Roadmap

New academic year, new Ymestyn!

The new and improved Ymestyn is here!

Over the last couple of months, I have been beavering away moving the Ymestyn course over here from Payhip, which it had outgrown. I have also rearranged it into modules to make it easier for you to choose what you want to focus on.

What’s more, I’ve developed a Canolradd companion course to help you do you homework more easily. Suitable for everyone doing Canolradd 1 or Canolradd 1&2, it will add units as term goes on, so that you can catch up on missed lessons or improve your understanding of grammatical concepts you’ve covered in class.

Students on Canolradd 2 will be able to take this course from September 2027 at the latest.

Ymestyn also caters to independent learners and there are plenty of resources for you to expand your vocabulary and polish up your grammar.

If that sounds good to you, sign up now for just £10 per month!

Roadmap

The new site is launching with the following modules:

  • Canolradd — Homework support for Canolradd 1 and 1&2 students
    • Unit 1 — Revision unit using a variety of grammatical constructions and a wide range of vocabulary from the Sylfaen course.
  • Auxiliary and Inflected Verbs — Learn the three patterns for creating auxiliary (helper or periphrastic) verbs and inflected verbs.
    • Stems — The different stems used for common auxiliary verbs.
    • Pattern 1 — Will, can, & the inflected future.
      • Talking about sports — Vocabulary builder & practicing will, can and the inflected future.
    • Pattern 2 — Was, could, would, would like, should/ought to, if (I) were to.
      • Things To Do In The Garden — Vocabulary builder & practicing was, could and would.
      • Things To Do Around The House — Vocabulary builder & practicing would like, should/ought to.
      • Things We Know Aren’t True — Vocabulary builder & practicing if (I) were to.
    • Pattern 3 — Simple past & have been to.
      • Talking About Travel — Vocabulary builder and practicing the simple past & have been to.
  • Simple past tense of Mynd, Gwneud, Dod and Cael — Overview of how these verbnouns form the inflected past tense.
    • Simple past of Mynd — Practice, vocabulary, listening and reading.
    • Simple past of Dod — Practice, vocabulary, listening and reading.
    • Simple past of Gwneud — Three version of gwneud, practice, vocabulary, listening and reading.
    • Simple past of Cael — Three regional versions of cael, practice, vocabulary, listening and reading.
    • Simple past using Gwneud — How to use the inflected past of gwneud to create the simple past tense of other verbnouns.
    • Simple past using Ddaru — How to use ddaru to create the simple past of other verbnouns.
  • Adar yr Ardd — Short articles about twelve common (and not so common) garden birds, with annotated illustrations and vocab list.
  • This, That, These, Those — How to use the more formal hwn/hon/hyn system to say ‘this thing’, ‘that thing’, ‘these things’ and ‘those things’.

I still have a few modules to move over, or new ones to create, including:

  • Modules to move:
    • Mae Rhiannon yn Mynd i Ynys y Barri — Vocabulary builder for the interactive fiction game.
    • Idioms 1 — Five idioms that people really use in everyday speech.
    • Adar yr Ardd (Vocabulary) — Vocabulary builder for the Adar yr Ardd module, chapters 1-2.
    • S4C: Shop Lyfrau’r Gelli Gandryll — Vocabulary builder.
    • S4C: Matthew Rhys on Widow’s Bay — Vocabulary builder.
    • Auxiliary Verb Pop Quiz — North and South.
  • Modules under development:
    • Canolradd — Units 2 to 20.
    • Simple past using Ddaru — How to use ddaru to create the simple past of other verbnouns.
    • Adar yr Ardd (Vocabulary) — Chapters 3-12
    • Mamaliaid Prydain (Reading) — Short articles about twelve British mammals, with annotated illustrations and vocab list.
    • Mamaliaid Prydain (Vocabulary) — Vocabulary builder for the Mamaliaid Pryain module.

I’m very excited to be re-launching Ymestyn and developing a better and more usable Welsh language resource for you all!

News

The Welsh Government must remember adult Welsh learners

Image of a sign at the Tafwyl festival saying "Croeso i Tafwyl".

“Croeso i Tafwyl” by Jeremy Segrott, CC BY 2.0

Last week saw the publication of a statement by Anna Brychan MS outlining, in very general terms, Plaid Cymru’s plans for reaching their target of 1 million Welsh speakers. 

For many people, learning Welsh is just something they want to do, but the wider Welsh language environment, including the government’s choice of where and how to provide support for learners, is political. And adult learners, who are crucial to the development of the language and for the support of Welsh speaking and learning children, are often ignored. 

So it was with Brychan’s statement. 

I prepared a press release explaining why adult education is important and sent it out to a variety of Welsh journalists. So far none have picked it up, so here it is in full. 

“The Welsh Government must do more for adult learners at the intermediate level if they are to secure a ‘strong future for the Welsh language’, says Suw Charman-Anderson, founder of Ymestyn.Cymru, the only online Welsh education program designed specifically for intermediate learners. 

“It is heartening to hear Anna Brychan, the Cabinet Minister for Education and the Welsh Language, commit to a variety of interventions that will strengthen Welsh learning and its use in childcare, education and the community. 

“But once again, there’s no mention of adult learners, particularly those who’ve reached the Canolradd level for whom there is currently little to no targeted support or content outside of the limited Dysgu Cymraeg Canolradd courses.”

The National Centre for Learning Welsh’s own statistics show that over the last five years, only 23% to 26% of Mynediad learners progressed to Sylfaen. Worse, the number of Canolradd learners never breaks the 2,000 mark. 

If we want a strong and vibrant future for the Welsh language we need to support Canolradd learners through to full fluency. 

Additional support for Welsh language childcare and education is essential, but an IWA report from 2014 highlighted the fact that “children who are taught through the medium of Welsh but don’t speak Welsh at home are less likely to overachieve by the time they reach the end of their primary schooling”. 

We need confident, Welsh-speaking adults capable of supporting their children’s education and using Welsh in the home, because “the likelihood of a child using Welsh diminish[es] if one adult does not speak the language.” 

For the government to achieve its ambition of “a million and more Welsh speakers”, children need the support of fluent speakers at home and in their communities.

Furthermore, the Senedd’s own research has shown that there are not enough bilingual teachers to meet demand. Data shows “39% of teachers reported having intermediate Welsh skills or higher, while only a quarter were currently teaching Welsh or through the medium of Welsh”. 

More worryingly, there is “a downward trend in the number of teachers able to teach through the medium of Welsh.”

We need to support teachers to develop their Welsh skills, which means not just providing a wealth of beginner content, but focusing efforts on supporting learners through the difficult ‘intermediate plateau’ – that period in any language learning journey where the student has a solid grasp of grammar but simply does not have enough vocabulary to be able to function in that language and begins to feel demoralised. 

None of the available Welsh courses focus on expanding vocabulary or helping learners memorise key grammar points. They introduce concepts and expect learners to fill in the gaps at home, without providing any tools to do so. 

Ymestyn.Cymru is unique in focusing on expanding Canolradd learners’ vocabulary whilst ensuring that they know how to use core Welsh grammar. It builds learners’ confidence in their knowledge of the language, using real world examples to help them use what they‘ve learnt in the classroom ‘out in the wild’. 

“The Welsh Government should be supporting programs like Ymestyn, which are essential to fixing the leaky learner pipeline,” Charman-Anderson says. “More help for Canolradd learners will translate into more fluent speakers who are using Welsh day-to-day, with their children, communities and at work.”

Insights

Why does language learning always feel like such a slog?

And how do you fix it?

You probably know the feeling: You’ve just finished a lesson or a practice session, but you don’t think that you’ve made much progress. You still feel like you can’t really read, write, talk or understand what is said to you with the level of confidence that you’d like. And you’ve been feeling like this for months, if not years. (In my case, decades.)

Welcome to the second of the Four Stages of Competence – Conscious Incompetence, where you are only too aware of how much there is left to learn.

First suggested in the 1960s, the Four Stages of Competence outline how someone moves through the process of acquiring a skill. But how does that map to language learning?

1. Unconscious Incompetence

You don’t know how much you don’t know.

Honestly, the only point in the Welsh learning journey where this could possibly apply is that period before you actually start, when you might still believe that you really can learn a language in three months or with just 5 minutes of play per day. As soon as you start, you realise just how much there is to learn.

2. Conscious Incompetence

You understand that language learning is hard and that you have a lot to learn.

This covers most of your learning journey, from entry-level Mynediad courses all the way up to Uwch. At every stage you’ll be introduced to more grammar and more vocab. This is where it starts to feel like a slog.

3. Conscious Competence

You’re getting there, but you need to focus to get it all right and if your focus lapses you make mistakes.
Congratulations, you’ve reached Hyfedredd (Proficiency) and can now probably do most of the thing that you want to do, but you have to focus to do it.

4. Unconscious Competence

You’re fluent! Yay!


The majority of us spend most of our time in Stage 2, which means that we are constantly reminded that there’s so much more to learn.

After a while, that becomes demoralising and for lots of people it’s so dispiriting that they give up completely. Dysgu Cymraeg’s stats show that around 75% of learners give up after Mynediad (Entry) and never get as far even as Sylfaen (Foundation).

So how can we fix this?

What we need to do is split our learning into smaller chunks so that we can go through all four stages in a short space of time and finish with feeling of fluency. Lots of courses do this to some extent, but what’s often missing is the milestone that says “You have conquered this stretch! Well done!”

We can create that milestone ourselves using self-testing, something that I think a lot of learners shy away from because it just smacks too much of school.

But instead of looking at testing as a way to make you feel bad about what you don’t know, you can instead look at it as proving to yourself how much you’ve learnt and as showing you what you need to practice a little more.

With nothing important riding on the test and the opportunity to repeat it as often as you need to, self-testing is a valuable tool to help you understand how much you have mastered.

These opportunities to test yourself and understand how well you’re doing are built into Ymestyn. They are a fundamental part of the course and, because you’re in control of your learning journey, you can go back and do the tests (usually presented as games so they aren’t at all onerous) as often as you like.

Instead of one long slog through the Four Stages of Competence, you develop unconscious competence in each skill, one at a time. We break that one big tedious pyramid into lots and lots of smaller and more manageable ones. By the time you get to the end of each little pyramid you know that you’ve properly learnt that skill and can feel confident and proud of your progress!

So if you’re a canolradd learner who wants to feel confident and proud of your progress, try Ymestyn today, the only structured practice course for intermediate learners!

Video

Matthew Rhys on Widow’s Bay

Widow’s Bay is a fantastic new horror-comedy series on Apple TV starring award-winning Welsh actor, Matthew Rhys. In this interview for S4C’s Heno, he talks to Rhodri Owen about the new show, his boat and his experience performing Playing Burton, a single-man play about Richard Burton’s life. 

Watching short videos like this is a great way to expand your vocabulary, but it helps to learn the vocab before you watch. It can be tempting just to coast through and rely on the English subtitles to fill any gaps in your understanding, but you won’t really learn new words or phrases that way — learning takes focus and repetition. 

With Ymestyn, you don’t have to do all the hard work of pulling out the vocab, checking plurals and genders for nouns, and creating learning exercises, because I do all that for you. 

In the clip below, for example, there are dozens of words or phrases that you might not already know. it would take hours to list them all out (ask me how I know!), so to save you time, I’ve put the top 20 here for you to learn before you watch. 

  • plethu — to braid, to plait
  • tam (tamau) — morsel, bit
  • trigolyn (trigolion) — resident
  • anodd iddo neud — difficult for him to do
  • chwedl (chwedlau) — legend, myth
  • ar led  — about, around
  • shwt foi yw e?  — what kind of man is he? 
  • yn ni’n i gyd yn gwbod — we all know
  • fysa ma’ be’ — I don’t know what
  • mynnu — to insist
  • gor-hoff — overly fond, too keen
  • er gwaetha modd — unfortunately
  • rhwystr (rhwystrau) — obstacle 
  • cyfarwydd — familiar
  • fferyllydd (fferyllyddion) — pharmacist
  • canolbwynt (canolbwyntiau) — focal point
  • sai’n cael gweud — I can’t say
  • ta weud hwn — I can say this
  • crwt (cryts) — little boy, lad
  • cnaf (cnafiaid) — knave, scoundrel

The video has English subtitles burnt in, so if you can, find a way to cover those up so you’re listening just to the Welsh. 

How did you do? Did you hear all of these words and phrases? Were there any other bits that tripped you up? 

For the full list of words and phrases, plus exercises to learn them, sign up for Ymestyn today.

Uncategorized

Update: 2 Jun – Es i, Des i and Matthew Rhys

Es i and Des i

I have now added exercises for the simple past of mynd (to go) and dod (to come), so that you can practice using those forms in context. Es i and des i are quite easy to use — if you would use I went or I came in English, you can just slot in es i and des i, in exactly the same way.

These two new exercises can be found right at the end of the course.

Matthew Rhys on Widow’s Bay

Last month, Heno’s Rhodri Owen interviewed actor Matthew Rhys about his latest hit TV show, Widow’s Bay, his boat and playing Richard Burton on stage. Although the interview is only about 6 minutes long, it’s crammed full of vocab and phrases, with lots in the south Wales dialect.

I’ve pulled out nearly 80 words or phrases and built exercises for you to learn them so that the video it makes more sense on first viewing.

Interviews like this, where native speakers are talking quickly and using lots of colloquial language, are really challenging so don’t worry if you don’t catch it all! As learners, we have to get used to a little ambiguity.

Learn some of the vocab and watch the video here.

Coming soon

I’ve got a lovely piece about Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Caerdydd’s Gwen John exhibition by Lauren Davies underway. And I’m halfway through the next set of exercises for the simple past of gwneud (to do, to make) and cael (to get, to receive).

Plus I have something fun up my sleeve that will be very different to what’s on offer via other Welsh courses. Stay tuned!

Uncategorized

Update: 19 May – Speed Reading, This and that, Y Gelli Gandryll

Speed reading exercises

I’ve uploaded speed reading exercises for every section now, having nailed down a faster workflow to produce them. 

The idea behind speed reading is that you stop trying to translate in your head and instead try to think in Welsh itself. Speed reading doesn’t give you enough time to translate, forcing you to connect the word to the meaning without going via English.

Log in to give it a go and see what happens! 

New ‘This, That, These, Those’ section

I’ve put together a whole new section on how to say ‘this man’, ‘that man’ etc, addressing both the yma/yna system and the ‘hwn/hon/hyn’ system.

As learners, we tend to default to the simpler yma/yna system. But if we flip it on its head, we can use the hwn/hon/hyn as a tool to help us learn noun gender. The benefit to this is that not only do we learn noun gender, which can be quite a challenge for English speakers, but we also become more comfortable with the hwn/hon/hyn system which is used more widely in written Welsh.  

Y Gelli Gandryll’s famous bookshops

S4C have a short video about the bookshops of Y Gelli Gandryll (Hay-on-Wye) on their YouTube channel, so I’ve put together some vocab games and exercises to help you prepare. Once you’ve learnt the vocab, you’ll find the video much easier to watch! Log in to learn and watch!

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 are live!

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 – New quizzes, five common idioms, Ymestyn in the news

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!