I went to Ynys Mon every year as a child as far back as I can remember, and they were magical holidays. We stayed on a farm near Cemlyn and had long days on the beaches and long nights playing on the farm - hiding in the huge hay barn, playing with the numerous half wild kittens that seemed to be born there each year, and walking to Cemlyn down the winding lanes in the evening to see the light go down over the sea and struggling back in a dense darkness you only get in the most rural communities…I never wanted to go home. I still feel the same about Ynys Mon and still go every year, staying all over the island. I hope to get a home there in the next ten years. I don’t want to live in Wales without being able to join in completely and speak this beautiful language, which you hear all the time on Ynys Mon.
Also my gran was an Evans so surely some ancestry in the deeper past?!
My mother is Welsh, but never learnt the language (and so far I haven’t been able to find any of the Welsh ancestors who did either - in Pembrokeshire). But now I’m married to someone from Snowdonia and we have recently moved to Cardiff, so I was determined to learn.
Last night we went out to a new social group here for Welsh speakers, and there were a lot of people there who had learned Welsh (mostly completely fluent). On the way home, my wife was saying how it warmed her heart to meet so many people who had embraced the language, some of whom had made such great efforts to learn it (e.g. one guy from London). So dal ati, folks - it’s a great thing you’re doing 
I have wanted to speak Welsh all my life but until I discovered SSiW I simply didn’t have the opportunity - won’t go into details here as to why -but what a great difference it has made to my life especially as I am lucky enough to have a lot of friends in North Wales although I live in the south. As Joella said at the Eistedddford last year I feel more like a Cymraes now.
This is a wonderful and inspiring thread… 
I learnt Welsh because it had always been something I knew I needed to do if I was to come home properly - after a childhood and young adult life spent overseas. My grandfather was a Welsh speaker, my mother lost the language when they moved to England when she was 6, and it feels like a nice neat and tidy circle that my children are now growing up first language speakers a stone’s throw (or two) from where my grandfather’s family lived…
My reason is very much the same as Karla’s. To “culture” I’d add “and history”. I’ve lived in the UK for not far off 40 years, but have only “discovered” Wales in the past eight years or so. Listening to the Welsh language is like listening to music! - and I’m really happy to be learning it.
I’m in the US, and don’t have any family or other connection to Wales. But I’ve been interested in Wales and the Welsh language since childhood. I’m sure it started from being a voracious reader. When I was in high school (a very long time ago), one of my friends and I sent away for application information to the University of Aberystwyth, even though we knew going there was only a dream. Recently, I was reading a book that had a lot of Welsh people and place names, and I really wanted to know how to pronounce them correctly. So off I went to Google, and eventually ended up at SSiW. I thought it would be fantastic if I could learn to speak Welsh, but I never really thought it would happen. I tried Lesson 1…and here I am nearing the end of Course 1, and eager for more. Dw i’n gallu siarad Cymraeg a dw i’n hapus iawn! Diolch yn fawr iawn to Aran and Catrin and Iestyn and Cat for this amazing way to learn! 
Love hearing everyone’s stories!
What do you do? I’m an occupational therapist and that’s another reason I want to learn Welsh. We’re planning on moving to Wales in the next few years, and I want to be able to speak to patients in Welsh.
I’ve always been a bit of a Welshophile even before I met my husband, I think the language and accent is lovely. Sadly he’s lived in London too long and lost his accent (it does come back when he goes home though). Does Iestyn run a Welsh accent elocution bootcamp?! 
For five years now…in Tresaith.
Excellent. I’ll send him along and tell him he can’t come home until he’s got a proper Valleys accent!
I don’t think you have to be Welsh or even of Welsh heritage to want to learn Welsh, but of course if you are, then you have even more reason.
I don’t think I have any Welsh blood connection, but most of the ancestors I can trace for as far back as I can trace came from northern England/Southern Scotland (with a little Irish chaser 
) and at some point in time (before Saxons, Vikings and Romans) would probably have been speaking a Brythonic Celtic language which had a common root with Welsh. Well, we will never really know what they spoke because the records don’t exist, but modern Welsh is the nearest I can probably ever get to it, and it will do fine for me.
But even if I didn’t have that tenuous connection, I’d still want to study it “because it’s there”, it has a fascinating history, and let’s hope it has a great future.
It’s actually a really funny story with me. I was watching one episode of Doctor Who which dealt with a space-time rift in Cardiff and they mentioned the words Blaidd Drwg. I was intrigued by this funny language and wanted to find out more. Since that moment, I’m a total Welshophile and I even wanna live and study in Wales
I’m a nurse and work in 2 local hospitals. I’m one of that fast dying breed of nurses who actually likes to talk and (sometimes) has time to talk with my patients!
I have a lot of respect for those who are learning without someone in real life to ask (annoy constantly) about pronunciation, sentence structure etc. Mr eljay is going to rue the day he encouraged me to start learning Welsh!
@margaretnock it’s so important to be able to just chat and put patients at ease. My husband’s grandma had a stroke recently and pretty much lost the ability to speak English, made me realise even more how important it is (IMO) for me to speak Welsh if I’m going to work in healthcare in Wales.
I was talking Welsh just last night with patients. It’s worth it.
I know our versions of Aneurin’s Gododdin weren’t written down for ages after he ‘said’ them, but I have always felt that the whole description of that campaign and who was there means that ‘British’ was pretty consistent across the land under Roman rule and people from, say, Cymru Gogledd would easily have understood those from what is now mid-Scotland!
I started learning the language of my fathers more years ago than most of you have lived. I lived in England all my working life with some time in the Marches during holidays. I retired to my favourite place in the world, Gower. Now, for reasons which seemed good at the time, I live in Scotland and came on this site to help with the hiraeth and brush up my Cymraeg. I realise just how much brushing it needs!!! I promise Aran, I’ll get to it soon!!!
I was born in London but have Welsh ancestry. Wales being literally the Land of My Fathers, I felt I owed it to myself and forebears to learn the language. Also, to spare the local population from my ghastly pronunciation of place names when I holiday in Wales!
When I was really little, I first read Susan Cooper’s series The Dark is Rising. I thought then that Welsh was the most beautiful written language I’d ever seen, however, I’ve spent the majority of my life in rural Australia and thus well out of reach of the very few Welsh related things I could find in this country, so I gave it up as a bad job for a long time.
About five years ago, I convinced my partner to learn it with me and, as her father has Welsh ancestry, she was interested enough to agree. Then we struggled for a few years with various stuff before stumbling upon SSIW, and here we are!
I am Welsh but I have lived abroad for many years and learned a number of other languages. I am fluent in other foreign languages and one of them is even essential to my work (I am a translator). So it struck me as incongruous that Welsh, the native language of my native land, should have been left to the sidelines.
I grew up in Cornwall but emigrated to Tasmania with my family when I was 17. I married into a Welsh speaking family (from Gwynedd) and heard Welsh spoken by my wife and in-laws without understanding a word. My first visit to Welsh Wales was a culture shock because my previous experience was limited to a brief stopover at Cardiff airport. I still remember some of my wife’s relatives calling ‘tyrd yma’ and ‘allan’ to sheepdogs but most of the rest of what was said was lost on me. After some years I decided to learn Welsh but I am largely self taught and my learning journey has been sporadic although far more intensive over the past 5 years and with plenty of support from my adopted family. It’s been a thrill to me that when we visit Wales or when Welsh speaking family and friends visit us in Tasmania, they don’t switch to English to address me. We receive Christmas cards, letters and emails in Welsh and it gives me pleasure to read and understand them. It also gave me a huge thrill when I could communicate what I needed to and understand most of what was said to me. I enjoy a good sing along and really respond to Welsh music, which I’ve explored thoroughly. It’s not only a good cultural experience but contributes to vocabulary. One thing that really appeals to me about Welsh Wales is the importance attached to cultural pursuits. A by-product of all of this has been that I now understand the meaning of place names in Cornwall e.g. Polzeath - 7 pools, Menheniot - old stones etc. Welsh is a beautiful language, which is a good mental challenge and fun to learn. It’s also amazing to be able to speak the language of the Britons before the Angles and Saxons had even appeared in the British Isles.