In the last part of Lesson 6-1, where we do all the practice sentences, one of them is:
I will want to know why you want to give it to me.
I came up with: Bydda i’n moyn gwybod pam ti’n moyn ei rhoi e i fi.
But I think I’m hearing Iestyn and Cat say: Bydda i’n moyn gwybod pam wyt ti’n moyn ei rhoi e i fi.
If there is “wyt ti’n” in the sentence, I’m a bit confused because we’ve only used that as a question phrase. If someone could clarify, I’d be very appreciative. (I’m not worried, just curious ) And please correct anything I wrote that is wrong.
This is an interesting lesson…I did better than I expected the first time through (which isn’t to say great). I’ve read on the forum about how the Lessons 6 are really hard, so maybe my expectations were set really low! I went through it a second time, and still spent a huge amount of time paused before I could say each sentence. I’m sooooo slow at processing what I need to say. But it’s quite rewarding to find out I said a sentence correctly, even if it did take me forever. Going to do it again and see if I can get a bit quicker.
I was confused aswell especially as you’ll later on often hear Cat say “ti’n” and Iestyn say “wyt ti’n” so I’ve just dismissed this “problem” according not to be stuck on it. I just took the thing that way: Whatever I say it’s allright to say. As Iestyn foten says, no matter what you say (in this matter or any other tiny thing) everyone will understand you.
So my suggestion would be use whatever you think is right. I’d say “it’n moyn” though too.
@Tatjana - Thanks! Glad to know you hear those differences. I listened hard to see if Iestyn and Cat seemed to be saying something different, but I thought they sounded very much the same in that particular case. I think you are absolutely right to dismiss the “problem”! I did the same thing when learning the phrases with “Does dim” because I hear Iestyn saying “dos” (like the Spanish number two) and Cat saying “doys” so I just picked one and didn’t worry about it. Also, I’m like you, in terms of not knowing anyone who speaks Welsh…I’m not sure there ever will be anyone to understand me speak, even if maybe they could
@mikeellwood - When you say “we say it both ways round in English”, I’m not sure how I’d (technically) translate those two phrases differently…do you mean something like “why you want to give it to me” vs. “why you do want to give it to me”? (I’ve only been learning Welsh for a month…)
You will hear Iestyn saying does and does dim (I hear more like dos and dos dim) and Cat saying doys and doys dim almost every time so you really shouldn’t mind much for this difference. There will be quite a lot of them in the future (in further lessons) aswell and i can tell you from my own experiences that you just take whatever you say easier and with more confidence. I found those differences frustrating and strange at first too, but then I just went with the flow because you’ll notice there are more and more of them (those differences) in the future. They are constant (I already have gone through the whole Course 1 and vocab lessons, Level 1 to 15th lesson, Course 2 to Lesson 15) and more and more obvious.
If it helps, I usually stick to what Iestyn says and just take a note of what Cat says so I could recognize both ways of saying things when it will (potentially) come to live conversation of a kind.
And (who tells you this though) you’re doing great, believe me, no matter how frustrating you are right now (or you are not (what would be much better)). Just keep going and don’t mind too much about differences in speach which occur during the lesson. They’re enriching your vocabulary, listening and speaking abilities.
O, yes, people, I’ve stopped moaning, can you believe it? !!!
@tatjana - Thanks so much for sharing your experiences with me and encouraging me. I am not too frustrated (I’m actually really enjoying this at the moment) but I am a person who likes to understand the details of things. It’s becoming quite clear that spoken Welsh can be pretty fuzzy on the details! I am glad to see that you are being kinder to yourself about the learning process. I am TOTALLY impressed by how much you have already accomplished, and I am sure you know a lot more than you think you do. Your English is fantastic, and you know other languages as well…you are certainly not unintelligent! And you are learning Welsh from English, which isn’t your native language, so you get triple credit there! My turn to encourage you - keep smiling!
@AnnaC I’ll give you one more thing to asure you you’re doing great: I just (now) went through the Lesson 6 Part 1 for the third (or maybe even fourth) time and didn’t do it 100 % correct.
@aran probably wouldn’t be too happy with that but I’ve measired my percentage very accurately marking down every right and wrong answer putting them into Excell creating some formulas which calculated the statistics for me and my percentage came out as 88%. And, strangly enough, I’m finally happy with this too.
@tatjana Now I KNOW you are being too hard on yourself! I think 88% is fantastic, and I’m sure Aran would be very pleased. There are some really tricky and long sentences in this lesson. I appreciate that you wrote to assure me that I’m doing great, but I hope I haven’t given you the impression that I can do any of the lessons with 100% accuracy! I sometimes use the wrong tense, forget to put ddim yn in the negative sentences, use the wrong verb, miss a verb entirely, mess up the softening, etc. etc. I’m sure I’m not anywhere near 88% even with my extensive use of the pause button. And this is on my third time through on Lesson 6-1. But I’m pretty happy when I think about how much Welsh I know now compared to a month ago when I knew nothing at all. I think it gets tougher as we learn more, in a certain way, because there are more choices (and so more possible mistakes) - and you sure know a lot more than I do if you have gotten up to Course 2 Lesson 15, plus a lot of Level 1. So… let’s both keep gweithio yn galed, be hapus, and keep smiling
Haha! I do all that mentioned above and more. And I moaned a lot was angry at myself etc, etc, but I finally stopped doing that. And yes, Lesson 6-1 even isn’t so hard but long sentences are mostly because I forget the second part of them if they’re too long.
Tenses? I many times freeze when change of tense occurs all of a sudden just can’t remember what tense it is and what I have to use. It’s even a little more tricky for me because in Slovene we usually use only one past tehse (we don’t have those “have” forms) so it’s sometimes hard to adapt.
Well in those 88 % I counted every single sound I did wrong even using wrong way of saying ddim.
Just for curiousity (now that I have some statistics) did you know that in each lesson there are approximately 140 to 170 things to be said? Prety amazing how much we learn, isn’t it?
Da iawn! Yup, I liked it. Soon you’ll surely be able to say this hwole thing in Cymraeg. I have no doubt.
Oh, I went one more time through the last three messages here and encounterred here might be missunderstanding. I didn’t want to say @aran wouldn’t be pleased with my 88 % of doing Lesson 6-1, but with me measuring, calculating and pulling out percentage because I know SSiW ins’t anything about this but I was just curious so i did it to see if I’m really such lousy learner as I say I am.
And yes, I can be satisfied with the result. My measure is below 50 % what would be allert for me to go through material (particular lesson) once again especially as I’ve done all this material 2 or 3 times before already.
@tatjana Sorry I misunderstood what you were trying to say. There’s probably nothing wrong with evaluating your progress occasionally as long as you don’t let it frustrate or discourage you. I am glad you are satisfied with what you accomplished. And how very interesting to see how many things we say in one lesson!
I tried something today. On my third time through the sentence practice at the end of the lesson, I wrote down the English sentences as I went through the practice. Then I did the practice again, letting myself look at the English as I went. The point of this was to eliminate the stress of forgetting what I am supposed to be saying, so I could focus on producing the Welsh. I did better, but still needed the pause button, and still made mistakes. Looking at the written sentence did help me with getting the tense correct, but I still made some of my usual mistakes. I realized I forget to include “sut” a lot, the way I forget to include “gallu”. (although I think the “gallu” thing is slowly improving.) My other issue has been forgetting what I said by the time I hear the correct answer, and being able to look at the English sentence helped me remember what I said! I don’t intend to do this again, and I’m sure it’s not in the spirit of SSIW, as you say, but I just wanted to see what would happen. It made me feel more confident that the Welsh is sticking. So I’m going to move on to Lesson 6-2…
I think I will now take those English sentences and try to write them in Welsh, as an exercise in learning to spell. Also probably not in the spirit of SSIW, but people post in Welsh on this forum, and I want to be able to read it
@craigf Thanks, Craig! I am interested in the differences between Southern and Northern, and hopefully after I’ve gotten comfortable with Southern, I’ll listen to some Northern lessons. But not yet…I don’t want to get confused this early on! There’s enough to try to keep straight already
I had the different isue with sut though. I tend to mix sut and beth for who knows what reason. The question words aren’t even a bit similar neither in English nor in Cymraeg so this was really strange experience. Gallu slips through my brains not to be said quite often even now when I should be acustomed to it. I caught myself when producing sentences with gallu that somewhere deep in my brains I felt gallu really isn’t that important and neccessary to be included to mind for it but when I realized I left it from sentence I was very angry upon myself.
Writing English sentences down is quite brilliant idea. At least you can remember what is needed to be said. I never came to this idea actually.
As for writing, I can perfectly understand why SSi people are not too happy with us (beginners - yah I still count myself as a beginner) to learn to write but I was very eager and this for frustrated with the fact that I can’t write for the same reason as you are mentioning however I don’t write in Cymraeg only here on the forum now and then but I wanted to give some Cymraeg personal contribution to my tweets on twitter aswell and when I listen to Radio Cymru I want my tweets to be as much in Cymraeg as possible (not all are though but they’re kind enough to read them (occassionally) anyway).
For 6-2 (let me be ashamed) I don’t remember anymore is it a bit easier or harder but I’ll know this (once again) this evening when new measuring will take placd with repeating this second part.
They say you don’t need to do 6 B (bonus lesson) but I did it when I first went through the Course 1 and it was fun so I’ll do it again. I like how @Iestyn presents the potential answers of Cymraig speaker to the question asked. So if you are happy with going through Course until now I might recommend this bonus part. It’s enjoyable and I relaxed with doing it really.
I’ve got the idea of taking sentences of listening practice after Challenge 5 in Level 1 for writen exercise in a way that @Iestyn’s sepach would actually be a dictate and I’d use pause button to create space for writing things down, but I dropped this thought for now for no reason. Probably just because I didn’t want to mess with speach. Reading things people are writing in Cymraeg (on advanced level) and trying to say them is really hard work. I caught myself i can’t read correctly even what I’ve written by myself sometimes so I just have to agree with this writing “rules” SSi stands behind. It’s especially hard when you try to read something you didn’t actually hear being spoken yet.
I didn’t realize learning to write/spell was actually discouraged…if beginners are really not supposed to do that then I will wait. I’m very impressed that you tweet in Welsh to Radio Cymru! Thanks for the information on the bonus lesson - I will look forward to it.
I had to look up “pob lwc” but I know what “gyda” means! Thanks!
It means Good luck. and I really wish you good luck.
Well, instead of learning to write sentences you’ve written in Cymraeg you rather try to produce something what you really want to say to the people and if it’s even only “Nos da.” (What means “Good night”), “Bore da.” (what means “Good morning.” or simple “Diolch” (what means “Thanks.”).
That’s how I started to write little tiny things which I wanted to say on twitter. In time you will be able to write quite some things and won’t (possibly) be afraid of sending a little tweet (if you have twitter acount) or message through the net to the people. At least I just took the deceision and tried. Just don’t be discouraged by what I’ve said about writing. I just wanted to say that you shouldn’t try too hard with writing at this stage. You’re really at the beginning so go step by step. if you feel you can manage to write something then do it but if you don’t just wait until you will be confident about the thing. You might look at written guedes which links to are on the first page of each old course but use them just for revision and when you really try to write something. I personally when I wanted to write something - tweet or so - I first had a thought of what I already learnt and what I potentially could say and rather went for what I can then searching for new phrases and words (I did it only if really neccessary). The big exception is my blog post which I have written out of kind of vow (see topic “My Challenges” if interested).
Well, how you did with 2nd part of Lesson 6?
I found it less hard then first part but my tongue entangled when saying “Byddi di’n” and “Fyddi di ddim yn” and strangly (or not) there were times when I totally mixed up “hynny” and “amdani”.
@tatjana Lesson 6-2 is going well. The first time I listened to it, I was doing other things and couldn’t use the pause button. So I mostly listened carefully and practiced the new patterns without really trying too hard on the rest of the sentence. Fyddi di ddim yn is a total tongue twister for me, and it took me a lot of listening and repeating just that phrase to get it in my head. Second time through I could give it my full attention and use the pause button, and that went okay. Today I will go through it again. I need more practice before I have any hope of not using the pause button all the time. I’ve been making up lots of sentences of my own, and I can say those faster than I can respond during the lesson. So I’ve learned a lot, I just need to produce it a lot faster! And now I officially know how to say…
) And please correct anything I wrote that is wrong.
)