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- What were your first impressi…
What were your first impressions when started the Welsh course?
Hello, I am talking about impressions like ''Such a beautiful language!'', ''Such an interesting language!'', ''Welsh is not very similar to Irish'' and things like that, and your opinion about it, you can also tell why have you started to learn Welsh, I made this post to know what you think about it, share your story :)
20 Comments
I'm really liking the course so far, and I've found that I actually know a lot more "subconsciously" than I ever would have guessed - after 10+ years of Welsh in school I could barely say anything more than the infamous "Dw i'n hoffi coffi" (and the "Ga i fynd i'r ty bach, os gwelwch yn dda?" that was drilled into my hear in primary) but I've recognised so many of the sentence structures that I've barely been having any problems... It's as if all the handouts from school are only now starting to make sense, so it feels more like revising than actually learning. (I never realised how simple "wedi" was! For some reason I had it as a Terrible Thing that would take months to learn, lmao) Plus the pronunciation comes naturally, so I don't have to learn about w, y, wy, yw, etc.
So... I'm loving it :D I'm also hoping to start attending Welsh courses whenever they next start (probably in September) and I eventually want to take a GCSE, so I hope Duolingo gives me a good headstart.
When I first started:
I LOVEEEE ITTTTT!!!! ecourages everyone to learn it too
That sounds like me! :-D And "This is easy!" I started partly because I want to learn Welsh, and partly because it was impossible to stop myself. (This is one of the reasons people get asked "Why are you learning so many languages?" We start one because we can't stop ourselves, and learn at least a few basics, and then sometimes we can't stop, and on it goes, and then we have a bunch of flags next to our names.) :-)
Is it really not that hard? If it is anything like Irish, it will be a pain.
Well, I admit that I've only done the first three lessons, but they've been the easiest first three lessons I've ever done. It's easier than Esperanto so far. I expect it will get more difficult later on, but if the relative difficult of farther on is about the same as the others I've done, it will be the easiest tree.
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It appears to be simpler than Irish; although "bod" retains the different verb forms for questions and negatives that were in old Irish but rarer now, but it seems, and I could be wrong, I haven't gotten very far, to do much more with auxiliary verbs for forming tenses while at the same time dispensing some of complexity of verbal nouns in Irish. Is that right - does it have a simpler verb system to Irish? I was surprised that the words are very different from Irish, but you can also see the similarities; the word order, the yn appearing like ag in the verbal nouns, the initial mutations.
This is the best commentary mostly based in grammar, thanks for commenting!
I am re-experiencing the very beginning of learning a language where you have no clue what anything means (I have an advantage with most Romance languages now) and nothing wants to stick. I love it. I have also discovered that Welsh is another one of those languages I am predisposed to love, for some reason.
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Exactly! Nothing sounds familiar (well, apart from the obvious nouns). But verbs and things, wow. I'm loving it, but the pronunciations are killing me. I've never really had that problem before. Lots of listening will be required, I think.
It makes me wish that they had a recording of a native speaker so that you could be sure that the unfamiliar pronunciation would be completely natural, rather than mostly natural with occasional oddities.
I love how melodic Welsh is. I want to learn it because I'm just across the border from Wales, in Shropshire, England. Wales makes the obvious holiday destination and I occasionally drive through the parts of it that stick out on my way to other places. We do get a few Welsh-speaking tourists in my town too! And the BBC seems to be doing more programming in the different languages of the UK at the moment, so this would enable me to watch the Welsh history programmes.
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Oh and I find the course a bit challenging because I don't know any language that is similar/celtic which is nice because it's a different way to learn then always thinking "hey! I think this is related to this other word in this other language". But I did find it odd when you start at the beginning and you learn things like "helo Mr. Lingo" and the word for dragon.
I think that is going to happen to me when I get started with the Welsh course XD
