crush wrote:I'm also studying Welsh, almost entirely due to montmorency's raving reviews of SSiW.
You might possible mean "rave reviews". On the other hand, you possibly might not...
Well, I had to return the favour. It was you who introduced me to HTLAL, if you can remember that far back. (and to audiobooks, actually...).
As Prof. Arguelles said once, some languages you should study just because the course is so good. Something along those lines. It was in reference to the Catalan Assimil course and perhaps it also applies to SSiW. I'm just about to the vocab section of level 2, just need to repeat lessons 24 and 25 once or twice more. I'm doing the Northern course (still) but i'm excited to get to the new lessons eventually.
I'm very pleased you are still doing Welsh. I think you'll like the new levels. I think actually, people who've done the old courses can appreciate them better, in a way, although I don't think Aran would agree.
The Welsh Google Hangout chats were a lot of fun, are those still happening? Now i think i'm to the point where i could almost have an interesting conversation entirely in Welsh, at least Aran constantly tells me so at the end of every lesson
I like his positive approach!
Well that particular group moved to Skype as it seemed to be more reliable, although I had to drop out of it for various reasons. There was an international Skype group that met on Saturdays (5pm UK time, so that people on the West Coast of the USA could manage it reasonably conveniently), but I'm not sure if it's still running. I can check up and PM you details, if it's still going.
It's also a bit different finding Welsh speakers to practice with, since every Welsh speaker also speaks English and isn't interested in exchanging Welsh for English...
Absolutely, and even living in Wales doesn't guarantee you access to Welsh speakers, from what I gather. (It is probably even worse for Irish learners). I live in England, and not all
that far from (South) Wales, but still far enough to deter casual visits, which might otherwise have helped. e.g. the new Language Centre in Cardiff at the Old Library sounds very good, and I think visitors to there can usually be guaranteed a chance to "siarad". And I'm told that the Welsh Assembly building (in Cardiff Bay) is a good place to go...it is specifically a public building and anyone can go in (maybe not to every part of it!) and there would be bound to be some people there who could speak Welsh. So even if Cardiff is not normally regarded as a Welsh speaking area, there are possibilities.