Learn Welsh

If you wish to learn Welsh, it's certainly not for its use as a common business tongue and it's not to take advantage of its mass audience, but for its unique qualities, many of which it shares with the other Celtic languages.

Welsh is spoken in the Celtic enclave of Wales in the U.K., and is kept alive abroad by people of Welsh ancestry in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and in the Patagonia region of Argentina. Unlike some of the other Celtic languages, Welsh is alive and in no danger due to its sizeable population of native speakers. This magical language also attracts many linguists, language enthusiasts and polyglots.

Like its cousin Celtic languages, there are few published resources to learn Welsh outside of Wales, but there are a decent number of online sources to learn from, and there are plenty of resources to use to maintain your knowledge of Welsh and begin to improve it, once you've learned a little.

Internet/Free

BBC Learn Welsh The single best free online source to learn the Welsh language. There are extensive multimedia resources to learn Welsh - video, downloadable files, audio, courses for beginner and intermediate. Lots of links to join an active community of learners and speakers of Welsh.

Welsh Course Basic online course for beginners. Also includes a good list of resources for learners.

Gwybodiadur A Welsh Informationary. Lots of links to resources and information about learning Welsh.

Cymdeithas Madog Recommended resources by successful students of Welsh. Includes readings in Welsh with English translations. This organization is dedicated to helping North Americans learn the Welsh language. Also visit their Cymdeithas Madog Home Page


Book/Audio Combo

The longstanding Teach Yourself series has always had a wide variety of languages. The coursebook comes with two audio cd's or cassettes, and is available in most bookstores or online. It is probably the most widely available commercial product to learn Welsh.

Software Teach Me Welsh
This small package by Linguashop actually covers a lot of ground. It is primarily a software program to learn Welsh, but it has a couple of very simple but helpful extras. There is a small booklet that contains the text for the stories used in the program to demonstrate the use of Welsh. In addition, there is an accompanying audio cd that provides the audio for the stories and some of the audio from the lessons. This makes it easier to learn as it gives you more options to study at your convenience. Overall, a very effective introduction to Welsh.

Software
Rosetta Stone Welsh
The one top quality product that I have experience with that has software for learning Welsh is Rosetta Stone. Their full-media presentation is excellent. It is only available for Level 1, but with hundreds of hours of instruction, text, pictures and lots of audio, this is probably the best product to learn Welsh. Read my review of Rosetta Stone or see for yourself how Rosetta Stone Welsh works for you and try out the free demo -


Also, for lots of general resources, penpals, language exchanges, forums, internet radio stations and other language resources that can help you learn Welsh, go to the Language Resources page.

"Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality. The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence."

- George Steiner