Back in Welsh class

Normally, I am in Welsh class during term time. Last year was an exception. I had registered, but when classes actually started, it became clear that this was not suitable to me. There are some classes where you just follow a certain curriculum, and then you know what to expect. I tend to go to the category of classes that are about "polishing" your Welsh. It is quite up to the tutor how that is given shape. And generally, that works out, but this time, it just didn't. I left.

In spring I realised I should be registering for a class in the new academic year. And then I forgot again! You know how that goes. You think about it, but never quite when you are in the position of acting upon it. So we reached summer and I wasn't registered. And then I did something about it. But by then, quite a lot of classes were fully booked, and I had to make a choice from a more limited offering. And what that meant for me was that all the online classes in the north were full. And if they are online, it doesn't matter where you physically are, but an online class in the south would be performed in south Welsh. Oops!

It started before the academic year did. I got ready on a Tuesday night. I had not had a Zoom meeting for so long, the software first needed to do a big update. I entered the meeting just on time! 

The first thing I noticed was the exemplary enunciation of the tutor. Great! And the group wasn’t too big. The tutor, Gwen, first told us a bit about the course and the course materials, and then she sent us off into breakout groups to get to know each other. we did that twice, with different groups, and then she went down to business. We had grammatical work to do. This first session we focussed on short verb forms. In Welsh, you normally leave your verbs in the infinitive, and let ‘to do’ do all the work. Not ‘I biked to work’ but ‘I did bike to work’. But if you write an official text, you will want to conjugate all your verbs, not just ‘to do’. And you might hide pronouns in prepositions. So ‘ysgrifennwn atynt’ means ‘I wrote to them’ as much as ‘rô’n i’n ysgrifennu atyn nhw’ does, but it’s a lot more concise, and it makes you sound like a 50s newsreader. I could use the practice! 

It was a good first class, and I look forward to the rest. And the fact it’s all in Southern isn’t a big deal. They say ‘moyn’ and ‘mas’ a lot, where I say ‘isio’ and ‘allan’, but that’s trivial. I’m sure to learn things here, and I don’t think my north Welsh identity will get in the way!