The Diolch! Thank you! thread

Sometimes I’m playing around the forum just searching things of my interest and I found out I have to put a bit of EDIT here because I found “real” Dave Rogers (the right one) on this forum. So the thanks I’ve mentioned in the post goes to you @daverogers in deed and all the rest you can read here.

So @Dysgu-Cymraeg let me be excused for the mistake (as I’ve already said) … unless Dave somehow opened 2nd acount here. :slight_smile:

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I’m really enjoying going ‘back in time’ and thinking about all the people I have to thank…

This week’s thank you from me goes to Eleri Swift Jones - she was my tutor when I moved to Porthmadog - and she was the first person to tell me that she thought I would become a fluent speaker - which, as you’ll know from your own experiences, is a HUGELY important moment - it still means the world to me, thinking about it now… :slight_smile:

She also made the very interesting comment that stayed with me permanently - which I’ve now seen over and over in other learners - that people who use their first language to a very high level of proficiency often find it psychologically more difficult to acquire a second language - because they’re less willing to accept the process of making mistakes and losing status.

It was certainly one of my main challenges - and that comment became a huge part of why I spend so much of my time on here emphasising the enormous importance of mistakes…:slight_smile:

Diolch, Eleri! :star: :dizzy:

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142 comments in 20 days - I’m loving this thread… :heart:

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My big thank you this week goes to @carolynh who I met at Bootcamp. Carolyn, if you don’t know her, has the greatest sense of fun ever… her dry wit, laughter and sense of enjoyment carried me through Bootcamp. Thanks Carolyn, I wouldn’t be speaking Welsh today without all you help!

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Just reading through an old thread and I realised how much I miss @owainlurch on here. I know there was a spat between him and another member (of which I have my opinion on who the aggressor was) but I saw him as a very valuable member of this forum. His replies always seemed to be from his knowledge base and not the result of a Google search made to look like his own like we see now and then. When he did research he always referenced. Above all I liked his sense of humour, his wit, his writing style, and his grace. He was always willing to help. So … Thank you @owainlurch.

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I among all. Guilty as charged! But at the end we kind of settled the things for what I’m endlessly thankful. And after that he came back (at least for a while). The latest I know, @owainlurch was quite busy with the family and things so I hope this is really the reason why.

Owain, I hope you’re right. I actually mss you too. My thenks will come in full amount but a bit later though. For now … Thank you for everything you’ve done for me and you’ve (not knowingly maybe) done a lot, believe me.

Hwyl!
Tatjana :slight_smile:

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It was nothing to do with you @tatjana, that spat was with someone else.

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Ah, diolch @gruntius. Relieved. :slight_smile:

Diolch @tatjana for telling me about “Enaid Coll” (Master Reboot)! I bought it a couple of weeks ago and have since been slowly trying to get through it (with a friend since I’m too scared to play it alone :smile:) Really interesting story! Diolch yn fawr for Skyping with me and for being so supportive to everyone on the forum :slight_smile:

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This week I would like to say Diolch o galon to @maynard , I am not sure if he knows this, but my first proper Welsh conversation was with him whilst we were walking along the cliff top at Tresaith. I just was just about able to tell him I had been in the RAF but now worked in a school. John’s patience with someone whose Welsh was far far worse than his own was really appreciated at the time. Especially in The Ship over a few beers!

He gave me the confidence to know I was going to get somewhere with this language. I didn’t have the Welsh Words at the time to explain this to him, and we have not managed to catch up in person since, but this thread gives me the chance to say to John, Diolch yn Fawr iawn :slight_smile:

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You know, I was thinking about @owainlurch yesterday… Just after I started learning, he invented a neat little card game for making up silly stories and rather generously sent out copies to anyone who wanted one. (I think I still owe him a beer…) I inflicted it on the nice ladies of the Barry meet up, about the 3rd time I met them, and I’m still not sure what they thought!! :laughing:
Three years later I’m finally off on a bootcamp and amazingly not only remembered about it but remembered where I put it!

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@owainlurch is alive, well and still in Abertawe (Swansea). He is. I think, a little less politically active than his Cariad, but not much! He left the Forum by choice. In view of my own recent history, (Mea culpa, etc thread), I will say no more.

And here’s Wednesday again. Now a bit of a feedback.

I’ve posted the link to my posts in this thread to all 3 whom I thanked and I’ve got lovely responses from Siôn and from @daverogers on twitter. They both said they’re delighted they could help and I’m happy that they still want me to keep in touch with them. Thank you both one more time.

The two brothers are probably too busy as they always have 1001 things to do in every field of their interest and there surely are new stuff to do since they’re much older now.

And now some replies before I anounce the 4th person(s)/organization/community who I’d like to thank to this week.

WOW! This is cool. It’s pointless to ask you if you play it in Cymraeg, I believe. So, well done! The story is interesting but riddles you have to solve are probably quite hard sometimes if in Cymraeg, aren’t they? And, I only watched my son playing the game, and I was too scared to try it at least. Especially that calm but yet strange music is always there to give you a sense of something scarry will happen in the next minute. :slight_smile:

It is all my pleasure to skype with you although I didn’t have much time lately. And being supportive is both, my pleasure and obligation. That’s why we’re here after all, to get and give support and encouragment we need and seak. So the Diolch could very well go oposite way as well. :slight_smile:

And now, the fourth thank you goes to those who are probably one of the most deserving for our constant progress in learning Welsh, especially after we’ve done all material on here and we’re striving to do more, to get out of our knowledge of the language the most … Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this thank you goes to BBC Radio Cymru and BBC Radio Wales! Why both? Because they both were my companions even before I started to learn Welsh with SSiW. I’ve listened BBC Radio Wales mostly at the evenings and there was not only English language to be heard but bits of Cymraeg too especially in Chris Needs’ Garden (but more about that in one of later editions of the Diolch posts). If I tweeted in Cymraeg, they tweeted back in Cymraeg and, especially BBC Radio Cymru numerous times published my tweets live on the air. This many times drove me further in my learning, or better in my search for the perfect course to learn Cymraeg until Dave Rogers came to my aid and recommended me SSiW. After I started to learn through the SSiW method, the tweets to (especially) Radio Cymru were even longer, more complex and even more confident. It is interesting how listening to Radio Cymru made me really confident in tweeting in Cymraeg even before I found SSiW, never leaving me in doubt I wouldn’t be understood. I admit Google Translate was many times my companion in composing tweets (as is now too sometimes) but getting replies back on twitter and with publishing my tweets on the air I used Google less and less and now only spelling is what I (mostly) check with it.

So in a way, BBC Radio Cymru is one of those, with their people on the air and those tweeting (maybe they are the same though) who just have to accept some guilt of that the right people could fiund me and my (sometimes silly) tweets who brought me on here. Ooo, yes Radio Cymru and Radio Wales - I proclaim you as guilty as charged of helping to make more and more Welsh speakers!

Diolch yn fawr iawn BBC Radio Cymru and BBC Radio Wales for ever responding to me and for responses in Cymraeg rather then English! It is my delight to speak and write the ancient language of Gods now!

To be continued next week …

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Actually it’s been going pretty well so far :blush: I’ve been translating every piece of text we find and I’ve only had to look up words a couple of times. She’s pretty impressed :smile: (sorry, this should go to the “small breakthroughs” thread!)

Yes, definitely! The childhood memory music was so horrible…

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I’d have to run this game one more time though as I don’t actually remember exactly the melodyies of the music, but I remember all is kind of kalm but yet it holds you in expectation and tension all the time. I know even music itself scared me although it’s actually not scarry at all. :slight_smile:

WOW! Great! Well, my son switched to Welsh just for me one time when I didn’t learn Welsh properly yet and it seamed quite hard to me. Nowdays it surely wouldn’t be that hardd though. :slight_smile: I might gather that courage one day to play it though. :slight_smile:

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Wohoo! I believe in you! :smile:

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:smile: Diolch (thanks) :slight_smile:

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Slightly different one this week. I would like to thank the Gwasanaeth Gwaed Cymru (Welsh Blood Service). A while ago I signed up and opted to have all correspondence in Welsh. For various reasons today was the first chance I’ve had to make an appointment. I’d forgotten I’d opted for Welsh. When they handed me the iPad (ohh la la) to fill out the 40 question questionnaire, low and behold it was all in Welsh!! I never realised I knew the word siffilis!

So thank you Gwasanaeth Gwaed Cymru for more than a token gesture. For taking the language registration seriously and following through.

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I’m really loving the way in which different people have chosen different days as their regular weekly diolch! :stars:

Me, I’m sticking with Friday - and today I want to thank my friend Richard Evans. Richard was one of the first people I got to know 100% only through the medium of Welsh - when we were both volunteers for the housing and language pressure group Cymuned - and he made me deeply and genuinely welcome when I was still an obvious outsider.

I will never forget the sheer pleasure (and the massively valuable practice) of sitting in his living-room understanding about 5% of what his wife and daughters were saying, and trying to smile my way through it - thank heavens that Richard himself had the patience and clarity for me to follow what he was saying a little more easily!

Richard and Gwen have become lifelong friends of ours, and one of the best things about being in Carmel now is that we’re only ten minutes or so away from them. They’re god-parents to Angharad Lliar, and just one example of how becoming a Welsh-speaker changed my life immeasurably for the better for ever… :slight_smile:

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Appreciations are one of the most important things we can give each other. I’m still lousy at it :wink: At the same time, it can be oddly easier to give thanks than to receive it, so to delay responding to Aran in a certain other thread, :wink: , I’m going to post my first Diolch here.

Diolch to my faithful team of beta testers for the iOS app: @AnnaC, @AdrianG, @faithless78, @MikesBox330, @garrettpless, @jamesmahoney, @tolu, @jimhoyle. This is everyone who’s installed a beta test recently, but thanks also to those who helped in the past. All the feedback that you’ve given me has been hugely helpful.

And an extra-special shout-out to @AnnaC who has gone way beyond the call of duty on several occasions to help track down frustrating bugs!

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