I thought it might be interesting to see if my three year old granddaughter could pick up any Welsh. She has been visiting for a couple of days from the Southampton area and has no experience of speaking or listening to any Welsh. I tried her out on the first few responses in SSiW, Southern. She picked up the Welsh words and South Wales pronunciation immediately. The English prompts did seem to throw her slightly, so she also repeated them in a convincing accent. She didn’t seem to have any confidence problems. Any thoughts?
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Oh to be young again. 
Cheers J.P.
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That’s how I learned German at the same age! Well, I met lots of nice German POWs who missed their little sisters, daughters, nieces etc… Some of them told me what others said, I think! I don’t remember the learning process, I just know I ended up able to chatter to them all!
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My nephew was living and working in Stockholm and his son attended nursery school where some staff spoke only English and others spoke only Swedish although they were all actually bilingual. That way the children learned both languages at the same time without mixing them together.
The children are not the problem; it’s our attitudes, prejudices and backwardness that delay our childrens’ development.
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I have been watching, "Growing up in Scotland’ the first in a series broadcast on BBC 2 Scotland and available on iPlayer. The first program was about education. Scotland started schools for all children in about the 16th century. But it took time for it to really get going. One point was that children in Ayrshire could win a prize for reciting a Burn’s poem one day and have the tawse for using his language in school the rest of the year, as Scots was banned! The tawse is a strap divided into 2 or 3 strips used to whack kids from age 5 on the hands. A chap from Tiree told how he purposely failed an exam, because, like the 11+ it would have caused him to be sent to school in Oban, in English, and he wanted to stay on the croft and use Gaelic! Lots of bells ringing!
Oh, and I think you have to be under about 52 to remember the cane, the strap. the tawse, thrown blackboard cleaner, ruler or other whacking implements in class! Such punishment was stopped by law in 1971.
Exposure like this in a playful environment when she feels like it will certainly give her valuable chunks of the language. At that age, longer phrases will be challenging for her (because she won’t be using them all that often in her first language), but the shorter stuff will be accessible… 
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I will try that with my 3 year old granddaughter who lives in Perth, Scotland. How did you introduce it? Did you ask her whether she wanted to hear Welsh?
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Yes, I checked with my daughter first, and then asked my granddaughter if she would like to learn some Welsh. She seemed keen enough, but I kept it to a single phrase. Now she’s gone back to Southampton with a Welsh accent. 
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Diolch. I will let you know how we get on!
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I used my son to practice ssi on when he was a baby and I still speak what I have learnt with him often (he is now 2 1/2). He understands most of it but answers me in English except for body parts and some clothing items which he repeats in welsh. My wife also caught him counting to ten in welsh when he was playing on his own the other day. Any way he seems to pick up new words in welsh real quick.
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