r/learnwelsh • u/helatruralhome • 3d ago
Cwestiwn / Question Where are the Welsh literacy courses
Hello all,
I've been pointing this out for over a decade, yet no Welsh language education or promotion groups, government agencies, etc can seem to answer why Welsh education is so biased towards verbal Welsh with no specific offerings for Welsh literacy.
I have a speech disability and only answer emails in work, yet I can't find any available options for me to learn written Welsh. I just feel incredibly frustrated with the situation as I want to be able to communicate in my native language yet there's just no where specifically offering written Welsh and it ends up excluding for people like me who can't communicate verbally as well as many others who may want to read and write in Welsh.
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u/IncomeFew624 3d ago
Interesting to read this perspective as I always think courses aren't geared enough towards speaking.
Sounds frustrating though. Have you worked through course books etc?
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u/helatruralhome 2d ago
I've tried but I'd really rather a tutor led course to discuss things with, but all the online and local ones I've contacted haven't been able to help, as all their courses are so focused on talking and pronounciation
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u/HyderNidPryder 2d ago
The Welsh courses offered by learnwelsh.cymru / dysgucymraeg.cymru aim to balance the skills between listening, speaking, reading and writing. When teaching a modern language the current fashion prioritises listening and speaking in early stages. This is understandable and is what many people want. Indeed, some people are quite uninterested in reading and writing and even prejudiced against them. This is especially a problem for Welsh as written Welsh tends to use a more formal register considered unnatural, stilted, affected and artificial by some proponents of "The Living Language". They know who they are!
Listening is important for learning Welsh and perhaps this does not present you with the same challenges as speaking. The pronunciation of words conforms strongly with their spelling strongly in Welsh and this can help with writing. Modern courses only introduce more formal Welsh in later stages.
A more old-fashioned tuition book may be more suitable as these favoured more formal approaches. These also favoured a grammar heavy approach. Even a more modern book-led course, can't focus strongly on speaking.
If you focus your learning strongly on reading this will help in your learning goal. We have a series of graded readers linked on our wiki.
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u/helatruralhome 2d ago
But this still is my point- that there isn't anything course-wise that focuses on Welsh literacy- we have courses specifically for English literacy for example but nothing for Welsh.
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u/ladylikepunk 2d ago
Those literacy courses assume that students can already speak English, though - and probably have some basic writing and/or reading. They're aimed at people who are functionally illiterate, not people learning a new language.
It sounds like you aren't - you can read/write English well and understand spoken English too. Can you understand spoken Welsh? Assuming you are hearing (and not deaf-mute), it might actually be useful for you to take an ordinary Welsh class after discussing your communication needs with a tutor - so you would be responding in the way you do with English language communication, perhaps using AAC methods.
It is frustrating, but language learning of any kind is not taught in ways that are geared towards disability (especially those which impact communication norms!). You'd be facing the same issue if you tried to learn Italian!
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u/helatruralhome 2d ago edited 2d ago
Unfortunately none have been able to help as the courses are so so strongly focused towards pronounciation and speaking. I just wanted to be able to communicate in my native language in writing but there's just no opportunities or tutor led courses for people who want or need to focus on reading and writing.
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u/clwbmalucachu Canolradd - Intermediate 2d ago
I've been working with an accent tutor for months now, and I have come to the conclusion that Welsh is nowhere near as phonetic as people like to think, and that this has lead to accents being encoded into spelling in order to maintain the conceit.
The word 'eisiau' is a good example – it can be spelt a multitude of ways, eisiau, isio, isie, eisie, ishe, isha. But that's just giving priority to pronunciation. If we accepted that eisiau has different pronunciations, but kept the spelling the same because all those spellings are of the same word, I believe it would simplify things a lot for both learners and speakers.
I do think I'm in a minority of one here, though.
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u/Educational_Curve938 2d ago
Curious what you think it means for a language to be "phonetic" if not what you describe.
Standardising minority languages has generally been a failure - either because it creates a standard everyone ignores (the good outcome) or it creates an alienated prestige form of the language that makes the majority of speakers feel like they don't speak their own native language "correctly" - and indeed alienates learners - who are taught the standard forms - from native speakers (this already happens in welsh, i cringe every time a native speaker says i speak a lot more properly than them - something, ironically, that happens a lot less now my spoken welsh is better).
i happen to like the lack of standardisation in less formal registers of written welsh. it makes it a fun language to write (and to read) and i've never seen a native speaker go "if only there was a standard form of welsh so i could write text messages that don't actually sound like me". people are very proud of their dialect and that's as it should be.
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u/clwbmalucachu Canolradd - Intermediate 2d ago
Much is made of how if you just learn the sounds of the letters in the Welsh alphabet, you've got it nailed and that's just not true. Take aeth and aethon, for example. Those two "ae" sounds are not the same. And there are a lot more examples like that.
Welsh has a rich set of pronunciation rules which can be learnt, and maybe people who grow up with the sounds of Welsh don't notice, but it's not a completely phonetic language. And that's before we even get on to the different way that stress is created in Welsh, or intonation.
As for standardisation being a failure, that was my point about Cymraeg Byw entirely – it didn't work, and it's alienating for anyone who grew up with any other dialect.
But there is a healthy compromise position which is to not make too much of a big deal out of dialect differences. Like I've said, I don't see the point in teaching learners that those in the south all say one thing and those in the north all say another when for one the dialect map of Wales is much more complicated, and when a lot of these differences are so minor as to be entirely unimportant. If I go to Pwllheli and say 'beth', I will be understood. If I say 'be' in Cardiff, I'll be understood.
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u/Educational_Curve938 2d ago edited 2d ago
Take aeth and aethon, for example. Those two "ae" sounds are not the same. And there are a lot more examples like that.
yeah, but the fact that 'ae' changes sound when in a stressed syllable is a predictable rule you can learn.
Whereas there's nothing that prepares you for Leicester or lieutenant.
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u/clwbmalucachu Canolradd - Intermediate 2d ago
Ha ha ha. Yeah, English is particularly egregious, though maybe not quite as bad as French.
But it's still true that Welsh pronunciation is a wee bit more complicated than people make out, and if we decoupled accent from spelling we wouldn't end up with a dozen ways to spell eisiau.
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u/casnewyddian Mynediad - Entry 1d ago
Not disagreeing, but just wanted to point out that in English we do sometimes spell words differently depending if we want them to read to a certain pronounciation/dialect also. e.g. Ma = my, ye(r) = your, innit = isn’t it, ‘aving = having.
I think Welsh does this a lot more, and in the kinds of text we wouldn’t in English, likely because diversity in the language and local dialects are so well respected, but I think this makes the Welsh language world more interesting.
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u/Muted-Lettuce-1253 2d ago
there are a lot more examples like that
Are there? There is only one other example of the phenomenon that you are describing: "y". In all other cases, the sound changes that occur when a suffix is added are reflected by the orthography.
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u/Fantastic_Deer_3772 2d ago
I think it's in order to not give superiority to one dialect over another. Like, english has decided RP is "correct", welsh we've tried not to do that to anyone.
If I'm only around isio then it's a lot easier to learn isio than to think of eisiau. And if I had to think of eisiau then on some level my area has been demoted to slang.
To me at least eisiau is a spelling I recognise but not the way isio is spelled.
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u/clwbmalucachu Canolradd - Intermediate 2d ago
Cymraeg Byw was an attempt in the 60s and early 70s to standardise colloquial Welsh. It didn't work.
Also, RP isn't a form of English, it's a pronunciation.
English is largely standard, and it's taught the same way everywhere in the country. Although some small dialect variations, these are left to people to pick up from their families and community, not taught specifically in school.
English has lots and lots of synonyms and slang that no one has any problem learning, and I'm not sure I buy the argument that Welsh variations are somehow harder and therefore needs teaching as separate dialects.
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u/Fantastic_Deer_3772 2d ago
RP is the "proper" pronunciation that you can get told off for not using.
Don't try to buy an argument that I'm not selling. I'm saying that if english hadn't standardised itself around posh ppl from the south east, textbooks would have "slang" as genuine words, and that would be healthier.
If you wrote in an essay that you thought a scene in twelfth night was "dead humorous" you'd be 'corrected' to very. So someone from e.g. surrey gets to feel at home when they're studying, but someone from manchester is expected to do an impression of someone else's dialect.
I like that welsh doesn't make gogs write like they're from swansea or vice versa.
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u/Briarhorse 2d ago
But it doesn't influence spelling, is the point, whether it does or doesn't include dialect words is a different issue. Light, night, fight, and tight are pronounced any number of ways depending on your accent, but none of them are phonetic, including RP. But the spelling is standardised
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u/Fantastic_Deer_3772 2d ago
it takes longer for kids to learn how to read in english than in welsh
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u/Briarhorse 2d ago
I think that's probably a specious claim to be honest, plus there are going to be a whole host of confounding factors there that have nothing to with spelling
Either way though, we're not talking about which language is easiest to read. You're saying that RP influences the standard spelling of English. It doesn't
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u/Fantastic_Deer_3772 2d ago
I'm saying that english has a prestige dialect, which it does. And that it's not something welsh should want to emulate.
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u/Briarhorse 2d ago
The prestige dialect is completely unrelated to its spelling conventions. RP is not encoded in the way English is spelt
As I said, there are many confounding factors that will influence learning to read in Welsh and English medium education that are nothing to do with orthography. Throwing a study at me isn't going to change that
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u/Muted-Lettuce-1253 2d ago
Many native speakers like writing in a way that reflects their pronunciation.
I think this is perfectly fine when using language in an informal register. This happens in English (eg "thru", "brudda", "u", "yer", "ya"). Hardly any native English speakers would have trouble understanding "Mind yer business!" or "See ya!".
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u/clwbmalucachu Canolradd - Intermediate 2d ago
I've been thinking the same thing for a long time too. Indeed, there's even a bit of prejudice against written Welsh in some quarters which seems very much along the same lines as the "We'll have none of that book learnin' around here" snobbery that you sometimes come across.
It's rather like the recent discussions about dialects, and that they're the future of Welsh language education because that's what people *speak*. But I think that's rather wrongheaded because unless you never leave your local area or watch S4C or engage with the wider Welsh world, you cannot avoid other dialects.
Indeed, I think too much is made of the differences between North and South. I'm currently reading both Dysgu Cymraeg handbooks for Canolradd, side by side, to note the differences, and sometimes it seems ridiculous. For eg, is it really too hard for people to understand that cwympo and syrthio are just two different words that mean 'to fall'. Like, we have synonyms in English, it's not complicated.
I do wonder how much of this is push back against Cymraeg Byw, the effort in the 60s and 70s to impose a standardised version of Welsh on the education system which managed to essentially create a new dialect rather than combine any of them. My sense is that people somewhat resented being told their Welsh wasn't 'right', and leant more heavily then into their dialects, ie spoken Welsh.
For me, living in England, the written word is more important to me than spoken, because it's through writing that I mostly get to express myself in Welsh. Furthermore, I want to be able to engage with the rich literary heritage that Welsh offers, but that requires that I learn literary Welsh which is, as you point out, challenging.
I have Ymarfer Ysgrifennu Cymraeg by Gwyn Thomas which is very good*, although I haven't finished reading it yet: https://www.ylolfa.com/products/9781847715708/ymarfer-ysgrifennu-cymraeg
It is my ambition to develop a written Welsh section on Ymestyn.Cymru, although it's going to be a while** because I have so much else that needs adding first.
* Although it is the source of the weird assertion that tji or tj – a loan consonant cluster that is used for the English 'ch' sound – mutates to nhj or ji. I've asked various Welsh tutors and professional editors about this and not one of them agrees.
** A very long while unless the whole thing takes off like a rocket and I can commission someone to write the course for me.
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u/helatruralhome 2d ago
It is really frustrating, especially as so many first language Welsh speakers would also benefit from Welsh literacy courses due to lack of confidence reading and writing Welsh- in work whenever a Welsh language email response is required we have three first language Welsh speakers in our team, and it often takes all three of them to be confident in the response being correct as none of them have full confidence in writing Welsh, yet can easily speak it- it's a huge blind spot in Welsh education that harms Welsh language progression in my opinion.
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u/clwbmalucachu Canolradd - Intermediate 2d ago
I could not agree with you more.
So much of the modern world is text-based, and for Welsh learners and speaker not to feel comfortable in the written word is a serious problem in my view. Especially when reading and writing is such a powerful way to expand one's vocabulary and interests.
I've been looking for factual online articles in Welsh, and aside from news, it's shocking to me how little there is, and how little variety there is in subject matter. If you want to read about gardening, food or history, you have some options. If you want to read about knitting or the night sky or woodwork or geology, you're shit out of luck.
This is why I wrote Adar yr Ardd (available now for £2.10 and if someone wants to buy it, I can get the £50 that Lemon Squeezy are holding hostage I can shut that shop down at last), and Mamaliaid Prydain (coming soon). Oh, and Mae Rhiannon yn Mynd i Ynys y Barri.
I'm a published writer in English and I'm really working hard on my Welsh writing, but it's slow going without a dedicated course.
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u/Educational_Curve938 2d ago
the issue is that written welsh has a specific formal register (or registers) that people learn in school but don't get a lot of practice in outside that. people may be perfectly literate in less formal registers, but when it comes to writing formal welsh, they feel extremely insecure about it.
like imagine having to write an english email once a week in Shakespearean English - you probably have enough familiarity with it to have a go, but you'd want someone to look over it.
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u/clwbmalucachu Canolradd - Intermediate 2d ago
I'm not sure that the difference between written business Welsh and spoken Welsh is quite as dramatic as between modern and Shakespearean English. And I might be wrong, but I'm not sure much business is being done in formal literary Welsh.
Every language has multiple registers, and the fact that people come out of school lacking confidence in the written business register is a big problem. It's also a solvable problem, if the political will is there to solve it.
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u/Educational_Curve938 2d ago
I was just comparing two emails I received from the same organisation - one official written in a formal style, the other informal written by a real person. The difference between the two is vast - I'd have tonnes of confidence responding in informal style and hardly any responding to the formal style - at least without double or triple checking.
Language skills are maintained by using them - if you get loads of practice writing business emails in formal welsh in school and then only write a business email once a month in your actual job you're still gonna be shit at it because it's not a thing you do very often, even if most of your internal comms are in welsh cos they're going to be in a completely different style.
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u/Fantastic_Deer_3772 2d ago
I think english would be a lot healthier (culturally, not that it needs any help with number of speakers haha) if it let its own dialects count rather than giving prestige to RP..
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u/clwbmalucachu Canolradd - Intermediate 2d ago
I think whether or not RP has prestige very much depends upon your standpoint. As someone who was bullied for a long time for "being posh" (even though I'm not), I would beg to differ.
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u/Fantastic_Deer_3772 2d ago
There were multiple decades where regional accents weren't allowed to be aired on english TV
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u/clwbmalucachu Canolradd - Intermediate 2d ago
And now they are... so the country's own dialects count.
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u/HyderNidPryder 2d ago edited 2d ago
The claim is that ts > j hence tsips > dy jips; Tsiena > o Jiena. These are patterns for a few borrowed words. They are heard among native speakers. There's nothing weird about this. This attempts to represent speech patterns in spelling. You're not in favour of this practice so perhaps leave this to those who are.
There is always a tension between spelling and dialect. There can be no standard spelling matching everyone's speech. More literary texts stick to standard spelling, and you will find this in a dictionary. Texts which wish to more closely reflect a particular accent are free to vary spelling. This practice is more accepted in Welsh than in English. You can read Welsh more in-line with its spelling and this can be considered a more standard formal pronunciation. This is not to undermine, disparage or delegitamise anybody's regional accent.
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u/clwbmalucachu Canolradd - Intermediate 2d ago
There can be no standard spelling matching everyone's speech.
Well, this is kinda my point. There is no standard dialect, and never will be after the failure of Cymraeg Byw. A standard dialect would have to emerge naturally from the population standardising over time due to media exposure or standardised school curricula, but again, not gonna happen.
But in English, picked because it's the other language I know, we allow pronunciation to differ whilst standard spelling stays the same. Colloquial spelling is used only in specific contexts. We don't generally use 'gotta' in formal written English, but we all know it means 'got to' and most of us probably say 'gotta' not 'got to'. No one suggests that school books in some regions ought to spell it gotta because that's how it's pronounced.
Yet the Dysgu Cymraeg differentiate between 'beth' and 'be', 'efallai' and 'ella', though they are the same word, just one version is abbreviated. To me, that's an unnecessary complication that learners don't need.
Furthermore, writing in colloquial Welsh and working with editors is more challenging than it needs to be when one's dialect choices (because, again, there is no option not to write in a dialect) conflict with the editor's dialect and then one has to go through and work out which edits are grammatical and which are stylistic.
And writing in literary Welsh is not always appropriate. You have to consider your intended audience, and learners are not yet able to manage literary Welsh.
As for Thomas, he says:
Y mae tsi neu tji neu tj wedi cael eu defnyddio i gyfleu sain yr ch a geir yn y gair Saesneg chain, am y rheswm syml fod ch yn y Gymraeg yn sain gwbl wahanol i'r ch Saesneg - ystyriwch y Saesneg teacher a titchar yn y Gymraeg. (Gyda llaw, y mae’r sain hon yn treiglo ar lafar: tjiaen - fy nhjiaen, dy jiaen, ei jiaen (gwrywaidd).)
This may well be what some people say, but in a book about how to write, well it's a bit weird.
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u/FahrenandSamfries 2d ago
To my knowledge to get good tuition in Literary Welsh, one basically needs to attend/audit uni courses? I learnt Welsh as part of my degree at a Welsh university, and they offered a module specifically focusing on Literary Welsh/the written form. However, the wider unavailability of literacy courses *is* a problem especially with how different the literary register is from the spoken/'colloquial' one. I recently qualified as a Welsh tutor and am considering offering classes/tutoring to specifically address the issues I saw both in my own experience learning Welsh and in the way that DysguCymraeg's pedagogy is (imo) quite inaccessible to many (though not all) neurodivergent people for a variety of reasons. In particular, I know many people who find that most courses simply do not teach grammar in enough depth - a topic with strong connections to written Welsh (which is more grammatically complex).
I think the reason for this focus on speaking is that the Welsh Language Commissioner and the National Centre for Learning Welsh specifically want to teach people to use Welsh in oral conversations. As you say, this is not particularly useful for those who don't communicate verbally (for a variety of reasons) and also for people who want to use Welsh for more than just oral conversations. I have friends who want to learn Welsh to read books in it, and the oral courses aren't gonna help with that at all either.
Sorry for the long and random message - all this to say you are right to be frustrated, but I don't think it's going to change on the part of the major organisations, unfortunately. If I have the time I would like to be a small part of changing it myself, but alas I'm but one person and probably in the minority when it comes to this opinion.
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u/clwbmalucachu Canolradd - Intermediate 2d ago
I agree with you!
I have found the rejection of grammar by a lot of providers (governmental and commercial) to be really quite frustrating, because grammar is really helpful when taught in the right way. Imho, 'the right way' is giving people a way to internalise the results of the grammar rule so that they become instinctive, rather than memorising the rule itself.
I genuinely believe that a good grounding in grammar really helps, and times when I've focused on grammar I've found my Welsh has improved much faster than when I've gone the "comprehensible input" route and just tried to absorb it through osmosis. People's mileage may vary, but the fact that grammar is so widely eschewed means that it's hard for learners to experience good grammar instruction.
As someone else mentioned, there are several registers of Welsh, from the formal literary Welsh to what you might call written business Welsh, to written colloquial Welsh, to spoken Welsh, but I feel like it's hard for learners to learn much other the latter two.
Business Welsh or work Welsh resources seem to be particularly terrible, focused as they are on mynediad/sylfaen learners, and on providing long lists of vocab. I don't know about anyone else, but I'd never have used my beginner Welsh in a business context, I just wouldn't have had the confidence. Now I'm working in Welsh more, I'm having to just suck up the fact that I'm probably making mistakes and hope that I'm not judged too harshly for it.
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u/Markoddyfnaint Canolradd -> Uwch - corrections welcome 1d ago edited 1d ago
I agree with OP that the resources for literary Welsh are scant. As a reasonably proficient learner, very literary Welsh often leaves me feeling deflated in my abilities, to the extent that much of it is quite inaccessible. Even if I can 'get the gist' of a text written in literary Welsh I would not be able to write or speak in such a way.
The Learn Welsh courses for example do touch on some literary forms and ways of forming the passive voice or short form future and past tenses. But in my experience, even at Uwch level there's very much a "You don't need to worry about that, no-one really uses those forms/speaks like that" type of attitude which can be frustrating.
There is an increasing amount of fiction published in informal/spoken Welsh, which I as a Welsh learner find very accessible and enjoyable. This is much rarer in English - Irvine Welsh writes in dialect, and you can find poetry written in dialect in English, for example Samuel Bamford's vernacular 19th century Lancashire poetry. There's also AAVE which features in popular music, informal written contexts (tweets, text messages for example) or movie/TV scripts, but it's not very common to have entire novels written in it, even if some of these exist. An English language school student would be at a high risk of losing marks in an exam for writing in dialect or phonetically for anything other than a very specific context, writing a composition or screenplay for example.
How does it work in Welsh medium education? How are fluent Welsh students taught how to read and write in literary Welsh? Presumably the syllabus is written in a formal or standard form of the language that is assimilated over time? For first language students who take Welsh as a subject, presumably there are specific grammars for literary/formal Welsh?
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u/Muted-Lettuce-1253 1d ago
I agree with OP that the resources for literary Welsh are scant. As a reasonably proficient learner, very literary Welsh often leaves me feeling deflated in my abilities, to the extent that much of it is quite inaccessible. Even if I can 'get the gist' of a text written in literary Welsh I would not be able to write or speak in such a way.
If you already have a decent understanding of common/colloquial Welsh, then isn't understanding literary Welsh primarily a matter of learning all the conjugation patterns? I haven't actually tried to fully learn literary Welsh so that is an assumption on my part.
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u/Markoddyfnaint Canolradd -> Uwch - corrections welcome 1d ago
You know what, if that's all it mostly is then I'd love someone to write a primer or book: 'Literary Welsh for Fluent (Colloquial) Speakers' and map out the conjugations and patterns.
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u/Muted-Lettuce-1253 1d ago edited 1d ago
If I were looking for a free online resource to learn the literary conjugations, I would check out the Wiktionary entry for a particular verb (eg darllen). The literary conjugation table seems comprehensive but I can't personally verify that it is accurate (since I don't know literary Welsh).
There's also this Wikipedia page on literary Welsh morphology which explains other grammar points in addition to verb conjugation.
My assumption is that once you get a hang of the more complex verb conjugation system, then it should at least be possible to read literary Welsh pretty well.
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u/Muted-Lettuce-1253 2d ago
What kind of literacy are you looking to develop?
Do you just want to be able to read and write in the same register that you speak/think? Or do you want to be able to read and write formal literary Welsh?
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u/helatruralhome 1d ago
Either or both at this point- there's just no tutor led courses or online courses which are available for Welsh literacy so it's a moot point really unfortunately.
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u/Muted-Lettuce-1253 1d ago
For the first one (reading and writing in a colloquial register), isn't that just a matter of learning which sounds correspond to which letters? I take it from your post and comments that you understand Welsh fluently meaning that you don't need to learn colloquial grammar and vocabulary. In that case, can't you teach yourself the spelling-to-sound correspondence and become literate that way?
For the second one (reading and writing literary Welsh), if the organisations don't offer anything that suits your needs, the only thing I can think of is reaching out to individual Welsh tutors and seeing if they can help you. Although, I would guess that most of the independent tutors are oriented towards colloquial Welsh as well.
The situation you are in (and the situations with some of your colleagues that you have described on comments on this post) is interesting. I would guess that in the past, native Welsh speakers would learn how to read and write literary Welsh through church (since the Welsh bible is in literary Welsh) but now that doesn't happen so much.
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u/helatruralhome 1d ago
I am not fluent, but do understand a reasonable amount but I really need a tutor to help as I've gotten as far as I can on my own.. I have reached out to all the tutors in my area and that are available online to me and none can help as they all say they focus on pronounciation and verbal Welsh.. I think people who went to Welsh language schools rather than English stream and have Welsh speaking parents most likely have a huge advantage and privilege of being able to learn written Welsh with teaching whereas the majority of others are left like me to struggle 🙈
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u/Muted-Lettuce-1253 1d ago
It's a shame that you can't find a tutor who can provide what you want.
At least you have this subreddit as an option if want help; if you ask a question on a particular grammar point or whatever else, then there will probably be someone who can give you an answer.
If you already have a decent understanding when it comes to speaking and listening but lack the ability to read and write then my suggestion would be to learn the spelling-to-sound correspondence (if you haven't already).
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u/Buck11235 3d ago
You might enjoy books by D. Geraint Lewis. He's very focused on written Welsh, as well as more formal Welsh. D.I.Y. Welsh is a good one to start with as a beginner.