moment and a little scary! I still struggle to switch languages though, it takes me a few seconds to switch. For example sometimes I can’t think of how to say something and decide to use the English word, but that involves ‘re-booting’ into English which takes a few seconds.
Correct me if i’m wrong, my mind may be playing tricks, but Aran doesn’t say we can speak Welsh until the end of Level one
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Iestyn must be a more optimistic chap than our Aran 
I’ll get an old lesson on today to try and find the quote, but I’m sure he says something along these lines.
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Yep - at the end of challenge 1, in fact:
…and more importantly, you’ve not learnt stock phrases, but rather words and patterns that you have chopped and changed just as a natural speaker would. This is the key to the SaySomethinginWelsh way, and will make your learning experience very exciting indeed! You really are already speaking Welsh…
Because you are…
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Thanks to Iestyn for the four categories. I am usually in the category above. However, I occasionally fall into a category not listed by Iestyn which is ‘I am going to speak Welsh and I don’t care if no one understands me’ - it normally kicks in after one and a half pints of Brains dark.
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Otherwise known as ‘multilingual heaven’… 
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Me too. Ond HEB gwrw…
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It’s really interesting to read all these points of view. Living in the US, with no family connections to Wales, I don’t have any of the cultural history that many of you describe. I consider myself a Welsh speaker, albeit a slow and struggling one. I love @iestyn’s post. Dw i’n ddi-brofiad iawn.
When I have conversations on Skype, I’m always missing vocabulary and structures I’d like to use. I try to do the best I can with what I do know. It can be frustrating sometimes, but I understand that it’s a process and as long as I continue to try, I’ll make progress. I don’t think there’s been a click moment. Its more like at some point I realized that I’m getting to know people - I know something about them and their lives, and have communicated about myself and my life, without having spoken in English - so I must be a Welsh speaker!
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Well, I think a week is long enough for a poll!
Interesting results indeed, the more confident came out quickly and I remember “I’m a Welsh speaker” winning by about 80:20 when I checked at the end of Day 1.
As the week moved on, the less confident came out and voiced their views 
and gave us a final score - of conveniently 66% to 34%, which is just about the closest to two thirds against one third I can imagine,
Some very interesting points raised by all
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I am never confident about anything much, but last time I was in Caerfyrddin with my youngest brother Willem in a shoe shop, he was addressed in Welsh (he barely speaks bad Flemish), so I had to translate his desire for a pair of very expensive shoes, and also pay for them. I did not get a comment on my Welsh, but I did get a comment that I was a very kind brother - which I am. Makes me a Welsh speaker.
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That is the best testimonial as to the excellence of your Welsh you could get! That they did not even mention it!
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They were flummoxed by our double Dutch…
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A lot of this question seems to revolve around target setting. If you set as your target the horizon, you will never reach it.
For me, the various landmarks were:
- Managing to say ‘diolch’ in a shop at a level that might be audible.
- Saying ‘sut mae’ to someone and nodding knowingly at the answer.
- Saying ‘sut mae’, understanding the answer and giving an intelligible response.
- Having a discourse that involved at least 2 sentences on each side.
- Being in a pub and forcing myself to enter into a conversation with broken Welsh on each side.
- Having a conversation in a pub and realising that I was enjoying both the conversation and the Welsh.
Number 6 was only last week. Each of these was a point of celebration, but in my ‘scale’ I think that Welsh speaker started at 4.
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I’m stealing that. And probably the list.(with your permission of course!)
Croeso (to use all of it)
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