I want to learn a Celtic language

I was just saying that they don't seem as hard as vowels, but I could be wrong, I'll update when I get better at pronouncing words which is harder, vowels or consonants, right now both are hard for me.

I go between being optimistic and pessimistic about my progress, I get happy when I can understand a sentence or two, but then get frustrated that I won't learn a whole new language. Right now I'm neutral in that I'm in between optimistic and pessimistic.

Sounds interesting, I don't know enough of the language to watch it, but sounds like an interesting channel none-the-less.

Well, I think I may have been too generous in my previous estimation. It's that one podcast that I felt very confident about, but today I consciously checked whether I understood everything in another podcast, and not really. And yesterday I listened to/watched the pen and paper game (in the beautiful Münster St-Paulus Dom - St. Paul Cathedral for the uninitiated ), and that was pretty tough, with a group of 4 people energetically talking over each other.

A thing I've started doing sort of in addition / conjunction with flashcards is trying to make up my own phrases or sentences with new words. I first need to look up how they actually are used, but I think it kind of helps association. And I also for this purpose search words with google images. Even if the word doesn't represent a physical object that can be photographed, there often seems to be a meme based around it.

And with these latest developments I feel that learning new words has become my new favorite hobby. Which is pretty unusual, I would think.

A funny thing yesterday - I was watching an English video, and the presenter was reading comments, where a name of a German city, I believe, came up. He straightaway said "Not even gonna try it." That was so weird, because to me it looked so simple. I think only 2 syllables, and I'm pretty sure even no diacritics (marks above ü, ö, etc). Of course, there was the letter combination "sch"...

I just think for me the optimism and pessimism goes back and forth like a pendulum, and I need to be in the neutral or optimistic sides, but it can be hard at times especially when I'm already a pessimistic person.

I'm hoping I reach a point like that, but I don't think it will be anytime soon, but I'm working on getting to that point.

Haha, that sounds like something I would do rather than embarrass myself trying to pronounce the word, but now that I'm learning a language I need to practice pronouncing words even if I butcher them.

Pronouncing the letters "r" and "l" in German seems pretty hard when reading about it, but hearing the letters in words (thanks to music and Duolingo), it doesn't seem as hard, so I think my book is making it out to be harder than it really is.

I decided early this morning (around 3:30am) to play around with a couple other courses on Duolingo, I added Swedish, Norwegian, and Dutch. I couldn't even get past the first lesson with Swedish and Norwegian (easy languages for English speakers to learn my *****), but Dutch wasn't that hard, I flew through the first lesson. I think that had to do with me already learning German and seeing the similarities between the words presented. I should add Spanish just to see if I really do remember anything. I know I should stick to one language right now, but I was just curious about the other languages.

I'm actually starting to suspect that my own optimism has very little to do with the progress I'm making and more with the fact that it's summer (at least it looks and feels like it) and the weather is good (and I've been going outside often, for me).

But at the same time that could explain my good progress (or be a chicken and egg situation)... Kind of my brain being more motivated to grow new connections.

One caveat I would warn about is the difference between how it seems to you you're pronouncing a sound, and how it actually sounds to other people. I started working on my German pronunciation quite recently, by recording myself reading stuff, and found that even though it felt right, my "r"s were actually pretty unconvincing (and I'm saying that as a native Russian speaker - a language that is kind of notorious for its hard "r"s - although they're very different from Germanic "r"s). And sometimes Germans like to overemphasize their "r"s (or it just comes out that way), in a way that I can only describe by comparing it to the Spanish "rr" (or beginning "r"), which is a... thing you (the general, not you in particular) probably should train one hour a day for best results.

So I've been trying to limit digressions about other languages, especially Dutch, since I thought you'd made it clear you weren't interested. But... it turns out, you are.

I just wanted to mention that I listened to a Dutch podcast on a whim, and it's pretty ridiculous how much I could understand with so little study. I'd probably estimate my efforts as about a lesson a month. And granted, I missed a lot, although there was also a lot of dialect and I don't count that . And I don't listen to Dutch on the regular basis, so it took time just to get my brain into the groove of being able to recognize spoken words.

I think one defining characteristic of my approach to Dutch is laziness. It's really hard to make myself care about studying it systematically because every other word (if not more) - I look at, it's written exactly like in German, means the same thing, only is pronounced a little differently... I suppose it's kind of boring to study.

Although at the same time it makes me think what other languages I could get away with acquiring by only half-assing them. Like Italian. I've known that it's very similar to Spanish for a while. And yesterday I saw a video that instead compared it to French. And that's two languages which I've already studied quite in depth...

Anyway, if I ever get bored with Welsh, I have options.

Oh, yeah, Swedish and Norwegian - yes, technically they are Germanic, but they are actually in a separate branch from German, Dutch, and English - North Germanic (whereas English is West Germanic). They split off quite early on. I don't know exactly when, but certainly around the beginning of our era.

Old Norse was a separate phenomenon by the end of the first millenium. East Germanic went extinct around the middle... Yeah.

Anyway... The only problem with Dutch is that it can be harsh on the ears in fluent speech. It's a language that is unexpectedly fond of various "h" sounds, so a sentence to me often seems to be an unrelenting avalanche of hissing and gargling, out of which you'd be lucky to extract any meaninful vowels (or other sounds).

Yeah the nicer weather can lift ones moods, we just came out of an endless winter, so now that the weather is nicer I seem more upbeat (well at least less depressed).

I just hope I don't have to actually roll my "r's", I couldn't do that with Spanish, just no ability to. So the "r" will be hard for me to pronounce, I was just saying that reading it in the book vs hearing it in words outloud are two different things.

I mean I just got curious mostly out of boredom amd insomnia to look at other courses on Duolingo to see what I could accomplish in the first lesson, hey with Dutch I only got one wrong in the very first lesson so there's that. I might still add Spanish just as a refresher and to see what if anything I may know. And as for Swedish and Norwegian, I'm not sure I'll be trying those again anytime soon, I couldn't even complete the first lesson in either language. I don't want to over do it with languages while I'm still a beginner at German, but I'm just curious of others, so at the very least I can take a peak at them.

The German "ch" as in "acht" or "nacht" is going to be very hard for me to pronounce, because we just don't have that type of "ch" spund in English, so it's going to be a hard sound to make, and I may never be able to actually do it.

That's always been kind of a weird idea for me. Maybe I'm doing something wrong... It's just that all those "h"-like consonants have never sounded too different from each other. Which may actually be the problem... But, like, people say "the 'ch' sound", as if it's something alien - like the "ll" in Welsh, say! - while it's just a more pronounced version of the "h" sound.

I don't know... I think people sometimes also say that this sound occurs in Russian, so I would have a natural advantage. To which I say bollocks. Our "h" is a completely normal one.

On the other hand, I've been having a bit of trouble with the "ch" in words like "solche" - where it's supposed to be the same as in "ich", but here it seems to require a more advanced acrobatic tongue manoeuver than I'm used to.

Still, I maintain that there's nothing supernatural about it and it's just an "h" sound, slightly dressed-up.

People offer various reasons for not studying several foreign languages at the same time, but the deciding factor for me, based on years of struggle, is the fact that the number of languages would be inversely proportional to the progress you'd make in each of them...

The problem is that in the beginning it didn't seem like I was making any progress in just the one language. So adding another one on top kind of seemed like progress, especially if I covered the intoductory textbook quickly. But then I would end up again in that place where I could only say basic phrases and understand materials aimed at learners... And was making agonizingly slow progress in two languages.

I don't know if you're convinced. I wouldn't be. I always learn on my own mistakes.

It's just the way I've heard ch sound in words like acht, just seems like a harsher sound to make than say in Fuchs where the ch is more like an x sound. I'll figure it out how well I can say ch words like acht or nacht. The ch seems like a very versatile letter combination though, because in may different words it can be pronounced differently that's just my take on it though.

Like I said it was curiosity for me to look up other languages, I figured it couldn't hurt to see it I could pass a basic lesson on Duolingo, Dutch was easiest compared to Swedish and Norwegian. I think Dutch was easy because of it's similarities to German so that's probably the reason I flew through the first lesson so fast. Languages are interesting, I just never took the time to actually study one up until December of last year. I did and do however listen to songs in other languages, have been doing that for a few years now, even though I couldn't understand them.

Ahhh, the formal and informal "you"! In English we just have "you", but in German (and some other languages) there is The formal and informal "you". In German it is Sie (formal you), and informal is "du" and "ihr" (which thw book didn't even touch on how and when that gets used). Maybe I'm making it out to be more confusing than it should be, but it did say that if you get confused to whether or not to use the formal or informal you when addressing someone, to just use "Sie" until they ask you to use "du". So confusing, well for me since I'm justnlearning it.

Haven't we already talked about "ihr"? At least I'm sure I have mentioned the informal/formal distinction a couple times.

Yeah, although I'm really no help there. To me that comes naturally, with my mother tongue... Speaking of which, it can be interesting to see translators struggle to invent that distinction when translating from English to Russian (and other languages where it exists, I suppose). Especially when it exists, it's often accompanied by a ritual, or at least an acknowledgement of the fact that a transition from formal (du) to informal (Sie) has been made. So, suppose, two office workers meet for the first time. Naturally they address each other formally. Then they fall in love. Nothing about their forms of address may have changed in English (well, usually it does, but not in the pronouns), but in Russian and German that would sound really strange... Oh, and to take a less melodramatic example, I've noticed that often in interviews there a short prelude where the parties establish which pronouns they're going to use (at least on Rocket Beans TV, where it's normally "du")...

Maybe it's not so foreign to you, after all. Except instead of pronouns it's "Can I call you Bill?" Of course, pronouns are just used much more often than names.

In other news, I've finished the short document that I consider a sufficient introduction to Welsh grammar. I think it's time to start putting it to use. I don't know what's taking you so long.

Really just kidding. Considering that I found it necessary to study a German grammar book during the 5th (now probably 6th) year.

I think I've just learned (or rather become familiar with) enough Welsh grammar where I won't be confused by basic sentence structure, so I want to start learning vocabulary. If that goes well I'll come back to grammar when... I've kind of absorbed some language and at least some things feel natural.