Categories: uncategorized
Date: 12 July 2004 11:08:40
i have finally started, after ages of toying with it and learning bits and bobs from various speakers I know, to learn welsh in a vaguely systematic way.
I meant to do a taster course in preparation for an wlpan course in september (intensive learning), but haven't had the time and now all the tasters have run. Instead, I have got a 'linkword' book, which is undoubtedly a fantastic way to start off with a language if you have That Sort of Brain... you learn a bit of vocab first, then you get to build sentences and so learn mutations etc that way - the rules are kind of introduced gently so you get used to using them. The main trick of linkword is that you are taught words through images; for instance, the welsh for 'dog' is 'ci', so you have to imagine a dog with a key in its mouth; also, dog is masculine, and they have decided that the visual for masculine is a boxer, so you imagine a dog biting a boxer. Another think I quite like is that where the welsh is the same or similar to the english, you imagine that item stuffed with leeks.
I now have a bank of bizarre visual images, including a boxer with a carpet on his shoulder that is sprouting leeks. I can also say things like this in Welsh: 'the black cat is slow but the heavy piano is dirty'. Should come in handy.