I sometimes mix ‘dweud’ and ‘siarad’, not so much as ‘siarad’ is firmly printed in my memory from childhood. Wanting and needing are problems, but I have just had a bit of a light-bulb moment that I have been trying to remember them in strings of other words ‘ma dal isie i fi’ - I still need to and ‘dw i dal yn moyn’ - I still want. Just realised this as I was looking over the vocabulary.
Helo Mari,
Congratulations on your determination to learn Welsh—that deep desire, persistence and willingness to come on this Forum will pay off as you learn to SSiW. As others have already said—many of us share the confusions you mention—so join the club! But it is a great club—a wonderfully helpful and encouraging group of people that you have ‘lucked into’ here.
You mentioned your struggle, but I found there is truth in the saying that we learn from our mistakes. If you ever need to be convinced, glance through the thread ‘What am I hearing or missing…’ because that is where I recorded and found amazing support through the struggle.
You asked for strategies to try. All the advice and encouragement Aran and Iestyn offer in the Introductions and during each Lesson are brilliant, but we each need to experiment to find the right approach which will probably change from time to time. For example, being profoundly hard of hearing (stone deaf on one side) I had to create visual ‘clues’, hit the pause button, take dictation, rewind, recheck, and if still puzzled then come on the Forum to ask if I were really hearing an ‘r’ or ‘d’ in a particular phrase—and the answer always came straight back helping.
The SSiW website is excellent because you can pull up the vocabulary at need, and although the strength of the method is simply to listen and respond verbally, some of us do need visual clues at times. The trick seems to be not to rely on them as a crutch, just ‘check it out’ then close that window and carry on. Yes I had to repeat lessons, but I would do the ‘slow going’ approach early in the day, taking about an hour per lesson. Then I would do it again later in the day, only using the pause button a little bit. The next day I would move on.
To make it ‘fun’ I created a little game—a horse race, pitting lessons in the Old Course against the New ones—not really to be recommended, but the Forum angel Tatjana really cheered me on illustrating it, and I really did imagine these two approaches like a steeplechase with hurdles to jump over, sometimes getting bogged down when the going got tough, sometimes streaking along. Making it a game took away the natural ‘seriousness’ I tend to have when trying to learn.
One other thing to try at the stage you are at—a Bootcamp, even if it is one you have to create for yourself. Others, like me, have done that too and there are threads on the Forum describing different versions. When I hit Lesson 5, since I live in Vancouver and could not sign up for one in Wales, I set aside a weekend Bootcamp—made meals and snacks in advance—including Welsh cakes, brewed pots of coffee and put some wine in the fridge, then set up a space specially for it adding little touches like daffodils. Sounds crazy? My husband was on a choir retreat, which meant I could scoff most of the Welsh cakes myself as ‘rewards’. From Friday to Sunday night I did SSiW as intensively as I imagined folk would do it on a real Bootcamp, even taking my MP3 player (which I bought specially to record lessons) when I went for walks, and went on the Forum to share little successes, breakthroughs or difficulties. That weekend made the world of difference because of the rate of progress I made, so I can only guess (with envy) what a huge leap folk make on the real thing.
Mari, by finding your way on to this Forum you have already demonstrated your determination to learn and discovered the joy of finding friends to cheer you on. Maybe horse-racing is not an image that helps—for you perhaps it is a ‘hero’s journey’ or some kind of trek or cultural pilgrimage—find an image that will draw you into the story and help you visualize the progress you are making despite the obstacles to be tackled.
All the best,
Marilyn
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I also mix “dweud” and “siarad” and in the same way mix up “hablar” and “dicer” on the Spanish course and also “querer” and “necessitar” (want and need).
I have found the course difficult, having done Welsh in school, albeit fifty five years ago. Some sounds seem to have changed as well most notably “cymraeg”.
I went through the first ten challenges on Level 1 and restarted again at challenge 5. It worked a lot better. I did the same with Spanish a number of times at different levels and found it worked. Also I remember that the Spanish course was difficult at first despite having done another course just before SSi.
Keep at it - I hope it works out for you
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You absolutely can do it! I have experienced all the above apart from true deafness, My ears are just as old as the rest of me and I really am an old dragon! So eyes and ears and memory not what it once was but impatience just as strong as ever! Also, I am relearning and expect more from self! I have tried both current challenges and the old course of lessons. I found the old more tne sort of structure of learning that I had been used to. But clearly the challenges work! Try, try and try again. Don’t repeat until you have at least 5 to repeat and do it all in batches of .5. Yell for help when needed!
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Welcome to the forum.
It’s supposed to be difficult. The important thing is to keep going back to it. I found a lot of the course was learning how to deal with your frustrations and just let things happen, just stick with a strategy until you can think of a better one. 60% is amazingly good. I probably went through the entire course up to now with a similar percentage. Once you can manage your expectations and frustrations,often then, the Welsh is easy/
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That’s not bad at all! Anyone getting over 10% right is actually making genuine progress - so my first comment here is that part of your frustration is just about not knowing how normal this is for the process… 
Having said that, the dyslexia indicators are a bit of a flag - there is evidence that dyslexia and a weak working memory are correlated, and one of the key issues we see with people who find the approach more difficult is working memory (although it’s not the only one).
That makes me feel that you might be well-advised to do two things - one, shift your expectations slightly about what is ‘doing well’ (I’m serious that 60% is nowhere near worrying) - and two, be kind to yourself with repeating lessons - just make sure that you don’t get caught in the ‘stuck on one lesson forever’ trap. Maybe give yourself a limit of 3 runs-through before moving on, and only coming back for (say) a fourth once you’ve got through a set of 5 lessons. So you might do 6 three times, 7 three times, 8 three times, 9 three times, 10 three times - and at that stage you’ve earned the right to go back to 6 once or twice more - something along those lines.
One other question - how long has it taken you to get through the first five challenges?
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It has taken me about a fortnight to get this far. I’m unsure about how many revisits and partial sessions I have done in this time. I think I should keep a record of what I have done so I can try a few things out and see what works best for me. I assume the challenges are structured to have similar levels of ‘challenge’ for the learner.
Thank you all, I am glad I asked.
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Hi Mari, I had to repeat lessons too. Some I just seemed to fly through and others just would not stick. I think when I started I was doing one or two a week practicing each day and then others I got straight away. Still mix “need and must” constantly and miss out “have” a lot but think this is to do with how I listen to English. However, it does work and I do enjoy the journey.
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In which case, you are cantering along at a fair old pace - at that rate, you’d finish Level 1 in about two and a half months - and people who’ve done Level 1 consistently turn out to be capable of surviving for a week without any English - so compared to any evening class, you’re going ‘whooooooosh’!..
Keeping track of what you’re doing is a good idea - just for your own confidence - but from everything so far, I’d say that even with the slight query over the dyslexia markers, you’re doing excellently as is…
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Hi Mari,
I experienced similar things to you when I started. For the first fortnight I really could not stop myself getting “I have to” and “I need to” mixed up. I really didn’t know what was causing it. I was convinced it was my head playing tricks with me because the difference between the two sentence meanings in English is so subtle that maybe my head was stopping me from learning them…
After all, when would you ever say “I need to”, accidentally instead of “I have to” and not be understood?
SSIW has a very clever way of picking up stuff a few lessons down the road. I’ve done loads of lessons in my time where I’ve come to the end and my wife says to me “So, what did you do in today’s lesson?” and I reply “Um… no idea - can’t remember a single word of it!”
…then 3 days later, I’m pulling the words out of some distant long forgotten part of my brain - somehow.
You’re doing great, enjoy the process. Try not to worry too much about it.
Start walking around your house and talk to yourself in your new language - tell yourself that “I need to make a cup of coffee”, “I have to go to work” etc etc and you’ll surprise yourself!
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Hi @MariHughes,
Best of luck in your new venture! There have been a few discussions on what is meant by success. It is closely connected to what we mean by fluency in a language. My take of the matter is that the more you use a language, the better you will get. The same is probably true of one’s mother tongue, so “success” is ultimately a relative term here. If you are able to say or understand a single spoken phrase in Welsh after learning on SSiW (or via any other medium) then you have already succeeded. And you also have room to improve, which lasts a lifetime. So best of luck for the future and well done for what you’ve done.
One strategy that I use for learning new words is to do some of the vocab courses on Memrise on the Internet. It’s not for everyone, but a few minutes here and there works for me after a while: meaning that it expands my vocab. There are also good vocab lessons right here at the end of ‘old’ Courses 1 and 2 in SSiW.
And if you live in Wales you should get right out and use what you have.
Pob lwc!
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Thank you for taking time to respond and encourage me. I’d love to view that thread but I can’t get the search function to work on this forum, perhaps because I am using a chromebook. Please could I have a link.
Thank you to all respondents; I do feel encouraged. I’m going to try a few things out to see if they help. Diolch
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Must be something else - I’m on a chromebook - but here’s the link:
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Must be my broadband then. Anyone would think I lived in the mountains. Diolch.
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You should try living in Vancouver Mari–we are really ‘behind the times’–8 hours to be exact
Good luck–persistence even with computers seems to pay off too!
Cheers,
Marilyn
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You say you’re doing the challenges Mari (@MariHughes ) . When I first started I did lessons then, after a break, in error went into challenges, and just thought the course and title had been revised. I thought wow! the course has got harder but then realised there were challenges and lessons (found by clicking the triangle thing at top of main page I think) So now I’m firmly back on lessons and so maybe try them instead (starting from as early a lesson you feel makes sense for you at your stage). Challenge 7 for example is far harder than lesson 7 and probably assumes you’ve had practice at the words being used. All the best
First of all “Da iawn” for learning Welsh!
I know that the SSi method is focusing on pushing ahead and not getting stuck in the repetition bog, but you need to give yourself some time to digest and get your head around new concepts. Learning a language takes time and especially in the beginning even small steps can require a lot of effort because it is so many new things all at once. Take your time and enjoy the small victories!
You’re going to get words mixed up and you’re going to have to settle for using words that are approximately right because you can’t think of/don’t know the right word. You’ll have moments when you manage to get every single tense of a single verb into the same sentence. But it doesn’t matter, because you are communicating and your improving. It’s amazing how much arm waving and a sympathetic listener can help.
Also try to figure out exactly what you’re struggling with and how do you learn best/fastest in other areas? I can’t remember a word if I don’t see it written down. I’m a word image person and it really doesn’t matter how many times I hear a new word, unless I see it written down it just won’t stick and in new languages I won’t even always hear it “right”. I used to do flash cards when I started out learning Welsh, with colour coding and little drawings, as that helped me remember the image of the word.
If you too need visual cues but don’t want to mix in the written words that you struggle to remember (as more in keeping with the SSi method) you could for instance draw pictures and use them as to trigger your memory of difficult words. It doesn’t really matter what you draw since what you’re doing is strengthening your associations to that word to make it easier to recall when needed. For phrases, you can imagine/do little pantomines that illustrate what ever it is.
Are you using your Welsh outside of lessons/challenges? Mumbling/thinking “Dw i eisiau coffi” as you go to put the coffee on, “Dw i’n gyrru car” as your driving to work etc is perfectly normal if it helps you get more familiar with the language! And you have the benefit of trying repetedly until you figure it out.
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Hi Mari,
Congratulations on making it to five challenges! I agree with previous commenters that it sounds like you’re pushing yourself quite hard, and have a possibly unrealistic idea of what good progress is, and are kicking yourself because you feel you’re falling short.
A large part of your problem appears to be a lack of confidence rather than a lack of natural ability, so I’m going to describe a strategy that has helped boost my own confidence.
When we are learning something new - knitting, juggling, cake decorating, playing the piano, doing cryptic crosswords, learning a language, anything at all - we tend to compare ourselves to those who have mastered it already, and that’s usually the person teaching us. But if we do that, it means we are always going to feel inadequate. OK, then, so maybe we should compare ourselves to our fellow learners instead of the teacher. But that doesn’t help much either. If we’re learning the new skill in a classroom, we definitely compare ourselves to them - we look around and have a peek at what others are doing, and we notice they seem to be picking it up so much faster than we are.
I don’t know about you, but whenever I was learning some kind of practical skill, such as craftwork, I was always among the slowest learners in the class. Here in SSiW, the equivalent is this forum. We skim through a few posts, and notice that even relative beginners already seem so much more competent and confident than we are - asking grammatical questions we don’t even understand, or dropping Welsh phrases in to their comments. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking: what’s wrong with me? Why am I getting so few answers right? Why am I forgetting things almost as soon as I learn them? Why am I so slow? And that mindset of “I’m so inadequate” just makes things worse, and is hard to climb out of.
What helps me is to imagine myself in a different role. For a short time each day - maybe ten minutes or so, whatever I’ve got time for - I’m no longer a learner of Welsh. I’m a teacher of Welsh. I know more Welsh than anyone around me, and I’m going to teach them.
Now, you may think this idea is ridiculous - after all, you’re only five challenges in! But that’s five challenges more than many people have ever learned, including people who have lived in Wales for decades. You are equipped to teach somebody five challenges’ worth of Welsh.
You may also be thinking - who can I teach? - I can’t teach another adult, it’s too embarrassing. I’ll feel silly. Fair enough. Is there a young child in your life - your own child or grandchild, or a friend’s child you can borrow? A 2 to 4-year-old is excellent. They are old enough to copy your Welsh phrases and answer questions, but still young enough to think you’re on a par with a deity and not feel inhibited or make you feel embarrassed.
No child in your life? OK, then, do you have a dog or even a cat? They’re not going to answer you, obviously, but it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to cast them in the role of attentive pupil. (Well, maybe the cat is not that attentive.) No suitable living creature at all? Then you’ll have to imagine them. Imagine you’re standing in front of a class. They’ve never heard a single word of Welsh. You’re going to teach them. You. You, Mari, are a teacher of Welsh. You have five challenges’ worth of Welsh in your head, and you’re going to pass on this knowledge to your imaginary class. You can do it.
If you can fully imagine yourself in a teacher’s role, it will boost your confidence no end. As you carefully explain some grammatical concept or some tricky pronunciation to your imaginary “class”, it will help clarify and solidify the same concept in your own mind. As you push your “students” to repeat back to you the Welsh translation of the English sentence you just gave them, you’re actually searching in your own mind for it.
I do this role playing nearly every day, often in bed if I can’t sleep, and it helps my confidence tremendously. I usually end my imaginary “class” mightily impressed at how much Welsh I actually can remember, that I never thought I could.
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Thank you, Matilda!
That’s one of the best posts we’ve ever had on the forum… 
@Deborah-SSi - one for the email…
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Thanks, @aran, I appreciate that.
I’ve mentioned it once or twice before in this forum, and in fact, the first time I did, I felt a bit of a goose. I don’t have a small child in my house, only a bored and unimpressed cat, so my “class” is imaginary. And let’s face it, telling people that you role-play to an imaginary audience is the rough equivalent of confessing that you dance around in your underwear playing air guitar and miming along to “Old Time Rock and Roll”.
I was also worried that someone might heap scorn on the idea of a student, someone no more than ten or so lessons in (as I was at the time) daring to think she could role-play a teacher of Welsh. What? A student, thinking she now speaks enough Welsh that she can teach it to other people? The impertinence! It takes years to be good enough to teach!
But, I thought, this role-playing-a-teacher method genuinely does boost my confidence and help my learning, and maybe if I explain what I do, it might help someone else.
So I did, and I was pleasantly surprised that no one laughed (well, not publicly, anyway), and no one was scornful. On the contrary, a few people agreed that the best way to confirm you understand something is to try and explain it to another person.
Someone - I forget who - said that in their workplace, they call it “playing dog”, i.e. “I need to think through a problem out loud. Can you play dog for a moment, and listen?” Just having an audience, even if it’s only a dog, or a person pretending to be a dog, who doesn’t understand a thing you’re saying but is listening anyway, can help you clarify your thoughts.
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