Hehe … I’d be the lifetime riddle then. 
or is “oh, you’re the foreigner” enough???
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We had an ex-POW in our village, always known as and referred to as ‘Joe the German’. He had married a local girl and I knew his daughter. If anyone mentioned her, her German ancestry was, so to speak, part of her name!! So, I think you would be Tatjana from Slovenia, even if you lived there for decades!!
Tatjana the sLOVEne
[SIZE=9]What means that I love all not that I should be loved by all[/size]
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I LOVE that!! 
I was trying to think of a place with CARU in the middle, but I can’t!!
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There has to be the basis for a good comedy sketch or two in that scenario…
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Hello, everyone. Matilda here again. It has been a couple of weeks since I last posted, so I thought I should post an update. I’m still persevering with SSiW, and despite the obstacles, still enjoying it.
A belated thank you to everyone who has been offering advice and encouragement since I last posted. I have read all your comments and taken on board what everyone has said. I only have about half an hour a day to devote to SSiW, and because I had spent so much time in this forum saying what I was going to try, I’d spent no time at all actually trying it! I found a week or two had gone by and I hadn’t progressed an inch, and was even starting to forget some of what I’d learned so far. So I felt it was time I stopped chatting here, put my head down, and started listening to the lessons again.
I heartily agree with @Iestyn’s comments about the value of SSiW being in its emphasis on aural learning rather than visual. That was, in fact, what made the course appeal to me instantly. With most new subjects, I prefer to read. I’m a voracious reader. I’d much rather read a speech than watch a video of someone delivering the same speech or listen to a podcast, not least because I can read much, much faster than anyone can speak. But language learning is different. Most second language courses, including the ones we all did at school, start with the visual - and in my opinion, the visual can get in the way of really listening. Like all of us, I have been looking at letters of the alphabet, and combinations of letters, and pronouncing them a certain way since I was five years old, and I knew that would interfere with my ability to look at those same letters and pronounce them in the Welsh way. The only way I would be able to achieve any kind of proficiency in Welsh would be to stop reading, forget about what the words look like, and just listen. So you can understand my dismay when I discovered my hearing was no longer up to the task!
I also agree with @Iestyn that vowel sounds in a language are critical. One of the most difficult things to do when learning a second language is to forget about one’s native vowels and force one’s mouth to form the shapes of the vowels in the new language. It can be very difficult, but it’s vital if you don’t want to be tagged as a “foreign” speaker forever. I’ve occasionally been asked by actor friends whether I had any advice on how to acquire a regional accent in a hurry. My advice to them (based on experience and instinct rather than any formal research) was: if you want to fool someone into thinking you’re a native speaker, you can get away with less than perfect consonants. The native speakers who hear you will probably assume you have a speech impediment or a mild hearing disability. We’ve all met people who can’t quite pronounce [s] or [th] or [r]. It’s no big deal. But if your vowels are wrong, no one will believe you’re a native speaker, because native speakers don’t get the vowels wrong. Therefore, I concluded, if you’re trying to acquire an accent in a hurry because the opening night of your play is in two weeks, concentrate on the vowels. Get the vowels right, and if there’s any time left over, work on the consonants. It’s nice to know that my instinctive feeling that vowels are more important than consonants has been borne out for Welsh, at least!
Anyway, I thought I’d write a summary of what I’ve done, how far I’ve got, what has worked for me, and what hasn’t. It may be helpful for other beginners, especially those who also have a slight hearing problem. As always, comments welcome, especially from anyone who has faced the same struggles.
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I briefly considered learning the whole Welsh alphabet, but in the end I decided not to, for the reasons I described above. I don’t want my eyes to look at the letters that represent the vowels and tell my ears what sounds they should be hearing, especially as my native vowels are Australian-accented ones, as @Iestyn pointed out. Instead, I concentrated just on the Welsh letters that represent the six fricatives I’m having trouble distinguishing on the audio recordings: [ch], [dd], [th], [f], [ff], and [ll]; also the two approximants [r] and [rh], and also [p] when it precedes [r]. All the other sounds, I think I can distinguish without difficulty. My habit now at the beginning of each lesson is to run my eye down the vocabulary list, just looking for words and phrases which contain the problem letters - words such as ifanc or llaeth or byddi. I ignore the vowels and all the other letters, especially the bewildering-looking and seemingly unpronounceable words containing lots of [w]s and [y]s, and I focus solely on the problem letters. I make a mental note to be on the alert for these words, and then I start the recording. When a “problem” word is introduced, I stop the recording, find the word on the vocabulary list, and adjust my pronunciation of the consonants if necessary (and it usually is necessary, especially with [dd]).
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I’m aware that @aran said we shouldn’t backtrack through the lessons, but I had gone so badly wrong for four lessons, and I had such trouble getting the [fim] (with a Welsh [f]) out of my head, that I felt I needed some serious drilling of [ddim]. So I did. I went back to Lesson 1 and just treated it like a five-finger exercise on the piano: ddim, ddim, ddim, ddim. And it worked. I am now ddim-ing with the best of them. Although I still hear [fim] and I think I always will. But at least I’ve stopped saying [fim], and that’s the main thing. Occasionally my tongue trips up and says [thim] instead of [ddim], i.e. voiceless instead of voiced, but I figure that’s the lesser of two evils and people will still probably understand me even if it’s voiceless. After all, if I said to you in English “this” and “that”, but I accidentally used the same “th” sound as in “thick” and “thin”, you’d still understand me, right? Very possibly you wouldn’t even notice.
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After repeating those four lessons, I tried following @aran’s instructions to “ditch the pause button” (except to clarify a new word I was hearing for the first time, as I explained above), and “don’t repeat sessions”. I tried. I completed three whole lessons like that. And it was a spectacular failure. More than half of the time, I was saying nothing at all before Cat’s voice kicked in with the sentence in Welsh. If I was very lucky, if the sentence followed the same pattern as the preceding sentences, I’d manage to get out one or two words - the Welsh for “I am” or “you didn’t” or “I will not” or whatever (I won’t try to write these words in Welsh) - and then I’d dry up. I could not think fast enough before the recording kicked in. And if the sentence was quite different in structure from the previous one - in the past tense, say, when the previous one was the present, or future tense when the previous one was in the past tense, or a question when the previous one was a statement, or a “No” sentence when the previous one was a “Yes” sentence - I couldn’t get out a single word before Cat’s voice began. Not one word. Long compound sentences were also a problem - I couldn’t even keep the whole English sentence in my head, let alone the Welsh! @aran said to do five lessons in this manner. I didn’t get to five. I managed three (Lesson 5, Lesson 6 part 1, and Lesson 6 part 2). There didn’t seem any point continuing if I was barely able to say a word - if I’d been forced to continue, I think I would have given up the course. @aran then said to go back to the first of the lessons that had been done without pausing, and “When you go back, you’ll find it has magically become much, much easier.” So I went back to the beginning of Lesson 5. It wasn’t any easier. Most of the time, I still wasn’t able to get any of the Welsh out before Cat’s voice kicked in - and even when I managed to get a word or two out before drying up, half the time it was wrong. Sorry, @aran. Maybe I’m a spectacularly slow and stupid learner, but your method just isn’t working for me. It’s only resulting in muteness and frustration.
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So I am once again doing the lessons the same way I did when I began the course: (1) with frequent use of the pause button on all but the very shortest sentences, to give me time to think without worrying that Cat will beat me to it; (2) repeating long sentences in English, sometimes two or three or four times, to make them stick in my head before I attempt to say them in Welsh; (3) repeating each lesson as often as I need to before moving on to the next one. When I reach the point where I can get most sentences spot on and the remaining sentences mostly right, that’s the point at which I feel confident enough to move on to the next session. That usually requires playing the session three or four times.
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With the sentences I’m getting mostly right, the mistakes I’m making are small silly ones. I’m not much worried about those. I suspect they’re the same kinds of mistakes everyone makes. My most common mistakes are: (1) leaving out “can”; (2) leaving out “like” if the sentence has a long string of verbs; (3) starting a sentence with the word for “No” but then leaving out the “ddim” later on (so I end up saying “No, I want to buy it” when I should be saying “No, I don’t want to buy it”)’; (4) forgetting to switch to past tense if the previous sentences have been in present tense; (5) failing to notice that the two parts of a compound sentence are in different tenses (e.g. “I bought it because I like it”); (6) mixing up the words for “know” and “think”; (7) mixing up the words for “say” and “speak”; (8) mixing up the words for “say” and “see” (I’ve no idea why! There’s a kind of semantic logic to the previous mix-ups, but not to this one.) (9) forgetting which form of “the” to use in which context.
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The news is not all gloomy. One thing I’m pleased about is that when I do manage to get the complete Welsh sentence out, if it contains consonants that need softening, most of the time I soften them correctly. I estimate at least 80-90% of the time, I get them right, with little conscious effort, and have done from the first consonant-softening lesson. The only ones I still regularly forget are the ones following “hen” (in Lesson 6 part 1), and I occasionally trip up on the ones related to “the”. But the consonants on verbs - it’s rare that I get them wrong these days.
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Another surprising and very pleasant discovery is that I have Cat’s voice in my head saying Welsh sentences, often when I’m doing nothing in particular. It’s always Cat’s voice, never @Iestyn’s. When this began happening, I thought “They’re probably just strings of Welsh words that don’t form a real sentence”. But I translated them into English, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that they are real, meaningful sentences! (Sentences that I don’t think we’ve had in the lessons, such as the Welsh for “You bought cheese and I don’t like it.”) So somehow, Cat has taken up residence in my head, and is coming out with observations in Welsh. Obviously I’m aware that it’s my own brain conjuring up these sentences, but I’m not doing it consciously. I don’t know how this happened, but I’m quite pleased about it, because it seems that some part of my brain, even a tiny part, is starting to think in Welsh.
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I have begun listening to Radio Cymru (thanks @mikeellwood for the suggestion), sometimes concentrating on it, (although I don’t understand a word, even when concentrating!), sometimes just as background noise when I’m doing something else, just to get a feel for the intonations and rhythms of Welsh. If nothing else, it’s very relaxing! I’ve also begun to seek out YouTube clips and other videos of people speaking in Welsh. I found this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxih6CN62V0 where Rhod Gilbert recites a line of Green Eggs and Ham in Welsh, and I realised with delight that I recognised hoffi and cig. And speaking of YouTube videos: can anyone tell me what Rob Brydon says to Joanna Page at the very end of this one, and what Joanna says in reply? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY3AyfzPJ1s (at 13:22). Someone claims to give a translation in the comments, but I suspect they’re making it up.
It’s nearly 1am here, and I need to get to bed. I’m aware that some of you have asked questions above which I haven’t answered yet, but that will have to wait for another day. Good night, all.
Well, I encourage people to test moving forwards without backtracking, because backtracking can get people stuck in over-repeating to the point where they get sick of it! But backtracking in and of itself won’t do you any damage, and I think most people feel the need if they’ve got something that really isn’t sticking 
I’d call bravely trying out something you’re not sure about a spectacular success! The more you know about your own learning, from trying out different strategies, the stronger your position.
If you were getting something out for somewhere towards half the time, then it’s very likely that you would in time start to adapt neurologically - but it’s far more important that you feel emotionally committed to the process, so it seems to me that going back to pauses is the right thing for you at the moment.
Do you know how strong your working memory is? If you give this a whirl, we’ll have an idea of where you fit compared to other SSiW learners:
http://www.cogmed.com/working-memory-challenge
Some other suggestions - I think you’d be well advised to steer away from repeating the long sentences in English - just have a go at however much of them stays in your mind, and don’t worry about the rest of them - you’ll still be getting valuable input from hearing the complete structures in Welsh.
Three or four times is okay for repetition - shouldn’t end up making you want to stab yourself - but you are doing the very common thing of setting your sights too high per individual session - what you’ve described is a very, very high level of productive control, and I’ve literally sat and watched people go through these sessions with about a 10% ‘correct’ rate but still have successful conversations at the end. I’d encourage you to think about restricting your repetitions to once per lesson (so 2 runs through per session), and accepting whatever level of productive ‘success’ that gets you to (from what you’ve said, I’m pretty sure it’ll be a lot higher than 10%!).
Small, silly mistakes are absolutely, utterly unimportant. If I were you, I wouldn’t even count those as mistakes - all that stuff gets easier when you have enough exposure, which is what the course is designed to give you - but it does require being willing to laugh off the little ones. A good rule of thumb is that every mistake you notice gives you a little extra learning (and the ones you don’t notice can be left until later…;-)).
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You’re welcome! It’s what the site is for! And though reading and writing along with SSiW was useful for myself and everyone I know in my area, if it wouldn’t be for you, it wouldn’t be for you! May well be different for people outside Wales- and even for non-Welsh people. But whatever floats your boat! Excellent to hear you are coming on well.
“Can anyone tell me what Rob Brydon says in this clip and what Joanna Page says in return”
Rob Brydon does not speak Welsh, and I don’t think he is the sort of person who would have too much interest in getting it right. A few random words at the beginning, " da iawn, Croeso am fynd" if I remember right, but the rest may just be gibberish. Certainly I think it would be a waste of time to spend too much time listening to it closely and try rating to work it out. Joanna Page say is “es i (somewhere) gyda ffrindiau neithiwr” - I went (somewhere [I think clubbing]) with friends last night)". No idea if she speaks Welsh.
Don’t you take my word for it though- others will have heard better!
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I’m answering your whole post! I have experienced all of that!
My problem with keeping up is partly physical. I have airways full of gunk and can’t talk quickly for long. Going back to using the pause button was wonderful and I am not going to try without except for shorter sentences.
I am forever forgetting the end of the sentence. I sometimes say…“er…whatever!” listen to Cat and add, “That!” Sometimes I simply say something which makes sense! I don’t thank it matters. @aran isn’t actually trying to test the failing memory or poor concentration of older learners like me, he is trying to get us to rabbit on and I’m fine at that!!!
I’d think that finding sentences in Cymraeg in your head is a very good sign!! Doesn’t it mean you are processing!
Oh, and being so long on the Forum you have no time to learn is a problem we definitely share!! It doesn’t matter much for me as my object was to deal with hiraeth, learning or re-learning yr hen iaith is an added bonus!!
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@aran, thanks for the guidance and encouragement. You’re probably right that I’m setting my sights too high, and being a bit too self-critical. I’m trying to relax a bit, and to keep in mind that ultimately I’m supposed to be doing this for fun, and for mental exercise, not to pass an exam. It’s very hard to drop the habits of a lifetime, though.
I did the Working Memory Challenge you suggested, and I scored 4.5. I did it again, and scored 4.5. I did it a third time, and managed 5.5. I have no idea how that compares with most people. Does that score tell you anything useful? (If it’s less than average, you won’t hurt my feelings by saying so. It might even help explain why I’m having difficulty.)
You make a good point about emotional commitment. At the moment I’m finding that pausing frequently, and backtracking and replaying, is making me feel more enthusiastic towards SSiW than if I stay off the Pause button and just let the recording run and never backtrack. I accept that it may not be producing the speediest progress, but I can live with that, because it means I am less frustrated. I feel I’m getting more on top of it, I feel I’m making better progress, even if by any objective measure I’m actually not.
Whenever I just let the recording run on its own, Cat stops being a helpful teacher and becomes an annoying know-it-all classmate. To everyone reading this: did any of you have the experience, back in your early schooldays, of your teacher asking you a question, and while you were gathering your thoughts to answer, your smug show-off classmate would shout out the answer first? If you had a good teacher, she’d say “OK, Hermione, we know you know the answer, but please give the other children a chance,” but even so, you’d still feel a bit thick. You wanted to say “I CAN answer this - if you’ll just give me a minute to think. I can’t do it as quickly as Hermione, but I’m not stupid.”
Well, that’s pretty much how I feel now if I don’t pause the recording. On all but the very shortest and easiest sentences, Cat (a.k.a. Hermione) jumps in while I’m still gathering my thoughts and taking a breath.
And here’s the real irony. During my primary school years, to my utter mortification now, I was Hermione, most of the time. I was the smug little so-and-so showing off how much I knew, how easily I could spell, how fast I could calculate. I had reached my teens before I first encountered any academic subject I struggled with (it was physics), and gained some inkling of just how much some learners struggle and how it doesn’t help to have some more gifted classmate parading their superior abilities. Struggling with physics was a well-deserved lesson in humility, and helped change me from a horrible smug [rude word deleted] into someone with a bit more empathy.
So here am I now, all these decades later, once again feeling pretty humble and a bit thick, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I can live with those feelings. I can live with the mistakes I’m making. As long as I get a chance to make those mistakes - in other words, as long as I can find a way to shut Hermione up and give me a chance to speak. So that’s why I’m still using the Pause button. It’s the only way I can keep Hermione quiet and keep me from wanting to slap her. As long as I can use the Pause button, Cat stops being the insufferable Hermione, and goes back to being the gentle teacher Cat, either confirming that I got it right, or showing me the right way to say it if I got it wrong.
And sometimes I really do need a long time to gather my thoughts, grope towards the right answer, and say something close to what I should be saying. Other learners are probably much faster at getting the Welsh out than I am at this stage.
Here’s an example. Suppose @Iestyn gives this sentence: “You don’t need to say why you will not do it”. (I can’t remember whether that sentence is on any of the recordings. I just assembled it out of the words I’ve learned so far.)
This is how I respond. Lines in quotes are what I say aloud. Lines in italics are what I’m thinking. Ellipses are pauses. Apologies for any wrong Welsh spelling - I had to look up the spelling, and I may not have got it right, but I hope you’ll at least know which words I’m trying to say.
USING THE PAUSE BUTTON
Iestyn: You don’t need to say why you will not do it.
(I hit the Pause button.)
…
“Ti ddim yn…”
Ti ddim yn, ti ddim yn… what’s the word for “need”? Hang on, it’s not “ti ddim yn” at all. It’s that funny construction which means something like “there is a need”. What is it? It has “isie” in it. What is it again?
“Mae isie i fi…”
No, that’s not right. “Fi” is “I”. This is a YOU sentence.
“Mae isie i ti…”
That’s still not right. The sentence was “You DON’T need”. It needs a negative word. What’s the negative construction? I remember! “Does dim”.
“Does dim isie i fi…”
No, you’re back to “fi”. It’s “ti”.
“Does dim isie i ti…”
“Does dim isie i ti siarad…”
No, not “siarad”. You’re always mixing up “speak” and “say”.
“Does dim isie i ti ddweud…”
What’s the word for “why?”
“…beth…”
No, that’s “what”.
“…sut…”
No, that’s “how”.
… pam!"
Got it! Now, what was the sentence again?
“Does dim isie i ti… ddweud… pam…”
I can’t even remember the rest of the sentence in English. How did it go again? “You don’t need to say why you will not do it.”
“Does dim isie i ti ddweud pam… ti…”
No, “ti” is for present tense. You WILL not. It doesn’t start with “ti”. What does it start with?
I can’t remember.
Think through the “will” paradigm. I will, you will, I will not… Those phrases don’t start with “dwi” or “ti”. What do they start with?
“…Bydda…”
No, that’s positive. That’s the start of “I will” and “You will”. What’s the negative form?
“…Fydda…”
Yes. And then…? You will not? Fydda… what?
…I can’t remember.
Fydda what?
…I can’t remember.
Fydda what?
I really can’t remember. Why can’t I remember? I’ve done “You will not” sentences at least twenty times. I’ll try saying the whole sentence from the beginning to see if my subconscious kicks in. How did it go in English? You don’t need to say why you will not do it."
“Does dim isie i ti… ddweud… pam… fydda…”
“Does dim isie i ti ddweud pam fydda…”
“Does dim isie i ti ddweud pam fydda…”
…
…
Nope, it’s not working. I know the “do it” bit at the end of the sentence, but not the “you will not”.
And at this point I hit the Play button to hear Cat say it.
As you can imagine, the above mental gymnastics take about 30-60 seconds, much longer than the few seconds Cat gives me to say it.
And if I DON’T use the Pause button, here’s what happens:
Iestyn: “You don’t need to say why you will not do it.”
…
Me: “Ti ddym in…”
…
Cat: “Does dim isie i ti…” etc.
And so it goes, for almost every one of the sentences. I get out only a word or two before I dry up, and more often than not, whatever I do get out is completely wrong. I usually know it’s wrong as soon as I’ve said it, and given enough time, I can correct it, but if I don’t pause the recording, I don’t get that time. Cat gets in first, and I’m left thinking grumpily “I could have got there, if only you’d given me time!”
And that agonisingly slow performance, which I’m sure is causing all you fluent Welsh speakers to grimace in pain at how your beautiful language is being mangled, is after completing all the lessons up to and including Lesson 6 Part 2, including playing them all at least three times each.
I’m aware that what I’m doing at the moment when I work through the sessions is merely groping towards the right Welsh sentence, until I eventually land on it. (e.g. No, it’s not “I”, it’s “you”. No, it’s not present tense, it’s past. No, it’s not “I am”, it’s “I am NOT”. No, it’s not “I know”, it’s “I think”.)
And I’m aware that that’s not speaking in a foreign language. That’s just puzzle solving. What I’m doing at the moment is no more truly speaking a language than doing a crossword is speaking a language.
What I need to achieve - and I’m nowhere near it yet - is to hear a sentence in English and have the Welsh for it spring immediately to my tongue. For instance, to hear “You will not say…” in English, and have the Welsh for it immediately in my brain, not have to grope towards it painfully in stages, via “I am… You are… You were… You will… You will not… You will not speak… You will not say…”
And that, I’m afraid, is a long way off at this stage. But at least I’m still here, still doing the course.
Apologies to all those whose comments and questions I still haven’t responded to. Partly lack of time, mostly feeling too mentally exhausted. Tomorrow, I hope. I still very much appreciate everyone’s comments.
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Rob Brydon doesn’t speak Welsh? Really? You mean he’s probably faking it, with a few phrases half-remembered from school?
He did a good job of fooling me. He spoke so fast and smoothly, I assumed he was fluent.
Thanks for the translation.
You’re welcome - pity it wasn’t more use to you! (always assuming what I said was right! Which no one should ever do…)
(again, assuming it was the case…) Well, I’d say words rather than phrases - I’m not sure any two of them put together in the way they were made sense! But you have to remember that he is Welsh and lives in Wales - he will have been surrounded by and heard the language his whole life, even if he had no interest in learning it, and a lot of its pronunciation will be completely natural to him - indeed, sometimes how he would pronounce English! - so it’s not surprising it sounded genuine to you! So I certainly wouldn’t describe it as fooling you, if that were to imply anything about you 
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This is absolutely the way forward for you, then - you’re making all the right decisions so far, I’d say.
Yes, it’s really hard to drop the habits of a lifetime - nothing easy about it at all - but keep at it, because the more you can play with it, the more you can laugh, the easier it will be to keep going…
Aha - I suspected as much. That’s a very low working memory score - the lowest I’ve come across so far was 4 - and that means that this approach is inevitably tougher for you.
But there’s some good news! Which is - the approach WILL still work for you - it just needs more time, and more patience - but settling down to a strategy that makes you feel emotionally comfortable, and keeping in mind that it’s not a race, is EXACTLY the right way forward for you.
So work through the sessions in the way that feels right for you - and come on here for a nudge if you think that you’ve got stuck on any particular lesson, and are in danger of over-repeating - and then when you get to the end of Course 1, you can start a pattern of revisiting the last couple of lessons every month or so (while you push on with Course 2) - and over time, your speed of processing will increase because you will start to process the language in larger chunks.
And - congratulations. It takes real guts to stick at this approach when you have a low working memory score. But your courage and determination WILL pay off…
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Thank you so much for your encouragement, @aran. What you’ve said also lends weight to one of my reasons for wanting to learn Welsh in the first place, which is: I’m constantly trying to find new ways to engage my brain, new skills to learn, in an attempt to prevent or at least slow down any decline in cognitive function.
I’ve had a lifelong love for the sound of Celtic languages, so when casting around for some new way to exercise my brain cells, I thought: why not try to learn a Celtic language? I’m sure I once had a better working memory than this - I used to blitz exams - so if it’s true that my memory really is starting to decline, then the more I try to stretch it, the better.
The woman next door to me took up the violin as a complete beginner in her fifties, for much the same reason as I’m learning Welsh. And she got pretty good at the violin, too! I envy her. I can’t do the same - I used to play the piano, until arthritis made that almost impossible - but as long as I can still hear, I can still speak. So I’ll keep plugging away at Welsh, at least for now.
I’ll never be your top student, but if I can reach a standard where I can hold a basic conversation without embarrassing myself, I’ll be happy.
The clock is striking midnight here in Australia, and I’m about to turn into a pumpkin. Good night.
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Matilda,
It’s amazing how much you have learned so far. You’re summary of the way that lessons go was brilliant and funny - I can totally relate to most of that and I bet that I’m not the only one. If you do another ten lessons and then look back at a lesson you are doing now, I bet that you’ll be amazed at how easy it then seems. Maybe it could be a short term memory thing as Aran says, but after a while perhaps you start to recall bits in blocks more than individual words, I don’t know?
If as Aran says 4.5, 4.5, 5.5 is low, well you’ve got some company - I’m only half a point ahead of you 4.5, 5.5 and 6 and based on age I should probably be a bit more ahead. So I should be struggling on SSIW as well and I do quite often, but I quite enjoy that and it seems to get easier.
P.S. I am that person who always loses the keys, can never find my phone or the TV remote and has generally a very very very short attention span - asking people to write it down and letting them know in advance that I will forget it if they don’t remind me is one of my lifelong habits. No point asking me to get something from the shop without writing it down first and I rarely ask for directions because I’ll never remember what someone was telling me anyway. When I was seventeen my dad asked me where my mother’s car was and I completely forgot that I had been out driving it and had left it at my friends (and no I would never drink and drive or anything like that even when I was young and less responsible)!. Unfortunately, I can never get away with using it as an excuse for forgetting Birthdays and anniversaries though.
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Stretching the memory is always, always good! - but let me be specifically clear about this - I’m not suggesting you’ve got any age-related memory decline here - while that’s a complicated field, it’s not usually chiefly about working memory.
Working memory is a very specific subset of memory - effectively, it’s your ability to keep multiple items in mind at once - and it makes perfect sense that you could have blitzed all your exams because your learning strategies weren’t forcing you to lean heavily on your working memory - most approaches to learning in a school setting don’t require much working memory.
Having a weak working memory absolutely does NOT imply that your other memory functions are weak - and the pattern of getting material into your short-term memory, and then building those memories into long-term memories, can function fine irregardless of your working memory
But you’re absolutely, absolutely right that continued learning is a HUGELY valuable part of brain health
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Oh so was I!! Then we moved and I found out that ‘know-it-alls’ with funny accents from ‘foreign parts’ are not very popular in Yorkshire, especially if they are hopeless at sports!! So I stopped trying and, in fact; learned never to do better than middling. Sometime thereafter, I lost the ability to be Hermione!! (At Uni)!!!
However, languages were never my forte!! Your mental process sort of mirrors mine, but in a much better informed way!! I freeze, rethink, and may get the right words. Else I get a near miss and put up with it!!!
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Thought I’d squeeze in one more reply before I head off to bed. (It’s after 1am here as I write this.)
You didn’t miss it. I was deliberately vague. I’ve been on the internet a very long time, almost since it first arrived in Australia. A few very unpleasant experiences (my own, and other people’s) have taught me to be extremely careful what I put online about myself. A friend, for example, was once found by her abusive ex-partner because she posted under her real name in what she thought was a fairly obscure special-interest forum such as this one. This was back in the 1990s, and because the internet was still fairly young in those days, she had no idea how powerful search engines are and how there is really no such thing as “obscure”.
I’ve been wary ever since, because I too have people in my past that I don’t particularly want to be found by. Matilda is not actually my real name. It’s a pseudonym I sometimes use in international forums to indicate I’m Australian (Waltzing Matilda, geddit?). And also because Matilda “Miss Matty” Jenkyns in Cranford is one of my favourite literary characters, and just because I think it’s a pretty name.
Even if I gave just my real first name and not my surname, I’ve already posted enough information that someone who knows me personally could join the dots and identify me. If I get comfortable enough in this community, I will probably reveal my real name to individuals privately, but for public purposes in this forum, I will answer to Matilda.
As for my location, I’m on the east coast of Australia. That’s where the majority of the Australian population lives, so I’m very likely to be in the same time zone as most Australian SSiW members. (I’m very surprised to hear that SSiW has such a large Australian membership! Clearly, Welsh is a much more popular language here than I imagined. That is very encouraging.)
I am interested in Skyping, but not quite yet. Now that I’m looking at the spelling of consonants whenever a new word is introduced (although still trying to ignore the spelling of vowels), that is going a long way towards helping me resolve my hearing difficulties, so that’s one hurdle I’ve cleared. As for making conversation in Welsh: I’m still only at the beginning of Lesson 7. My progress is slow, because I pause and repeat so often. I’m comfortable with my rate of progress, but I don’t feel confident enough making conversation in Welsh yet, and am likely to freeze like a deer in the headlights if I don’t understand something. Let me get a few more lessons under my belt, and see how I feel then. But it’s nice to know there are people in my time zone who may be willing to help!
Yes, I am doing the original Course 1, and it’s good to know the quality does improve later on. Incidentally, at the suggestion of someone else on this page (can’t remember who offhand), I listened to a couple of the Northern Welsh lessons. Partly to make the acquaintance of Aran and Catrin, and partly out of curiosity to see how the northern dialect differs from the southern one. Although @aran has the most beautiful diction, I found the consonants in the northern recording even harder to understand than the southern one. The Introduction was fine - very clear - but in Lessons 1 and 2, there’s a distinct echo in the room, which for me causes the consonants to blur even more than in the southern course. Maybe the room where Aran and Catrin recorded had hard walls with sound bouncing off them, or maybe the recording equipment was more primitive. Either way, the echo is very blurry and distracting, so I gave up part way into Lesson 2, and went back to the southern course.
It’s 1:40am here, and time I got some sleep. Goodnight, all.
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Is there a thread in this forum on the funniest mistakes that people have made? Because I’m doing my daily Welsh practice session, and I have a contribution I could make to it.
Lesson 7:
@Iestyn: “Do you have meat?”
Me: “Wyt ti’n cig?”
I’m trying to imagine the look on the face of a Welsh butcher if I’d said that to him.
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The response you get might not be what you are expecting either. I just imagined:
Cigydd: nagw, mae fe’n gweithio yn y dafarn
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