Chris M.

Although my grandmother (who died when I was five so I only met her a handful of times) was born in Newport, Gwent, I was born and have lived in England virtually all my life. The sole exception was when I did a university course (Maths and Computing) in Bath, but as it was a “sandwich course” it meant two years at uni, a year working in industry, and the final year back in Bath. That year in industry was in Cwmbrân in 1980/1. I rented a house with a fellow student in Newport and made many friends in Cardiff too. I went to Welsh evening classes when I was there, mainly so I could make sense of Welsh placenames, but got hooked on the language and was able to have very basic conversations. After that year I head back to Bath, then lived in Bristol for 30 years, and then moved to Leicester 12 years ago.

Fast-forward 40 years, and my Welsh was very rusty indeed – I could still say some basic sentences, but that was it. Although I was now living in Leicester, I had a very part-time job as a tutor at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David doing a course that was entirely on-line, with international students, and not language related, so the course is entirely in English. However, we had a conference and Summer School in Lampeter (all in English), but most of the people on campus had Welsh as their first language, and I was able to try out a few sentences of my rusty Welsh with porters, cleaners, kitchen staff, and tutors on other courses based on campus. Some of them smiled at my “old fashioned” Welsh – I’d been taught “fe ddechrais i”, “rydw i’n” “roeddwn i’n” and so on back in 1980. One of them said “I don’t think anyone’s used ‘fe’ for about forty years, cariad” – well yes, that’s when I’d learned my rusty Welsh!

I came back from that Summer School determined to learn Welsh more seriously, and signed up with SSiW. I’d remembered much of the grammar from my 1980 days, and could read some basic Welsh, but had never been good at speaking or understanding it. SSiW helped enormously, although as someone who needs a bit of structure I did supplement it with another method whose name shall not be mentioned, although it begins with D and ends with uolingo

I completed the SSiW levels, and enrolled on the dysgu.cymraeg Canolradd 1&2 intensive course with Coleg Gwent online, and am frantically revising now for my exam which takes place near Newport next month. Before starting the Canolradd course, though, I had the amazing experience of going on an SSiW Bŵtcamp in Lampeter, where about a dozen of us spoke only Welsh for a whole week. It was an incredible experience, with amazing tutors, and if SSiW do bŵtcamps in the future, I can highly recommend them. In fact, it was so inspirational that three of us who were on last year’s bŵtcamp, plus one other person, are doing our own “DIY Bŵtcamp” this year – we’ve booked an AirBnB in Aberystwyth, and will spend a long weekend going to Welsh-speaking places and using our Welsh in the wild!

I still struggle to understand spoken Welsh – I seem to be unusual among my fellow learners in that I find speaking Welsh easier than understanding it (I can make a sentence in my head and say it, but I can’t necessarily understand the response) but I’m persevering! The moral is – never give up and stick at it, and don’t be afraid to try out your Welsh, even if you’re not word perfect, get the mutations wrong, or use weird grammar.