Learning Welsh

[RuthieB]

I learnt Welsh while I was at university in Lampeter - the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David still offers Welsh language classes on-line: http://www.uwtsd.ac.uk/certificate-practical-welsh/ and should be suitable for west Wales.

[Ayashi]

Cheers I've book marked it just in case.

I'm actually tempted to start learning French and German again after this. I did both at school but gave up in college.

[Maiden Stone]

I have no idea of your age but just thought I'd mention that learning a language in one's "senior years" is thought to help keep brain "healthy" by exercising it and so may slow down onset of Alzheimer's. To that end a charity has begun language classes for older people in my area.
My Welsh "speaking " is limited to trying to sing along with well-known hymns on St. David's Day edition of "Songs of Praise". My ancestors included Jones and Davis.

[Malcolm33]

I have no idea of your age but just thought I'd mention that learning a language in one's "senior years" is thought to help keep brain "healthy" by exercising it and so may slow down onset of Alzheimer's. To that end a charity has begun language classes for older people in my area.
My Welsh "speaking " is limited to trying to sing along with well-known hymns on St. David's Day edition of "Songs of Praise". My ancestors included Jones and Davis.

     That is true and it is so important to keep our old brains very active with learning and doing puzzles.    I do hope though that you learn more of the old British language for I feel that just doing that forges a stronger link to our ancestors who are looking on.    For those who find genders and declensions a bit too much then I recommend Turkish.   It is so much easier as it just adds on tense syllables and suffixes for prepositions to the end of words.   The alphabet was only worked out by Ataturk around 1926 so there is just one letter for each consonant or vowel - e.g. no need for the letter 'C' to represent S or K so they use it for the 'J' sound and adding a cedilla to it softens it into 'Ch' - same with 'S', add a cedilla and it softens from the 'ss' sound into 'sh'.    Only difficulty at first with Turkish is that the suffixes can change to match a preceding front or back vowel, but you soon get used to that.

[Ayashi]

I'm 28. I was going to put that in Welsh but I know there are two number systems in play now and I'm being taught the decimal.

I had a Turkish girl in my class at school. Her name was Çağla, which the teachers mispronounced all the time. Not that she cared, she just allowed it but every time the rest of the class, as one wave of peer indignation, would correct people on her behalf lol

[Maiden Stone]

I learned some Irish when I was younger. At the time I had an older relative nearby with whom I could practise, but he died when he was still learning the basics. He also spoke & wrote German. One of his brothers learned 2 European language at town's "Night School" when he retired, so had 4 languages. Their elder brother used to travel to Irish classes in Manchester as a young man and won medals. They also had Church Latin of course, from childhood. (Prayers at home were Irish.) They'd all left school at 13 or 14 but never stopped learning.
I'm also interested in "Old English" languages, Anglo-Saxon and Norse. I learned an Anglo-Saxon word on here.
 I discovered from a TV series about the Vikings, that some words familiar to me were Norse.

[Malcolm33]

I'm 28. I was going to put that in Welsh but I know there are two number systems in play now and I'm being taught the decimal.

I had a Turkish girl in my class at school. Her name was Çağla, which the teachers mispronounced all the time. Not that she cared, she just allowed it but every time the rest of the class, as one wave of peer indignation, would correct people on her behalf lol

    Her name then would have been pronounced as 'Chala' because that is a Yumuşak ‘g’ and is a very faint 'g' sound at the back of the throat which is more or less silent to the ear.    Many Turkish names end in oǧlu (olu) meaning 'Son' and news presenters regularly get that wrong.   So did they call her 'Charlie'?     There must have been some Turkish people or at least people who had lived in Turkey, in Village Way, Rayners Lane in the early 1950's because I remember a house about half way down that had 'Evimiz' on the Gate - or was it the door?    Ev means 'House' in Turkish and 'imiz' is the suffix for 'Our'.    'im' is 'My' and 'iniz' is 'your'.

[trystan]

I'm 28. I was going to put that in Welsh but I know there are two number systems in play now and I'm being taught the decimal.

28 is dau ddeg wyth (literally, two tens eight)   The Welsh language has maths built into the way we say the numbers.

[papercutter]

Nothing wrong with Gog Welsh !

I agree...