To want to learn Welsh?

[CesareBorgiasSkeletonOnesie]

When I am not Welsh, do not live in Wales, an such have no connection other than really liking going on holiday there? I like learning languages (though have a habit of getting to a basic conversational standard then losing interest) but haven’t tried a Celtic language yet. DH thinks I’m being silly and should either spend the time getting better at something I already speak or ‘learn something actually useful,’ and says if we ever do go to Wales and I try to speak Welsh people will think I’m being odd.

Verdict?

Download the Say Something in Welsh app. It's a fantastic resource for beginners and the first few dozen (at least) modules are free. It's not an easy language to learn (I'm a learner) but it sounds beautiful when spoken fluently.

There are some Welsh language taught classes and conversational groups in England. One of my friends learnt in London, and I think there's one in Derby (no, no idea why).

Pob lwc!

Those of you in Wales, do you have any links for buying Welsh language read along books, you know the ones where you put the CD on and follow the words in the books? They might help with my pronunciation block. :)

I can’t see there’s any problem. Skills you need for learning a new language overlap for any language you want to learn. My husband knows some Welsh and isn’t Welsh, and doesn’t go there all the time either. His dad was born there but wasn’t actually of Welsh descent and he tells me he didn’t sound Welsh either.(l never met him, he died young). Have fun, that’s all that matters.

I keep meaning to learn enough Scots Gaelic to be able to pronounce place names. I’m not doing too badly on that. Truthfully l’d like to understand Gaelic grammar too - l am a bit weird in liking grammar! Just call me a geek ..... l need to persevere and be less distractable. I don’t live in a Gaelic area of Scotland, possibly have 1/8 Gaelic speaking ancestry (if that) but certainly no more. I think my aim now is to learn enough to follow a column in a newspaper, written by a family friend.

Do it! It's a beautiful and interesting language. I'm relearning as an adult. I have a holiday home in West Wales and hear plenty of Welsh being spoken. I also live in a village (in South Wales) with a high number of Welsh learners, an annual Welsh festival, and it's very much alive and well as a language. I also know a lot of fluent speakers/learners in the Cardiff and Vale area so efforts to maintain the language are certainly not a wasted effort.

I’m welsh and studied it as a second language at school to a level. I wish I’d been schooled in welsh.

DD is schooled in welsh and so DH - a yorkshire man - has been attempting to learn via weekly lessons for 3 years now. It’s incredibly hard if you aren’t used to hearing welsh letter sounds or learn in a way where you’re translating English sentences rather than forming them in welsh from scratch. .

Do the Welsh even speak Welsh? Lol

I can speak bits of Welsh, but am not fluent by a loooong way!
I could understand a conversation but not engage fully in one.

Its a shame as its a lovely language and the lilts to the accents are great

I'm just too lazy to learn it again!
maenad, are you near Builth? Royal Welsh?

Pob lwc op, yr wyf yn siŵr y byddwch wrth eich bodd!

Yes, lol

Another one from wales who doesn’t speak Welsh! Rydw i’n hoffi siopa is about as far as I go. But a few tips on pronunciation- to make the ‘ll’ sound put the tip of your young to the roof of your mouth and blow. Also ‘i’ is pronounced ‘ee’ and y ‘u’

If you're in South London, there's a Welsh language church in Lind Road Sutton that could give you an opportunity to hear the language in use.

Ah- Rydw i'n hoffi coffi!! And you cook tea in the popty ping!!!

" Do the Welsh even speak Welsh? Lol "

heckneck obviously yes many of them do. What a silly thing to say.
My son speaks Welsh, just heard him on the fone to his mates. However i think that was for my benefit , lol I think they speak English with Welsh phrases thrown in.
He is 'English'..
OP honestly if you want to do it, just do it, no time spent language learning is wasted.

Hellsbells I speak mandarin as I lived in China as a child, and French and Spanish. I’m not fluent in any of them but can carry on a conversation.

Would you not prefer to increase your fluency in those languages? Spanish, Mandarin and French would be potentially very useful languages to have functional fluency in.

Arabic would be another.

There used to be more on the BBC for learning but all I can find now is.
www.bbc.co.uk/wales/learning/learnwelsh/
www.bbc.co.uk/wales/welshathome/
My Welsh is spotty, I use a little at work and sometimes understand what is being said.

I say go for it. If you are interested that is enough reason to do it. Yes, there are more useful languages internationally, but none of that matters if it is Welsh that you reallywant to learn.

I have started learning Irish. I am from Ireland but have lived in a different, non-English speaking country for almost 25 years. I will almost certainly never move back to Ireland. But I still want to learn it. I´ve been doing the Duolingo app and I´m looking for a more thorough course now.

cwtch No, I'm in the Valleys

Bit of a waste of time, you can get by perfectly well in English there so why bother?

I'm not Welsh but have lived in Wales all my adult life. I tried to learn Welsh but I'm rubbish at languages I at least know the Welsh alphabet so can pronounce most things because Welsh is a phonetic language. I remember my head hurting when I had to learn about mutations though! That's the point I stopped!

Some parts of Wales people will look at you oddly if you randomly try to speak Welsh, other parts will be really helpful. I know when I was learning some of my classmates would practice in the local butcher and bakers, who were happy to help people learning.

" why bother? "

out of politeness, out of interest?

It was the language of Boudicca after all..:)

Go on Duolingo and learn Klingon and Dothraki!

why bother?

Why not? Surely the joy is in the doing when it's something like that.

It's not like op is planning on a career in languages and wants to know which would be the most useful language to learn.

If you think you'll enjoy it, go for it.

Bit of a waste of time, you can get by perfectly well in English there so why bother?

It’s attitudes like this that gives English people as a whole a bad name. Just the sheer arrogance of this statement....

I camp in Wales regularly and considered leaning to speak Welsh.

Then one time I was in Cemaes Bay, I was speaking to a Pub Owner from my City, who could speak Welsh but struggled to speak to or understand anyone because of the different dialects.

Thinking about it, the Welsh my Auntie speaks (in Colwyn Bay) is different to the Welsh spoken in other parts.

If you are a Welsh speaker from Birth, or Scottish, it must be a lot easier to get by than if you learn the language as an Adult.

However leaning a language is good for the Brain and learning anything new is good for your confidence.

My mum wanted to learn Welsh. This was back in the 80's. She went to the local paper and against the odds found enough people to form a group and a Welsh speaking lady to help them. They raised some funds to buy books and hire a too each week for the class. It ran for a few years in the end.

Why not? It's no more weird than learning any other essentially niche concern like archery, Latin, flower arranging, etc.

I don't mean its niche for Welsh speakers at all.

It's kind of like a really enjoyable mental exercise for some. Me included. Rewarding sense of mastery, a whole.new world of sounds and intonations and if you get reasonably competent an entree into another cultural world.

But... it is a small world in this case: basically draw a linew between Bangor and òoh I dunno, Borth?!?! Colour in the bit west.of that line and that is your native language community :) With clusters and outliers in other bits of Wales before anyone bites my head off

But yeah go for it. I quite fancy it too but in my case there is a family link and my dad was pretty monolingual in Welsh till age 6 and then forgot it all