Category: Roadmap

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.

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!

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.

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.

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