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Monty Says Something in Welsh | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5549 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 25 of 76 10 September 2013 at 8:25am | IP Logged | ||
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I was speaking to a student in class today, and it turns out that they're also a big fan of SSiW and have completed part of the course...small world eh?! :)
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| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4821 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 26 of 76 10 September 2013 at 11:00pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, indeed! That's brilliant. I gather from the SSiW forum that there are quite a few SSiW students from the United States, and I've now heard a few of them speak via Youtube, and they seem pretty good! Come to think, one was interviewed on Radio Cymru recently, and (from comments made on the forum) the interviewer was impressed at the high standard. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5401 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh | Message 27 of 76 13 September 2013 at 1:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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I found the SSIW program while looking at their Latin course and completed the first lesson. It seems rather well done, I think I'll go on with it as long as I can.
I noticed that the male speaker (Northern course) says something like "tchwiya" (to try) and "ti" (you are) while the female speaker sounds more like "tsriya" and "tsi". Do you konw where this variation comes from ? On an unrelated note, the number of Welsh speakers has diminished during the last 10 years. Do you think it is temporary, i. e. due to the older generation passing away while the effects of the new teaching ssytem are not yet visible or is there a deeper probleme here ? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4821 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 28 of 76 21 September 2013 at 8:59pm | IP Logged | ||
Hi Akkadboy, Sorry for the delay in replying. I normally rely on "active topics" to see if a thread has been updated, but must have missed this. Plus I've not been updating myself recently. Mea culpa. I hadn't noticed those exact differences, although I know there are some. It's interesting how our perceptions of words can vary, perhaps because of different backgrounds, etc. I also have some hearing difficulties, which probably means I'm not hearing it as precisely as I'd like to. But for me, "to try" is "trio", with the "o" pronounced as a pure vowel, something like Italian in "o sole mio". EDIT: and the "r" has quite a strong trill from the front of the tongue. For the single familiar "you", I hear it as "ti", as in "ti'n iawn?" "are you OK?" One very obvious difference is in the first past tense that you learn, e.g. "nes i mynd" - "I went". He seems to say "neshi mynd" and she says "nessi mynd". (I prefer her version, so that's what I say, but I assume either is ok). There is one important difference between them, which you can find somewhere on their website, which is that Catrin, the lady speaker is a "from birth" speaker, whereas Aran, the male speaker, learned it as a young (I think) adult. It had been spoken in his family, but had been lost in his parents generation. Anyway, I'm delighted to hear that you like the course, and I hope you are able to carry on. On your other question: I don't know. It's been discussed on the SSiW forum. I think people don't altogether trust the census figures for one thing. I think there is a serious problem though, which is that children might be learning Welsh in school (everyone has to), but unless it is also spoken at home, it probably won't "take" properly. The number of Welsh-speaking households has dropped, I believe. That is the biggest threat to Welsh - probably. Still, on a surface level, things aren't looking too bad. Let's hope for the best. I realised I had been a bit slack with my log, but (at least until very recently) I have been fairly faithful with SSiW, and have finished Course 1. Dwi wedi gorffen Course 1! :-) What I am actually doing now is partly revising it, and partly making a list, in English, of all the topics covered in each lesson. This is proving slow going, but I think it's worth it, as I'll then be able to quickly check which lesson covers which topic. Now: I could simply use SSiW's lesson notes, but I am not going to, since they are written in Welsh, and I'm keeping as far as possible to the spirit and letter of the "no reading - no writing" "rule" that they at least suggest, if not actually lay down, at the outset. I'm afraid that if I start looking at the notes, I won't be able to stop doing it, and it will get me into bad habits, as far as the SSiW method is concerned. This is actually being slightly more purist than necessary, but I know it is necessary for me, because I know what I'm like. It's also a very interesting experiment for me, because up to now, almost all my language learning has heavily depended on written materials, so it is an interesting change to use one that is purely audio-based. (I did use Michel Thomas for Spanish, but I went straight from that on to a more conventional reading and writing (+ audio) type course, so it's not really the same. And by the time I tried the MT German course, I'd already been studying German by conventional means for many years, so again - not the same). I cannot - of course - totally avoid written Welsh, and that's not really the point. The point is not to depend on written Welsh for the actual course material (and also not to make notes as one goes along. I think it's ok to make notes in English, but I'm only doing that after having done the course once already completely. I'm also doing the daily practice sessions (5 minutes each of listening and speaking), and occasionally listening to Radio Cymru or watching something simple on S4C, like the soap, "Rownd a Rownd" (which is set in the north, and I think is aimed at learners). Haven't worked as hard on the Welsh in the last few days as I was previously, as I've been trying to get back into regular German and Danish (see separate log). Just got to get the balance right now. Hwyl fawr i bawb. Edited by montmorency on 22 September 2013 at 12:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4821 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 29 of 76 22 September 2013 at 12:19am | IP Logged | ||
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Bye the way, one consequence of the SSiW method of learning is that, at this stage
anyway, very often I do not know how new words that I learn are written. And you know what? I couldn't care less. Since I'm not planning to do any writing in Welsh any time soon (except the very occasional word here or on the SSiW forum), it really doesn't bother me. I'm not taking notes (in Welsh) as I go, since we are advised not to, and I'm more than happy not to. I have enough faith in the method that by the time I have enough Welsh under my belt to want to start writing anything I'll be able to learn how to in a very short time. The lack of reading ability bothers me a little more, but not really a great deal. I know most (I think) of the pronunciation-spelling rules and could work out how words are pronounced if I had to, but I'm not going out of my way to read anything, and will not be for quite a long time. I suspect there aren't many people on HTLAL who are going out of their way to avoid the written aspects of their TL, but I'm happy to be a guinea pig in this respect. (Of course, on the SSiW forum, I'm just one of many). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dmaddock1 Senior Member United States Joined 5426 days ago 174 posts - 426 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Esperanto, Latin, Ancient Greek | Message 30 of 76 23 September 2013 at 3:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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First, I'm enjoying following your log very much, Monty. I'm eager to get a handle on Welsh but don't have the time to devote to a serious study at the moment, so I'm studying vicariously through you!
Nevertheless, I've done the first three lessons of SSiW and the audio-only does leave me a little unsure at times. For instance, I assumed there was a 'V' sound in "dwee vim" which I recently accidentally learned was spelled "dwi ddim." Turns out, 'dd' is a voiced 'th' as in English 'then'; the English 'V' as in "voice" is spelled with an 'f' in Welsh, no? The two consonants are pretty close so perhaps its a minor mistake, but its one I wouldn't have made if I peeked at the spelling earlier. d. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5401 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh | Message 31 of 76 23 September 2013 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Monty : thanks for your answer. Trying to transcribe Welsh using the French phonetic value of some letters wasn't the best idea I had. And as you said, different people may hear things in a slightly different way.
I am going on with the lessons (currently on lesson 12) and I am enjoying every minute of it ! It is too soon to tell what will be the results in the end but I can already say that it has been a long time since I took as much pleasure in using a course. So much so that I have added Welsh too the list of the languages I study (and removed Persian since for a lot of reasons my Persian studies have come to a grinding halt after I finished Assimil Persian). @ dmaddock1 : yes, dd an f can be easily confused. In fact, if you checked SSIW forum, you'll see that lots of people have the same problem. When the word cerdded was introduced I was sure it sounded as cerfed. That's why I consult the checklist when in doubt (even if, as Monty wrote, these checklists have to be used with care). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4821 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 32 of 76 23 September 2013 at 11:27pm | IP Logged | ||
You are spot on, so if you didn't know that before, you've worked it out very well. I happened to know about "dd" = "th" and "f" = "v" because of previous exposure to Welsh over the years, so I'm not quite being the "audio only" purist that I pretend to be I suppose. :-) I'd forgotten how confusing that might be. In the slightly more advanced lessons (around lesson 6 I think) where the future tense in various forms gets introduced, I was getting quite confused between "dd" (or "th") and "f" (or "v") sounds, and judging by the SSiW forum, I am not (or perhaps we are not) the only one(s). The new constructions introduced round about there seemed to contain lots of these sounds all together, and it's easy to get confused. As it happens, I'm about to revise all these early lessons, so it will be interesting to see how that goes now. I think it does become a bit clearer if you stick with it and listen as carefully as possible (without distractions, at least for the trickier bits). I've found I've had to repeat especially any lessons that I listened to while out and about, because I could never hear them perfectly clearly (street noise, etc). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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