We have had the good fortune to attend two fantastic events in the past few weeks that celebrate and promote everything Welsh.
First, as part of London Wales Week, we munched on some delicious snacks while hearing from famous Welsh businesspeople, sports administrators and athletes about their experiences and tips for achieving success in the corporate world.
An SSi and Iaith ar Daith alumni, Colin Jackson, the athletics world record holder whose passion and determination motivated everyone in attendance, was one of the esteemed panellists.
Still feeling the effects of London’s glamour, we returned to Cardiff City Stadium for the Welsh Government’s “Explore Export Wales” trade conference, an equally spectacular annual event.
By helping us to establish solid local relationships, the Welsh Government’s ongoing assistance and direction has been crucial to the development of certain of our language programmes, particularly Irish and Japanese.
Workshops, an exhibition, and one-on-one meetings with in-country officials comprised the Explore Export day. It was fantastic to network, strengthen existing connections, and update important decision makers on our latest advancements.
The secret of SSi’s success has always been to continuously learn and grow by meeting significant Welsh government and corporate leaders; now, we can add Welsh athletes to the list of people we learn from.
On January 13th 2025, three determined members of the SSi team, Aran, Tom and Kai, embarked on a bold and ambitious challenge, to learn Japanese in just 10 days.
What started as a seemingly impossible task turned into one of the most intense and rewarding language-learning experiences they’d ever faced.
Their journey began in a cottage nestled in the foothills of Eryri, Wales. While this might sound like the perfect location for a peaceful retreat, it was anything but a holiday for the team! They committed themselves to an immersive and rigorous learning schedule, aiming to reach a level where they could hold meaningful conversations with each other and even native speakers by the end of the challenge.
To achieve this ambitious goal, Arm, Tom and Kai have been using the newly developed SaySomethingin App, a cutting-edge tool which is designed to make language learning more accessible, immersive and fast-paced. Over the 10 days, they pushed the boundaries of what’s possible, testing not only their capacity to absorb new information but also their resilience and determination.
The Struggles and Triumphs Along the Way
By day 3, the team was already experiencing the intensity of the challenge Aran shared his feelings on our forum:
“I’m feeling pretty tired and intimidated going into day 3 – Tom and Kai are both quite a bit ahead of me, I spent a chunk of yesterday trying to get my app reset to the beginning, and I’m running on the trial webapp for now, to get the extra repetitions.
But even as the back marker of the team, I’m getting some of the early signs of progress that Kai is talking about – I feel swamped with words that I can’t quite remember, but I’m starting to be able to do some small amounts of independent production.
I’m also starting to understand the scale of the ten-day challenge – all I want to do today is sleep!”
Despite the challenges, the team’s perseverance paid off. Kai remained optimistic and documented their impressive progress:
“Massive update today—we just had a 45-minute chat, 100% in Japanese. As in, real communication, where we said many things, understood what others said, and could respond with more than just ‘hai’.”
Moments like these fueled their motivation and proved that the intensive approach was yielding tangible results.
Putting Their Skills to the Test
Day 10 of their journey took place in a Japanese restaurant in Chester, where the team put their newfound skills to the test. They were able to engage in meaningful conversations not only with each other but also with the restaurant staff. What had seemed like an overwhelming challenge just days earlier now felt like a major triumph.
Why Learn Japanese?
So, why did the SSi team undertake this whirlwind language journey? Along with testing and showcasing the capabilities of the new SSi App, 2025 is the year of a larger initiative, in Wales and Japan.
This campaign, which is the fifth in a series which is led by the Welsh Government, seeks to strengthen the cultural and economic ties between the two countries.
As part of this initiative, a £150,000 Arts Fund, managed by Wales Arts International and British Council Wales, will be launched to foster artistic collaborations between the two nations. The fund aims to inspire new creative projects, engage diverse audiences and deepen existing partnerships. Learning Japanese, as the SSi team demonstrated, is an important step in building these bridges and opening up opportunities for deeper connections.
What’s Next?
The overwhelming success of this challenge highlights not only the potential of the SSi App but also the rewards of diving headfirst into a new language. Aran, Tom, and Kai have shown that with focus, determination, and the right tools, it is possible to make astonishing progress in just 10 days.
We couldn’t be prouder of their achievement, and we can’t wait to see how their Japanese journey continues to unfold.
If you’re curious to learn more about their journey, check out our forum for their reflections, updates and tips. Who knows? Maybe you’ll feel inspired to start your very own Japanuary adventure!
A massive congratulations to Aran, Tom and Kai on their incredible accomplishment. Here’s to many more language learning milestones ahead!
The SaySomethingin App is available from the Apple App and Google Play stores.
We have been hugely encouraged by last year’s comprehensive process evaluation of the SaySomethingin (SSi) Welsh language intervention pilot in Cardiff and Caerphilly schools.
The research was carried out by Peter Russell, a Cardiff University MSc student, and was totally independent of SSi.
The main take out was that as little as 5 minutes a week with SSi leads to greatly improved understanding for spoken Welsh, (where considerably more time spent on other approaches is not moving the needle at all).
Other highlights include:
- Use of SSi has a small but statistically significant positive impact on results for continuum content
- In observation and anecdotally, levels of teacher engagement drive improved student results (which in this research is not the case for other approaches)
- The data suggests SSi learners may show strong rates of retention, as compared to significant language attrition for other approaches
- Students in interviews speak very positively about microlessons (the 5 minute burst with SSi)
- The reverse bell curve of results with SSi suggests that disengaged students become more disengaged over time (ie, there is a polarising effect)
- Teachers say some of the successful/engaged students with SSi are not students usually recognised as being academically strong (one of the most important points of the study)
Please visit https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/174145/ to see the full report for yourself and do not hesitate to contact us with any questions or comments.
The Perfect Gift for Language Lovers
We often find ourselves searching for meaningful gifts that will truly delight our closest family and friends. If you’re looking for a thoughtful, inspiring and maybe a little out-of-the-ordinary gift, we’ve got the perfect solution, a SaySomethingin voucher!
SaySomethingin offers an innovative and flexible way of learning a new language, Whether it’s Welsh, Spanish or one of our other available languages. Plus, you can gift 12 months for the price of 10! That’s a full year of immersive language learning through our app for the price of just 10 months.
Here’s why this gift could be the highlight of someone’s year!
Learning That Fits Their Life
SaySomethingin’s methodology is designed for busy people who want to make real progress without sitting through endless grammar drills or memorising vocabulary lists. The app focuses on helping learners build real conversational skills from day one. Lessons are audio-based and can be done anytime, anywhere. Perfect for a morning commute on the train, a lunch break or a brisk walk!
Language learning is more than just acquiring a skill, it’s about connecting with people and cultures in meaningful ways. Whether your loved one has always dreamed of visiting Italy or reconnecting with their Welsh heritage, a SaySomethingin subscription can be their first step towards making those connections a reality.
The Gift of Personal Growth
This special offer makes it easy to give a truly generous gift while staying within your budget. With the 12-for-10 voucher, your recipient will get two free months to explore everything SaySomethingin has to offer, giving them ample time to build confidence and experience real progress.
Unlike many other gifts, giving someone the chance to learn a new language is an investment in their personal growth. It’s a gift that keeps on giving, opening doors to new experiences and opportunities for self-expression.
How to Purchase Your Gift Voucher
If you’re ready to purchase your voucher, follow these quick and easy steps –
- Visit SaySomethingin’s voucher page,
- Select the voucher duration, (choose from 3 or 12 months), and add your email and the recipient’s email (optional),
- Follow the steps at the checkout and complete your purchase!
Don’t miss the chance to give a meaningful, life-enhancing gift. With SaySomethingin, you’re not just gifting a subscription, you’re giving someone the confidence to say something new, connect with others and see the world in a whole new way!
On Tuesday, November 19th, SSi were guests of S4C for the Wales vs. Iceland match at the Cardiff City Stadium.
The Red Wall created a charged atmosphere with their passionate singing, particularly during the ‘Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau,’ which was a memorable moment. Hearing our anthem sung with such immense pride after the players entered the pitch was one of the many highlights of the evening.
As the fourth Welsh goal thundered into the Iceland net, securing Wales’ promotion to League A of the Nations Cup competition, a spontaneous rendition of ‘Yma o Hyd’, adopted by fans as a Welsh football anthem, echoed around the stadium.
If you want to learn our national anthem and the legendary ‘Yma o Hyd’, you’ll find all you need in this website’s ‘Free Resources’ section.
In addition to the remarkable singing, all of S4C’s guests were key decision-makers involved in promoting the Welsh language across various media, contributing to the game’s overall positive vibe.
As the “proper” grey and cold of early November set in, Aran and Nick travelled to Friesland in The Netherlands to attend a conference that looked to address the challenges and opportunities surrounding minority languages and multilingualism.
We chose this event to help us focus SSi activity and our plans for Welsh and other endangered or indigenous languages.
Organised by the Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning, the conference brought together policymakers, educators, researchers, and the SSi team to discuss strategies for preserving linguistic diversity and promoting effective multilingual policies.
It is grounded in the understanding that linguistic diversity is a cornerstone of cultural heritage and societal cohesion. These are SSi core values too.
With over 200 regional and minority languages in Europe alone, many are at risk of extinction due to globalisation, assimilation pressures, and lack of institutional support. The conference aimed to foster dialogue on sustainable practices that support minority languages, particularly through education, technology, and community engagement.
It also addressed the integration of multilingualism into broader societal frameworks, advocating for the inclusion of minority languages in public life, media, and digital platforms.
All music to our “language activist” ears!
A major focus was the role of education in maintaining minority languages – again an area SSi strongly believes is key, especially as we develop resources for schools in Wales.
We were inspired by the wonderful initiatives – including a couple of exciting Welsh ones – which made us buzz with future possibilities for SSi.
Our future is going to be very bright and not cold at all!!!
In a world where communication is key, language learning has become more critical than ever. Whether you’re travelling for work, meeting new people, or simply wanting to engage with another culture, the ability to speak a second or even third language opens doors to different opportunities and experiences, and in many cases can help prevent language extinction, which is at the core of what we do.
We are thrilled to share that we have launched a brand-new app, making language acquisition even more accessible, efficient, and most importantly, fun! Our brand-new app is a game changer for anyone looking to break down language barriers.
In what staff and learners call “the most significant step forward for SaySomethingin in the last 15 years,” the new SaySomethingin app is now available in the app stores for Android and Apple devices.
The new app is designed to be more robust, flexible, and user-friendly. Testing so far suggests that it will help many more people achieve conversational confidence.
If you’ve tried SSiW before to learn a language, and found it too difficult, now would be a good time to test the free content in the new app.
The new app also includes a French course at no extra cost, and SaySomethingin plans to release new languages regularly in the coming months without increasing the cost to subscribers.
With Wales and the Welsh language being the heart and soul of everything we do, SaySomethingin aims to use the revenue from its new courses to significantly increase the resources it can provide Welsh learners. Additionally, we aim to offer our Welsh courses for learning in many other languages.
‘We want to be the Netflix of language learning’, says Oxford physicist Tom Cassidy, now SSi’s Head of Course Creation. ‘We’re using high-quality AI tools to produce the sentence database we need much more quickly than was possible before, and our ultimate aim is to produce a crowd-sourcing approach which will let us build a course for every language in the world.’
With the new SaySomethingin app, language learning has never been more accessible. The immersive methodology allows users to break free from traditional learning methods, offering a more organic, real-life way to pick up a language. Whether you’re learning Welsh to connect with your heritage, or French for your next holiday, the app’s innovative design, accompanied with our methodology ensures you’re speaking confidently in no time.
Learners of all levels and walks of life can embark on a language learning journey that’s fun, flexible, and focused on what really matters: communication.
Ready to start your language journey? Download the brand-new SaySomethingin app today and discover how simple and effective learning a language can be!Available from the Apple App Store and Google Play store now!
Part of Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School is well known for its dedication to global perspective, innovation, and academic quality.
Being one of the top business schools in the UK, it draws a varied group of international applicants every year.
For the past two years, SSi has been chosen as one of the subjects for their yearly postgraduate students’ “Live Business Project.”
In this scheme, which is the last in their study program, students examine and evaluate a real-world business scenario before producing a report and giving a presentation in person.
The cohort for this year just finished reviewing language learning technologies and e-learning, paying close attention to the SSi methodology.
Hearing the opinions, suggestions, and ideas of a dedicated group of young academics from locations well away from Wales was fascinating. The original perspective led to some great insights.
Everyone at SSi expresses gratitude to the group tutor and the entire Cardiff Business School staff for allowing us to access such a fantastic group of students.
Finally, we send our best wishes to the entire project team and hope they gain the qualifications they need to progress in their chosen fields.”
Initiatives aimed at promoting and enhancing the use of Welsh in schools are crucial for preserving and fostering the language’s future.
With this very much in mind, SaySomethingin, (SSi) has been working closely with a selection of primary and secondary schools as well as the National Centre for Welsh, since 2022, to test our Welsh language resources in the school setting.
We had several key objectives with this initiative…
- Increase the spoken proficiency of students in Welsh, ensuring that they can use the language confidently in both academic and social contexts.
- Enhance the cultural understanding and appreciation of Welsh heritage among students.
- Integrate Welsh more thoroughly into the school curriculum and daily life, making it a natural part of students’ educational experiences.
The pilot was a voluntary initiative rather than a mandated one and uptake levels in different schools have varied. However, all schools made use of the resource and feedback has been very positive across the board.
Results have shown that regular use of the SSi resource in the classroom has led to a marked increase in pupils’ confidence and use of Welsh.
Schools have been particularly encouraged by how groups of pupils used SSi resources to help each other, with weaker students receiving support from the wider group.
Findings such as this have inspired us to develop our resource to improve group uptake and comparison, support teacher analysis and help attain approved academic standards.
Based on this work, we now believe there is an opportunity for a fuller roll-out, with clear guidance for schools supported by the relevant education authorities.
We would like to thank all the schools that have been part of this pilot and we look forward to sharing our Welsh language system developments with you all in the future.
I first visited a Buddhist temple when I was 12 and we lived in Sri Lanka. I have faint memories of the colours and the waves of incense, and of feeling relaxed even though I was usually shy and awkward in public.
It would be another forty years before I started to pay serious attention to meditation, though. As is true for many people, it was an experience of suffering which brought me to that point – but the more I found that meditation helped reduce my suffering, the more I began to realise it could be a very helpful tool for language learners as well.
The SaySomethingin Method (as you may already know!) puts your brain under a considerable amount of pressure – this is how it triggers the synapse growth which gives you the ability to speak a new language. People respond to this experience in two main ways. Some people find it playful, and we often see those people achieve confidence in their new language remarkably quickly.
Others, however (and it’s a more common experience) find it frustrating whenever they don’t say the same thing as the model voices – they see that as ‘making a mistake’, and feel bad about it.
Every person I’ve talked to who has given up on a SaySomethingin course has given up because they become too frustrated with ‘making mistakes’.
Ironically, this is quite frustrating for me, because I know that the process of making mistakes is an extremely important part of the learning journey, and I know that everyone who keeps on playing the SaySomethingin game will eventually achieve the confidence they’re looking for.
I used to see this regularly when I was coaching celebrities for the S4C programme ‘Iaith ar Daith’. It’s pretty high stakes when you know that if you give up, your episode gets cancelled. I would try and help the people who were struggling by offering them insights into the learning journey – I was always trying to get them to understand that they should celebrate their ‘mistakes’, because if they did, the journey would become fun and successful.
Sometimes that was helpful. It was always very joyful to see someone suddenly change their perception, stop beating themselves up, and start enjoying the process.
But sometimes it wasn’t helpful.
Try as I might, some of our celebrity learners found the whole journey extremely stressful, and beat themselves up very badly about it. That was a very distressing experience for me as well – sometimes I just wanted to hug them until they stopped hurting, as I would with one of my own children.
So where does meditation fit into all this?
When I was trying to help learners feel better about making mistakes, I was working directly with their emotions. Messy, complicated old things, emotions. It’s not impossible to work directly with emotions – all the best coaches do to some extent, in whatever field. But it’s a tough gig.
Meditation, at the very heart of it, is an exercise designed to help you become more familiar with the difference between two levels of your mind – the part which is aware, and the part which contains all your thoughts and feelings. It’s a subtle difference, but the easier it becomes for you to switch between those two levels of mind, the easier it becomes for you to deal with difficult emotions.
There is a moment in the meditation journey when it becomes suddenly clear to you that when you are focused intensely on something – your breath, a candle, an apple, it doesn’t matter what – you are completely in the aware mind, and you don’t experience thoughts or feelings unless you let your focus go back to them.
I think this might be what people are describing when they talk about ‘flow’, particularly in sports. When your focus is absolutely and entirely on the game, you don’t have room for distracting thoughts and emotions, and you operate at a noticeably higher level.
Meditation isn’t a short-cut, though. It can take years!
I thought I might be stuck. Either I would have to work directly with people’s emotions, which can be a long, difficult path – or I needed to persuade them to trot off and spend a few years training with a Zen master before I tried to teach them a language.
Neither of those fits very well with TV deadlines…;-)
Then I saw another option.
If I could help our learners become familiar with one simple instruction, I might be able to turn the language learning journey into its own kind of meditation. The learners would gain confidence in speaking their new language, and they’d also gain a new command of their own mind.
The instruction is this:
The moment you notice yourself having a negative emotional reaction, place all your focus on the next voice you hear.
That’s it.
That’s all it is.
And it’s extremely similar to the meditative process, where you bring your attention back to one particular thing whenever you notice your mind beginning to wander.
If you’re focusing properly, deeply, on the next voice, you’ll find that you don’t have room in the aware mind for the negative emotion.
If you’re experiencing the negative emotion, you’re not focusing on the voice (which will also damage the learning process).
If you turn every negative emotion into a reminder to increase your focus on the next voice, you’ll be turning yourself into a super learner – you’ll become an absolutely unstoppable language learner.
I’ve only just had this idea, and I’ve only just started using it in my coaching work, but I’m already seeing some very encouraging results. I think there’s something clear and simple about it that is much easier than trying to do the complicated work of changing emotions. I’ve got a crazy idea that I’d like to go and spend a month in a Buddhist community to see if monks would find this familiar enough to become incredibly fast language learners. If I ever manage to arrange that, I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes.
Catrin and I are just back from a week in Paris with the kids, and I’ve been forcibly reminded of how tough – and then how magical – the journey from intermediate to advanced is. For me, intermediate means that you can hold a conversation, but you’re still conscious of your limitations, and it can still feel like quite hard work sometimes – and you can’t easily follow radio or TV or podcasts.
That’s almost exactly where I am with my French – I can have extended and enjoyable conversations in a 1-on-1 environment (which mostly means down the pub with my friend Dave) but I’ll often need to ask first language speakers to slow down or repeat themselves, and I can’t follow podcasts in any detail.
Thrown in at the deep end with Parisian taxi drivers, that meant a range of experiences – when I was feeling high energy and cheerful, I had some interesting conversations about Paris and politics and colonialism and the joys of being a parent. When I was feeling tired, or not sure how friendly the driver was, it meant some fairly extended silences (with bits of Welsh with Catrin and the kids in the back, just to make sure the driver knew I wasn’t being silent in English ;-)).
It’s a roller-coaster of a learning stage. I came out of some of those taxi rides absolutely buzzing with enthusiasm and excitement, wondering how soon we could arrange to move to Paris permanently. After the mostly silent ones, though, I felt frustrated and self-critical, and grumpy that I couldn’t see any magic buttons I could press to just BE a French speaker already, without all the bloody effort.
By the end of the week, though, my main sensation was of being tantalisingly close to being able to slide into Frenchness – and experience all the fascinating cultural shifts that open up with that linguistic sidestep – in the same way as I can move between Welsh and English.
That last little step, though, is all about building a large enough database of listening recognition – and I haven’t found any short-cuts for that yet. It took me about a year in Welsh of listening to Radio Cymru for about an hour and a half in the car every day of the week (as well as having more and more conversations with more and more people). I can’t increase my number of daily French conversations in the same way (what with not living in Paris yet, and having a post-lockdown hatred of Zoom calls). I think I’ve got a new level of motivation to do an hour or two every day listening to French podcasts, though, fuelled by my love for Paris and how much we would all like to be able to visit more often. It’s going to be interesting to see how that works out over the next year or so.
What’s more, the kids seem up for putting in the hard yards with the new SSi French course, because they had a great time in Paris as well, and they could see (even without me preaching!) what a difference it would make to be able to understand the language.
If you’re at this stage with Welsh, I sympathise with you. It’s brutal, because you won’t notice any change in your ability after listening to a podcast for an hour. You won’t even get to the end of the week having done an hour every day and suddenly notice a change. The only thing you’ll get – and it feels like a pretty small reward – is occasional moments of realising that you’d understood a sentence or two without needing to think about it. And then, agonisingly slowly, you’ll start to get three or four or five sentences in a row – and (as I keep reminding myself at the moment) that means you’re close to the tipping point. The journey from understanding five sentences in a row several times an hour to understanding almost everything is much, much shorter than the journey from understanding five words in a row to understanding five sentences in a row.
I’m sorry that we haven’t solved this for you with SSi yet, too. Really sorry. Throwing yourself into the app can get you to intermediate, and interesting conversations, very quickly – but it doesn’t help much with the leap onwards to the comfortable advanced levels of understanding that most people call fluency.
I do have some ideas about what we might be able to do, though. We might have some test material that you could help us assess in the course of 2025. I’ll keep you posted 🙂
But in the meantime, if you’re listening to as much Radio Cymru and as many podcasts as possible, keep going. If you bring the raw determination, the magic will eventually happen. Bonne chance!
The EdTechX Awards celebrate the companies that are making a substantial impact to the digitisation of education, training and work sectors.
SSi are very excited to be selected as a nominee for their 2024 Language Learning award.
It is always wonderful when our work is appreciated by prestigious “movers and shakers” in Ed Tech, so we are pretty chuffed to have been selected, especially as other nominees come from all over the world and cover some amazing language ideas.
To check out all things about the awards and all nominees in each category go to https://impactx2050.com/edtechx/awards-finalists2024
The awards are announced on the 18th of June – we will tell you how we do.