Three months in and hanging in there. I’m the most positive person and am not easily discouraged…but…I’m in a strange place at the moment - Welsh-wise.
At the start it was easy. Everything going along in a straight line and new vocab being retained. Now I’ve sort of plateau-ed. I look in my tool box and there’s LOADS of stuff in there. I’m a bit slower when fishing stuff out…there are lots of variations on how to say things. Oodles of tenses and patterns that fit some words and other patterns that fit elsewhere. I feel like I’m juggling plates and sometimes those that were stuck fast - are getting wobbly! I’m not panicking - I know it’s practice, practice…but I feel like I’m going backwards/stalling/slowing up. I’m sure it’s only a temporary blockage…but has anyone else experienced this phenomenum? Also…I look at the ordinary folk on Pobl y Cym…and I think…these people are fluent in two languages! I am in awe of anyone who achieves this,
Rant over.
Keep moving through the podcasts. We’ve all had the plateau at some point, the fog will pass and it will all come together! Dal ati!
The feeling of hitting a plateau is mostly just mathematics - you’re probably learning just as quickly as you were before, but every new thing you learn now is a significantly smaller percentage of what you already know that every knew thing you were learning when you were first starting out.
If you’re getting a little slower in the lessons, remember that that’s because the lessons are getting harder. If you don’t believe me, go ahead and redo the one five lessons before your current one.
Totally normal. I’ve had numerous plateau moments. Sometimes I give myself a complete week off from Welsh then come back to it, it’s amazing what the depths of the brain will have sorted out in that time, sometimes I’ll gently review, talk to the mirror/cat/plants/children in Welsh for a few days then go back to SSiW, sometimes try learning a little from another source. You’ll then accelerate again when you get back to SSiW until the next plateau then repeat whatever worked for you!
I can guarantee that it’s absolutely, definitely, without-a-doubt NOT just you Chris!
It’s a perfectly natural state to be in and in a kind of a weird, contradictory-feeling way it is actually proof that the learning process is working 
and frustrating though this - as you’ve guessed - temporary blockage is, you’re doing the right thing by not panicking and keeping going… and having a little rant about it 
I completely sympathise with you Chris. I’ve had what I’ve thought are plateaus. They last a while and things shift again. I think it’s completely normal. Remember that, in the beginning, you tend to feel like you’re picking things up quickly or making big gains. So then when things get harder it can feeling out of proportion in difficulty.
Perhaps you need to mix it up for a short while? Maybe give the podcasts a little rest and try doing some enjoyable listening (eg S4C/radio Cymru). I’m sure things will go better soon.
Hwyl
Kim
Please don’t be discouraged - you’re doing great! The reason there are lots of variations is because you already have a really flexible use of the language - after only three months! As you can see, we have all been there, and it does pass, we promise. Keep putting one foot in front of the other (metaphorically speaking) and climbing the hill … then one day, all of a sudden, you’ll realise you’re at the brow and a whole new (Welsh) world is laid out before you. I’ve gone back to square one with another language now (Catalan), and I just think I’ll never be able to speak it like I can Welsh - and then I remember that’s what I thought about Welsh just a few years ago. (But with Catalan I don’t have SSiW to help me, so I think it’s going to take me a bit longer!)
3 months…you’re doing incredibly well!! How much time is three months really? You see those people on PYC who have been speaking and listening to Welsh for years!! What’s the youngest character? Guarantee they’re older than 3 months.
We all get plateaus and we all have massive highs and sometimes feel we go backwards. I can pretty much guarantee that, short of never hearing or speaking a Welsh word for 20 years, you won’t go backwards. The brain is incredible. You’ve learn so much and you’re meeting more and more structures and words. At first being able to say “dwi’n mynd” was a huge sense of achievement, now…you’re miles ahead.
I would go as far to say, this isn’t a phenomenon more a perfect normal, regular stage of the learning process.
Keep going!! You’re doing great and you’re not alone!!
Also, completely agree with @Richmountart’s recommendation of a week off. I do it from time to time and it helps loads! There’s more to school holidays than giving teachers a break, students need it to consolidate
Yes, what you’re experiencing is 100% normal and nothing to be worried about (especially if you’ve only been doing this for three months!). I’ve been at it now for almost two years, and I still go through the same thing from time to time. Taking a little time off can help, or just switching to listening to music and not worrying about understanding what you’re hearing. This is just a signal to you that it may be time to take a short break and switch gears for a bit. As you can see from the responses from other (very wise!) forum members, this is not at all unusual and nothing more than a short (hopefully scenic) detour on your learning path.
Sometimes I give myself a complete week off from Welsh then come back to
it, it’s amazing what the depths of the brain will have sorted out in
that time
I’m a drummer, have been for ~10 years. Sometimes when learning new things (different rolls/fills/ornamentations) I get frustrated and leave it for 3-6 days, and come back to it to realize that I’m far better at whatever I’m learning!
Music is like learning a language. There are patterns and it involves creativity to play with what you already know. After I learned this little hack I moved on to using it in just about anything I’m learning… Give it some time, and voila! Really, it’s absolutely astonishing and fascinating how your brain can do so much ‘background’ work and accelerate you without really any conscious effort.
@CaerlanChris I learned German to quite a fluent level (although I’m sad it’s quite faded - use it or, yes, lose it!) and I gave myself intervals of time off sometimes. Take some time, let your brain rest, and you may be very well surprised. Really, I agree 100% with @Richmountart
All really helpful replies - thanks so much. I do realise it’s normal and I will get past it. I do take breaks and I do ‘mix it up’…I watch Welsh TV with subtitles, I read Welsh books for beginners, play Welsh word games online. I try to write a little Wlesh each day and speak Welsh as often as I can. Even to the cat.
I think what’s foxing me is all the variations of the many versions of a past tense. We’ve got ‘wnaeth’…then along comes ‘oedd’…then we have ‘dweudodd e’ (not wnaeth e dweud?). I don’t know if these are peculiar to particular verbs? Or are they optional variations? I feel a bit cluttered in the ‘past tense’ department. I do have a really good grammar book but I’m just trying to make sense of the examples we’ve learned so far. I feel that I’ve misunderstood some basic principle. I know you’ll all make soothing noises…but what am I not grasping?
You can say wnaeth e ddweud - He did say, dweudodd e - he said, Oedd e’n dweud - he was saying, English has loads of past tenses too. Learning Welsh has made me thing so much about my use of English. When we learn a language we start to realise how much we take for granted in our own language.
Essentially - Oedd = was, something over a period of time, Wnaeth = did, a one off. Welsh also has a short form (dweudodd) and loads of verbs have this form too. Often it’s interchangeable with “wnaeth”. It’s the difference between “he said” and “he did say”, it’s a subtle difference, you’d probably ignore it in English.
Essentially - don’t worry. If you say - wnes i ddweud instead of dweudes i, you’d be understood completely!
What a great way of putting it! Yes, all the different forms of past tense can be a bit overwhelming. There are subtle differences (i.e. in context) just as there are in English - and I’m not going to go into the grammatical names for each type (your grammar book will do that!) - so you get equivalents of things like: he did say / he was saying / he said etc. This context recognition will come in time the more listening you do, so until then you won’t be misunderstood if you use whichever one pops into your head first.
Does that help?
It all helps enormously - many thanks again. So would you suggest that I plough on - hurling scruffy Welsh at anyone with a pulse - safe in the knowledge that they’ll get the gist of what I’m saying and the subtle nuances of perfect Welsh grammar will magically appear over time? 
I love word games! Where do you find these?
(And I agree with what everyone else has posted, it’s not just you!)
100% yes!! Don’t worry about mistakes!
Here are the two that I play at the moment:
http://baltoslav.eu/hulnia/cym.php?mova=en
https://www.memrise.com/course/49854/150-welsh-verbs-for-everyday-conversation/1/garden/learn/
Great fun - just keeps the learning process spread out across the methods!
Diolch am hynny! Thanks for that! I do “play” Memrise, but I didn’t know about the other one!
I also have a Welsh crossword puzzle app on my iPad called Brwydr Croeseiriau. It’s meant for children, I think, so they aren’t too hard - but I still need a dictionary sometimes to figure out what the clues mean, or to translate the word I think it might be in English to Welsh! I think it’s also available for Android.