Author: TIDE and CANUTE

Natural listening to improve your Welsh

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I’ve been learning Welsh on and off for years. I’ve made slow progress and am stuck at beginner level. Recently, I decided to stop following courses and instead focus on enjoying multimedia entertainment in Welsh. I hope this will give me the chance to acquire words and grammatical structures in a more natural and intuitive way. Here are some things I’ve been trying out.

Practise Welsh listening with folk songs

Gwilym Bowen Rhys is a Welsh folk singer with a beautiful voice. I’m a big fan and often listen to his songs on YouTube – even though I understand very little of them.

Over the weekend, it occurred to me to look the lyrics up online. I’m glad that I did. They’re on Bowen Rhys’s website in Welsh and English. I found them in the dropdown menu under the word “geiriau,” which means “words.”

I chose two songs on YouTube and listened to them over and over again while reading the lyrics. They were:

Coed Glyn Cynon (lyrics to Coed Glyn Cynon at this link)

Yr Wylan Gefnddu (lyrics to Yr Wylan Gefnddu at this link)

Welsh and English have very different sentence structures. They’re also from different language families. That means it’s usually not possible to match the Welsh word with the English one just by sight. I used Google Translate to check the meaning of each word.

I intend to stick with these two songs until I know their words and phrases well enough to recognise them in other contexts. I expect it’ll take a long time, but as it also means listening to Gwilym Bowen Rhys sing, it’s no hardship at all.

Practise Welsh listening with a teen drama

I’ve also been practising my listening skills by watching Y Coridor on S4C. It’s available with English and Welsh subtitles on S4C’s app. You can also find it with only English subtitles on the BBC iPlayer.

Each episode is about 10 minutes long. I watch it with English subtitles, and then I repeat it immediately afterwards with Welsh subtitles.

It’s an engaging teen drama about a schoolgirl who goes missing. I think the language is quite accessible. I usually feel a lot more confident about my Welsh after watching it.

Pulling out of a rut

I’m sure that following courses is the best way to learn Welsh. It’s a difficult language for English speakers because it is so different.

I’ve switched to using Welsh rather than studying Welsh because I felt stuck in a rut. Some beginner lessons were too easy for me, but I didn’t know the language well enough to progress to the next level.

I’m going to measure my progress by how much I rely on subtitles. If one day I can watch Y Coridor without any subtitles at all, I’ll be very pleased with myself.

Echoes and reflections in photography

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I enjoy photographing quite ordinary scenes. There’s always something that makes them special. It could be colour, light, or interesting shapes.

I took the first picture because of the red and yellow on the noodle van. I liked how the colours reflected in the puddles on the pavement and the way the autumn leaves echoed the red.

A truck selling noodles (Halal Chinese and Thai). The truck is red and yellow.
Location: Bexleyheath shopping centre in Greater London

I took the second picture because I liked the pairing of the sky and car park. They both looked flat and vast and filled with light-flecked grey.

The roof parking area of a multi-storey car park. Grey clouds in the sky and puddles on the tarmac.
Location: Car park at Bexleyheath shopping centre

I have always liked old brickwork. The wall and arches in this picture are likely to be from the 19th century. I took this photo through a train window because I liked the curves of the bicycle racks against the curves of the arches.

Bicycle stands next to a brick wall and arches on a train station platform.
Location: Crewe

Charity gift ideas for Christmas

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This year, I’ve been shopping for Christmas gifts in the online stores of national charities. It’s the first time I’ve focused my Christmas shopping efforts on charity shops. I wish I’d tried it sooner.

While their product ranges aren’t as extensive as Amazon’s, they do give the impression of being thoughtfully curated selections. And because buying from these shops sends money to good causes, it adds a layer of meaning to the gifts.

The photo below shows a detail from a unisex Christmas jumper sold by the RNLI. In its 202 years of existence, the RNLI has saved many thousands of lives in the seas around Britain and Ireland.

I like the combination of maritime elements and Christmassy snowflakes.

A close-up photo of a patterned jumper. The pattern shows lifeboats, snowflakes, anchors, waves, and life preservers in a repeated pattern.

The two bags in the photo below come from the Red Cross’s online shop. The shoulder bag comes from Nepal and is made of recycled sari material. The tote bag was made from fabric offcuts in Ghana.

A shoulder bag with a sari pattern on the left and a tote bag with an African pattern on the right.

I also bought a package of red fabric squares from the Red Cross. They’ve been upcycled in England from donated clothes that weren’t suitable to be sold as garments. If you know someone who likes sewing, it’s worth telling them that the Red Cross sells a whole range of colours.

A clear plastic bag of red fabric off cuts

I usually find gift shopping quite stressful at Christmas because it’s a lot all at once. Browsing through charities’ online stores has made the experience far nicer.