Author: suw

Video

Are we doing grammar all wrong?

I’ve spent a long time learning Welsh, and have spent large part of that long time trying avoid even thinking about grammar, let alone studying it. And I know I’m not alone – there are a lot of people on various forums asking how to learn without studying grammar, and even more people telling them that it’s actively damaging to study grammar explicitly.

What tosh!

What we need is to change our mindset around grammar. Instead of seeing it as a laborious chore, think of it as like Pokemon Go, as a set of skills to learn about and collect. And we need to bin this idea that grammar is about rules, and instead think about its application and what that allows us to do.

Roadmap

Update: 13 Apr 26

New listening exercises

Over the last few weeks, I’ve focused on adding more audio to the site. The following sections now have audio exercises, where you listen to me saying a phrase and then pick the correct translation from the options.

  • Talking About Sports
  • Things We Know Aren’t True
  • Talking About Travel
  • Idioms 1

Audio is already a part of the Robin Goch and Titw Tomos Las sections and, over the next week or two, I’ll be recording the audio for the remaining sections.

Up next

I’ve been working on more video content for YouTube and Instagram, so hang tight for that! And I’m going to be adding more audio, a pop quiz to help you assess your progress, and more reading and listening.

Roadmap

Update: 23 Mar 26

Today’s Ymestyn roadmap update

I have upgraded the ‘Putting It All Together’ exercises by adding in ‘Type The Answer’ quizzes where you’re given an English phrase and have to type in the Welsh translation. This will help you with your recall and give you a sense of where you might need to go back and do a little more practice.

The sections on Gardening and Things To Do Around The House I have split into northern and southern versions so you can focus on your own dialect. Things We Know Aren’t True is split into taswn i and pe bawn i, so again, practice whichever version you would naturally use.

(If you’re wondering where tawn i went, I got feedback from one of my advisors that it’s rarely used so I removed it from the final exercise. I’ve kept it in the earlier exercises just so that you’re aware it exists.)

New section on idioms

I’ve added a new set of exercises looking at five common idioms:

  • teimlo i’r byw — to feel deeply
  • brifo i’r byw — to cut to the quick
  • yn ôl traed — in the footsteps of
  • o’r newydd — renewed, anew, once again, afresh
  • i’r carn — to the core, through and through, fully

I love idioms. They are a great way to sound more fluent, but a lot of courses don’t teach them directly, so these sessions aim to fill that gap.

Ymestyn in the news again

Ymestyn featured on the Herald Wales website, in connection with the recent report from Welsh Language Commissioner Efa Gruffudd Jones. Although she said that more work needs to be done to support the Welsh language, the report seemed to largely ignore us adult learners!

News

Record numbers learning Welsh

Over 20,000 people learnt Welsh via courses administered by the National Centre for Learning Welsh between August 2024 and the end of July 2025, new data shows. This is the highest number of learners since the NCLW’s records began in 2017/18, and an improvement on the pre-pandemic peak of 18,390 in 2019/20.

The data shows a large increase in the 16-24 year old bracket since 2018/19, going from 705 to 4,110 learners. The number of learners in the four decade-long age brackets between 25 and 64 all sit around the 3,000 to 3,400 level, showing a very healthy distribution of interest in the Welsh language across all working-age demographics. Indeed, counter to what one might assume, there are fewer learners in the 65-74 bracket (2,500), and only 790 older than 74. 

The top five locations for learners were: 

  • Cardiff:  3,020 (15%)
  • Outside Wales: 1,885 (9%) 
  • Gwynedd: 1,240 (6%)
  • Carmarthenshire: 1,010 (5%)
  • Wrexham: 1,005 (5%)

It’s great to see so many learners outside Wales, though I would have liked to see that number broken down into UK and Rest of the Word. However, it’s an indicator that more support needs to be given to people who aren’t living in Wales. The migration of young Welsh speakers to the rest of the UK is a significant threat to the Welsh language, so it’s important that we help them maintain or relearn their mother tongue regardless of where they live. 

I also find it interesting that Wrexham comes in fifth. Unfortunately, this is the first year that location data has been included, so I can’t look back to see if there’s been a rise in interest since the takeover of Wrexham AFC by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney in 2020. McElhenney especially has been a vocal supporter of the Welsh language, and their documentary, Welcome To Wrexham, features the language throughout. I would love someone at the NCLW to look at historic data to find out if there’s been an increase in learners since then. 

All that said, I am a bit worried about the low number of people who make it as far as the Intermediate stage. The NCLW said: 

Of the learners who are on courses at a specific level in 2024-2025:

• 61% of learners were at Entry level (which includes Pre-Entry). 14% were at Foundation level, 9% at Intermediate level, and 14% at Advanced and Proficiency levels.

• 2% have completed courses at Confidence-Building level, a new type of course for Welsh speakers who have lost confidence and want to use more Welsh.

Obviously, we need lots of people to come in at entry level, but I’d like to know why there are so few making it out of Entry, through Foundation and up to Intermediate. 

If you assume people spend a year doing Entry before moving on to Foundation, then over the last five years 74% to 77% of learners have been lost that transition point. There are bound to be some people who don’t continue for whatever reason — learning a language takes a lot of time and effort — but a reduction of three quarters feels like a lot. 

If we also assume people spend a year in Foundation before moving on to Intermediate, we’re losing between 25% to 29%, which isn’t too bad. But if we could persuade more people to stay on for a Foundation course, then our Intermediate numbers could look much better. Indeed, if we could reduce the loss from Entry to Foundation to 30%, we’d have three times as many learners at Foundation and Intermediate levels now.  

So what is stopping people progressing?

As an Intermediate learner myself, I think there is lack of resources for people at this level, which is obviously why I launched Ymestyn. But if we don’t get more people up to the Intermediate level, then we won’t get more fluent speakers and we won’t hit the Welsh government’s target of a million speakers by 2050.

Two key questions I’d love to see answered are: 

  • Are people just bailing out of the Learn Welsh program when they’ve completed Foundation, but continuing independently, so not showing up in their numbers?
  • Or are people bailing out of Welsh completely before they hit Intermediate? If this is the case, why? 

And, finally, looking at these numbers, it seems like it might be wise for me to develop Ymestyn so that it provides support to people doing Entry and Foundation courses. I do feel that there’s nowhere near enough support for Intermediate learners, but if this data is generalisable across the whole body of Welsh learners, then perhaps the problem starts earlier. 

What do you think? 

Roadmap

Update: 6 Mar 26

Today’s Ymestyn roadmap update

Recent changes include:

  • New section covering the simple past (aka inflected preterite or inflected past) tense of what I think of as the Big Four, mynd (go), gwneud (do/make), dod (come) and cael (get).
  • Improvements to the Putting It All Together practice sections has begun. I’ve started to add ‘type the answer’ quizzes to each section, to provide a slightly more challenging way to practice which depends more on recall than recognition.

Ymestyn in the news

Ymestyn was also featured in Nation.Cymru where Jules Millward wrote about my plan to help learners become fluent by providing the kind of support that I’ve always been desperate for myself.

Roadmap

Ymestyn roadmap

There is an almost endless supply of Welsh grammar and vocab to get through, so you can expect the Ymestyn program to take a while to be fully built out. The next round of development will include (in no particular order!): 

Grammar

  • Irregular inflected preterites: mynd (went), dod (came), gwneud (did), cael (got)
  • The preterite using gwneud and ddaru
  • Irregular inflected futures: mynd (go), dod (come), gwneud (do), cael (get)
  • Present and imperfect of gwybod (to know)
  • Prepositions with personal endings
  • Using fod wedi (have been) with auxiliary verbs
  • Phrases using verbnouns and prepositions
  • Verbnouns that don’t use i (to)
  • Making comparisons: Equative, comparative and superlative forms
  • Numbers: The vigesimal system and ordinals. 
  • If
  • This, that, the other.
  • That (bod, mai, taw, etc)
  • The passive voice
  • Impersonal forms

Vocabulary

I have another eleven chapters of Adar yr Ardd to convert into exercises, and have nearly finished writing Mamaliaid Prydain which will provide another twelve sections on British mammals. These will all follow the same structure as the section on Robin Goch. 

I am also planning to create vocab exercises focused on a variety of hobbies, pastimes and interests, so that there’ll be something of interest to everyone. And once I have enough subscribers, I’ll be able to commission original content from native Welsh speakers to provide some variety.

Timing

I hope to be able to release at least one new exercise per week over the next few months, circumstances allowing. Though again, that pace will speed up if I have the resources to hire in some help.

If you want to be kept up to date with new section releases and news about Ymestyn in general, please do sign up to the newsletter.