As one would expect, YouTube has myriad resources for the Welsh learner, ranging from brief clickbait like "An American tries to speak Welsh" to full episodes of educational programmes and everything in between.

The first port of call, really before going any further, is to watch the Welsh Plus series which go into great detail about how to pronounce the letters of the Welsh alphabet, both individually and in common combinations. They also touch on the mutations. Welsh Plus's playlist can be found here.

When I started learning Welsh, and before I'd discovered the Say Something in Welsh website, I discovered a series of videos called "Learn Welsh with Will" in which Will Huw, an Englishman living in Wales, disseminates his own Welsh knowledge as he goes about learning it. I liked Will's videos as he comes across as non-judgemental and very amiable. You can see Will's playlists, which include more than just Learn Welsh With Will, here.

Another series of videos I happened upon are aimed at adult learners from the 1990s, Now You're Talking (conveniently mis-spelled as "Now Your Talking" by whomever uploaded them!). These are presented by the likeable Elin Rhys in a variety of very early 90s outfits! There are 36 full half-hour episodes covering a variety of topics and gradually building vocabulary. I enjoy these videos as they present a chance to hear simple conversations in Welsh and learn everyday vocabulary. My only criticisms are that the programmes are now quite dates, the language is in some places a little too old-fashioned, and the pace of the lessons is a little slow for my liking. There's also not a great focus on grammar, so you'll need other resources to accompany these. You can find all 36 videos here.

Much more recent, are Margaret Hall's wonderful videos. Margaret is a Welsh learner and as part of her learning process she's created a series of videos in which she explores various places in Wales. Margaret speaks very clearly and uses a great vocabulary for the upper-beginner or intermediate Welsh learner. I find I can understand a lot of what she says, but not everything. That's due to limitations in my Welsh, though, not any problems with her speaking. Margaret's channel is here.

Finally, the Easy Languages series have several videos in Welsh. These are largely conversations with Welsh speakers in towns and establishments around Wales, conducted entirely in Welsh. The videos are subtitled in both English and Welsh, which is both a blessing and a curse, as you can find yourself reading the English subtitles rather than understanding the spoken Welsh. The ease of understanding the spoken Welsh depends largely on the speaker. Some interviewees are fluent speakers, some only beginners, but the most encouraging thing I took from these videos is that, actually, Welsh is very fluid, Welsh speakers are very forgiving of mistakes and, in reality, things like mutations are not nearly as stuck-to as online guides may lead you to believe. You can find those videos here.

There are plenty more besides, but these are the video series that I've found most useful and most enjoyable while learning Welsh. Feel free to comment if you feel I've missed anything important!

Da bo am y tro!

Mae'n amser eisteddfod ar lein eto!
It's online eisteddfod time again!

Every year, alternating between locations in the North and South of Wales, is the National Eisteddfod (Eisteddfod Gynedlaethol), a celebration of Welsh language, music and culture with bands, singers, poets authors and more besides.

And every year, SaySomethingInWelsh.com runs an "Online Eisteddfod" for members and non-members to practice their Welsh by speaking, writing or singing reviews, poems, songs and prose that they've written. The entries are judged and a winner chosen for each category.

I really enjoy the online Eisteddfod. It gives me a chance to practice my Welsh and enjoy what others have created with theirs.

Last year I was the only entrant for the Beginner Prose category, so of course I won by default. This year I have entered the Englyn Milwr (a short, three line poem on a given theme) and the Post-Beginner Prose. I'm not sure my Welsh is really good enough for post beginner, but I didn't want to run the risk of being the only entrant for the beginner category again!

Entries close on 2019-11-14 and voting takes place the following week. Let's see how I do. Fingers crossed...!

Alongside Welsh, I have also been brushing up on my GCSE French and hoping to improve my German (although I've already given up on this).

These languages have highlighted two more things I like about Welsh and that I think make it an easier language for the beginner:

1. The present continuous (I am going; I am doing; We are sailing (across the sea...))

In English, we have this periphrastic construction for the continuous tense that involves using "to be" as an auxilliary verb. This construction is alien to other European languages who simply use the present tense form of whatever verb, for example "to go", to indicate all three of the following ideas:

I go
I am going
I do go

In French, all three are "je vais". On the DuoLingo forum you see beginners in non-Welsh languages ask "Where is "am" in this sentence?" or asking "Why is it not 'Je suis vais'?".

Welsh, similarly to English, also forms the present tense periphrastically with "bod" (to be), almost in the opposite way to French by including the auxilliary where in English it *wouldn't* be needed:

Dw i'n mynd (literally "Am I going")

is

I am going
I go
I do go

and I think that inclusion of "am" (dw, in this case) is a more familiar construct to the English speaker, despite the reverse word order.

2. The same pronouns are used for both the nominative and accusative case.

What I mean by this is that "he" and "him" are both the same word, as are "She" and "her" (although not "her" the possessive pronoun), and "We" and "us".

For example:

Maen nhw'n mwynhau'r ddrama (they enjoy the play) - Nominative

Uses the same pronoun as:

Paid ag anghofio nhw! (don't forget them!) - Accusative

In French, "them" can be "ils" or "elles" or even "eux" in the nominative and "les" in the accusative.

The more Welsh I learn, the more I think it's a lot easier than people give it credit for. That said, it's not without its own strange constructs!

Ok, so it's been about seven months since I started learning Welsh in earnest, and he's what I think is hard and what I think is fairly easy about Welsh:

1. Mutations. Letters change at the start of one word depending on what word they follow. However I'm finding that this starts to feel more natural in most circumstances after a while.

2. Versions of "about" and "of/from" for each pronoun. If you're talking about a thing, they're "am" and "o" respectively. But if you're talking about/from me, you, her, him, us or them you're looking at "amdana, amdanat, amdani, amdano, amdanon and amdanyn" and "ohono, ohonot, ohoni, ohono, ohonon and ohonyn"!

3. The letter "Ll". Yes, it counts as one letter. The pronunciation is somewhere between ell and hissing like an angry goose with a headache. For some reason I find it easier to pronounce at the start of a word, like Llawr, than in the middle or end of a word, like Arall or Galla.

4. Conjugations. Well, this is the same for any language, really. Remembering the conjugations of short-form verbs is just one of those things you have to get used to.

5. Yes and no. There are no words for Yes and No in Welsh, you just repeat back (or negate) the appropriate conjugation of the verb in the question. "Do you like cheese?", "I do". "Are you tired?" "I am". "Are you reading?" "I am not". But that's only in the present tense. In the past tense it's usually "Do" for yes and "Naddo" for no. But then for emphatic questions it's "Ie" for yes and "Nage" for no. If the question was asking if there is something with you (see below) you reply with Oes or Nag Oes. Remembering which to use is the hard part.

6. There aren't many words that are similar to other European languages. There are some, mostly more modern words borrowed from English: tacsi, parcio, ffatri, ffôn, beic, etc; and some ecclesiastical words like eglwys (church) and capel (chapel) but not to the extent that you find with Romance or Germanic languages.

Things that are easier than I expected:

1. Mutations. Yes, they're difficult, but actually you get used to them, and in many cases the rules are quite consistent. You just get used to dropping the G in words like gweithio and gweld when they follow a sentence subject. You get used to changing D to Dd in adjectives after "yn", and you get very used to nasal mutations after "fy".

2. Conjugations. Although remembering them is difficult, many of the conjugations are quite consistent and actually fit in quite well with the pronoun they go with.

3. Possession. I've said before about there being no form of "I have a (something)" in Welsh, they instead say something is "with them": Mae ci gyda fi - "There is a dog with me". I got the hang of this much quicker than I thought. I think you just change your way of thinking and everything slots together.

4. The language as a whole. I'm only a beginner. Very much so. But I've been surprised at how much I've covered in such a short space of time. I'm not proficient by any stretch of the imagination, and I can only string together fairly simple sentences, but on the other hand I can make many more types of sentences in Welsh than my partner's daughter can in Spanish; a language she's been learning at school for two years now. I can use the present tense, the past perfect, a sort of imperfect, the future in several forms and some conditional tenses and even a kind of limited subjunctive mood.

On the whole, Welsh has (so far) been easier than I expected. It's not the incomprehensible jumble of letters it always looked like on road signs when we used to visit my Grandma in Rhossili when I was a child. In fact, in many ways it's a lot easier than the languages I'd been taught at school.