I want to learn a Celtic language

I think this page has a decent idea about starting with a language: https://fluent-forever.com/the-metho...cabulary-list/ It's called "A Base Vocabulary List" but it also goes over different topics... Well, I looked at it to see how well I'm doing in Polish (which is the main language I'm studying these days), and I don't know a lot of those words. (But a lot of slang having to do with various bodily excretions and procreation...)

Still gathering inspiration about Welsh. When I look at it in reality, it's just another language, with people going about their everyday business, pretty European in style. A little bit in decline, but at the same time with more speakers than Icelandic, which nobody seems to worry about...

What attracts me to it, what it is in my dreams, so to say, is a language of real-life elves, druids, Celtic legends, and castles, and landscapes... Which is for me a conflict, because I don't know if it's really Welsh. At least, modern Welsh. Maybe it's just the history of Welsh, a language that is in fact no longer written nor spoken, and which I'm actually not going to hear (which is important to me)...

Thanks for the website, I'll check it out, at least if I don't know any words, I can look them up in my dictionary or on Google translate.

I sometimes have dreams where I'll see Spanish or German, I can't usually understand anything written in the languages in my dreams, and I don't know if it is truly those languages, it's interesting to have dreams where other languages appear that are foreign.

Elves and druids is what Welsh represents to me, but as far as how I want it to eventually "materialize" in my life, that's almost a fatal certainty. I want to make a videogame for studying Welsh, in the vein of the Witcher games (because of how much fun I've been having using those to study Polish). It's fatal because that genre of games is inescapably a product of big teams, and I'm a single poor (also in the economic sense) individual (who is bad at team work anyway). Not to mention that I still don't speak a word of Welsh, so the road to being able to write a Welsh-language game is long indeed, not to mention all the other aspects of game development.

The video game idea sounds cool, I don't play video games anymore so I don't know if there would be video games say in German (just can't get into video games). I'm more of a music person and have found a lot of German music out there.

Well, in any case, Germany is a very prolific and gaming-friendly land, including an internationally famous convention called Gamescom... It's a big factor for me... Although, on the other hand, German gamers are very fond of using as many English terms as they can around this topic (and possibly in other pop culture areas). So it can become a bit boring and frustrating if you're there also to learn German.

To prevent this reply from being completely irrelevant, have you already seen these two sites? Reverso Context | Translation in context from English to French TypeIt - Type accent marks, diacritics and foreign letters online I pretty much use them every day in language-related matters. One is for seeing how a word is used in context, the other provides easy diacritics, pretty much, if you don't want to add another keyboard layout (or don't have another trick).

I'll check out the websites, thanks. I found more books on Amazon, but they may not be for absolute beginners. But I may get them anyway.

I like the reverso context website, that is a good one. Thanks.

I'm suddenly feeling that maybe learning a language is a really bad idea, and it has to do with time and money. My job is on a gentle but certain trajectory for shut down, I'm spending most of my evenings on Polish, meanwhile hoping that some of my hobbies will get me out of this predicament... And it won't be a new foreign language. They + me isn't a profitable combination. Rather the opposite. And I'm almost 30, which makes me feel that I really should economize my brain capacity... Of course, on the other hand I've found that not engaging my brain linguistically doesn't go so well for my psychological wellbeing.

I feel the same way some days, I have the time to do it, but not really any money. I have to rely on my Dad to buy me books, if I could afford it I'd take a class. But for me it really comes down to my age (I'm 26) and whether or not at my age I can really retain a language. I took 2 years of Spanish in high school and didn't retain any of it, but my therapist actually gave me a possible reason why in which she basically said that I didn't have a personal investment in it like I do with German. Due to me liking music in German and have friends in Germany, I'm more invested in learning it than I was with Spanish. But I didn't hate Spanish, I did like it, just didn't retain it.

I think it's at least worth it to try with a new language.

My other problem is wanting to wake up in the morning knowing the whole language. My brain doesn't seem to get that it'll take a few years to get decent at a new language.

I feel like that's similar to my motivation with Celtic languages. Something in my mind keeps hurrying me up, because there's literally thousands of languages in the world, many of which I find at least somewhat interesting, and it's like my life is going to pass quickly without having touched most of them even remotely. I mean, what's up with mutations in Welsh? I might never know... And I really want to.

I just want to know everything there is about the German language, how words work, in which ways, sentence structure, proper grammar, nuances etc. I want to know it like tomorrow, but I know it will take practice and time, but I just want to know. I also like the Finnish language, but I took one look at that and was like nope, but have heard a few songs in it and found it a pretty language. Spanish isn't bad either, it'd make more sense for me to re-learn Spanish because it is a common language spoken here in the US, and in my area the two most common languages after English are Spanish and Arabic, but know I chose German, though I probably will start re-learning Spanish at some point. Languages are interesting and I want to know more than just one, I have like an angst to know more than one language especially German.

For whatever reason, I've got a hard and fast rule for myself - only learning languages within the Indoeuropean family... I think... well, it's partially just a question of quantity vs quality. I've already got my toes (or languages) onto a few branches (so to say), so whatever new language that catches my fancy is going to be a lot easier than if I didn't know any of its relatives. Well, Polish is practically rushing along, because so much vocabulary and grammar is similar... Or it would be better to say, so little vocabulary and grammar is different from my native Russian... So, yeah, I'm not getting younger, and if I have this gnawing desire of learning more and more, sticking to familiar waters (which are still brimming with fascinating oddities) is very useful... Unfortunately I feel like English isn't the best starting off point even in this sense. There's a lot of borrowed vocabulary, but I've found it not very helpful at all when transitioning to the grammar of any other language, including German. Mainly for the cases and genders, I guess, without which you won't get anywhere. Oh, and, of course, the fact that German actually tends (or tended) to stay away from Latin-based vocabulary, instead preferring to invent its own compounds (like Fernsehen instead of the Latin world's TV). I've at times found it useful to instead look at translations in Russian because even though they're more distant cousins, something in the way words are formed makes more sense (although a TV is still Latin-based in Russian)...

I guess that doesn't help you any. Well, I've long thought that if a person could be persuaded to get interested in it, Dutch would be an excellent middle ground between English and German. Both in terms of vocabulary and grammar. But it's really hard to get enthusiastic about it because of how little it is in the public consciousness, I guess.

Incidentally, I get tempted sometimes by Finnish and its relatives. Partially because a part of my family has its roots in an obscure language and culture related to Finnish (although quite frankly I'd rather forget this connection). And Tolkien based his elvish languages in part on Finnish. Plus its relative, Hungarian, has an exciting and mysterious past with Dracula and Bathory... No, got to stay on track!

English is a weird language because it just seems to have no close relatives, I read that it is considered a Germanic language, yet we also have Latin based words, so I think we steal from other languages, my Dad says English is one of the hardest languages to learn, I don't really believe that maybe because it is my native language, but I feel there are other much harder languages to out there learn. Not saying English is easy for anyone to learn, but it can't be one of the hardest. I chose a hard language to learn, Spanish would probably be an easier language, but I'm hyperfocused on German at the moment, it'll be a challenge though. In my area you can hear music in other languages at some restaurants, like Greek, Mexican, and Middle Eastern music. In high school when I took Spanish my first year taking it the classes (all thd classes, Spanish 1,2,3,4), were offered to go to a concert put on by a guy that goes around to schools singing in Spanish, that was cool, didn't understand really any of it but it was fun. Here in my area you can hear many different languages spoken, but mainly Spanish and Arabic, some Asian languages, and I don't really know what else. But people here in the US are kind of hostile toward people who don't speak English, even though it isn't our "official" language, but it depends on where you are too if you're going to run into hostile people.

Dutch I don't really know anything about, I do follow a cat page on Facebook that is based in The Netherlands, but there is probably vdry little in the way of resources for learning Dutch.

I do have someone in my group therapy who is teaching himself Russian, for me I don't think I could learn a language like Russian due to the alphabet being different and I'm legally blind so seeing the letters may be harder for me, Asian languages and probably Arabic are out of the question for me just due to limited vision and all the symbols (characters, script etc), Greek would be hard for me too because of the alphabet. I can barely distinguish words that have an "r" and an "n" next to each other like say the "burn" from an "m" because to me "rn" looks like an "m", so some languages are almost totally out of the question for me, which is sad.

I don't know, I'm doubting myself on learning a language, I just have to try and make it fun maybe that will help.

Yeah, well... Probably Chinese and Arabic scripts would be overkill, but (and maybe it's just my native-speaker bias) I don't think Cyrillic has a place among them. I mean, it's similar to the Latin alphabet, which has its advantages and disadvantages, but basically I think after a little bit of initial confusion you'd only have as much trouble as with your native script, in the sense that letters can be mistaken for each other similarly, like maybe "a" and "o" (handwritten)... Not that I'm suggesting that you should learn Russian... just wanted to clarify the matter.

Myself, I'm getting ever closer to plunging into the study of Welsh, due to my terrible job and feeling like I don't have that much time because of it as a sane person in possession of all my mental faculties... I'm thinking that if I make it through this latest stab and a kick at least somewhat ship-shape I just might take a whole day off and devote it to Welsh.

Oh, also, not sure how much I should go into this matter (out of fear of leading you astray with one more language), but I've found at least one pretty cool Dutch resource that I haven't seen replicated for any other language (to my great chagrin). It's a series of simple short videos with parallel subtitles in English and Dutch about learners and teachers of Dutch which gradually develop into a complex love triangle... or rather web... story thing. Look up "Heb je zin" on Youtube if you want to check it out... It's really long and actually ongoing, in season 2, I think...

I was just going through with my vision which alphabets would be harder for me, I could probably learn the Greek alphabet and the Cyrillic alphabet if I really tried. And yeah Arabic and Chinese/Japanese would be virtually impossible for me to learn.

Right now for me I have a lot of time on my hands as I don't work at the moment, so I needed a hobby and I decided to take up a language, it's just a money issue now when it comes to buying books, and finding books for absolute beginners, ones that say "for beginners" may not be for the absolute beginner. There is an app I found that reads articles to you in German, it is for a more advanced learner but if you click on the words/sentences/paragraphs it shows the English translations. It would be a good way besides music to get one to hear what words sound like especially as you're reading them. Some of the German bands I like will put videos they make on YouTube with English subtitles, but I haven't really watched them, well one band I do. From hearing the words in German when I listen to music or on Duolingo, I'm getting better at pronouncing words that I see that I don't know. I also found a photo on Google image of how the letters in the alphabet are pronounced in German so that helps a little, my confusion is the letter "S" can be pronounced 2 different ways sometimes with a "z" sound and sometimes with a more "sh" sound so that's confusing on word pronunciation especially when some "s" and "z" words sound similar and "w" and "v" are virtually the same sound, like why? So that makes hearing words even more confusing, though I'll learn how to distinguish words that start with a "w" and "v" from each other and some words that start with an "s" from words that start with a "z". It'll take time to learn.

Thanks for the YouTube video suggestion, I'll check it out.

...Okay, I tried to write up a simple explanation, and failed miserably. It depends on how comfortable you are with terms like "vowel", "consonant", "syllable", etc (not to insult your intelligence but they aren't really household words). And it's complicated by the distinction between simple and compound words. The only thing easy is that "w" is always pronounced "v" - Wagen, Wasser. And "v" in the beginning of simple words is "f" - Vogel, Verlag, - and "v" everywhere else (although I struggle to come up with examples for that; can only suggest "Adjektiven", a plural form, which in the singular would end with the "f" sound). Although, again, you have to look if it's a simple or compound (more often than not) word... or actually a recent borrowing, in which case all bets are off.

And compound words can come in an obvious form like Fernsehen, or innocuous like Beispiel.

Okay, makes more sense on the "W" versus "V" sounds now, but now "F" and "V" will sound the same to me unless it is a hard versus soft sounds thing. Now another thing I am noticing is some words sounding the same but are two different words example "sie" and "sehe" both sound the same but are two different words or "liebe" and "lebe" . The second example is because of a song I like called "Lebe deinen Traum" and I always get confused because until looking at the title I thought it was "Liebe deine Traum" , and couldn't figure out why it kept translating to "Live your Dream" and not "Love your Dream", yeah I don't think (and I could be wrong) that there are many words like that where they sound the same but are two different words with two different meanings. I know English can get confusing with words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently and have different meanings. Then we do have words like "there", "their", and "they're" all spelled differently, all sound the same, and all have different meanings. So English can do this too. But it seems more confusing in German.

Also you didn't insult my intellegence. I do know (well read) that German has 13 vowels, English has only 5 and sometimes "Y" can become a vowel (though I can't give any examples of that). I haven't learned yet which letters are vowels and which are consonants. I should probably look that up.

Well, yeah, in most cases f and v are the same sound - "f". Except if v is in the middle of a word (which happens very rarely, unless it's compound words, which have infinite variety) in which case it's a normal English "v".

The thing with "liebe" and "lebe" is that, at least in my opinion, the long i and long e sounds that they contain are pronounced somewhat similarly. But are obviously supposed to be different. Except that the mouth makes very similar shapes, at least in the most prominent High German accent (I can't vouch for all the other accents and dialects of Germany, which has the same situation as if you compacted all of the English-speaking world from New Zealand to Boston in, well, a country the size of Germany).

I guess I don't have good news in this area. They just might stay the same to you or with time you might learn to recognize the tiny bit wider that the mouth is opened when pronouncing the long e.

Thanks for clarifying that, I'll probably never get the chance to speak the language out loud (too poor to travel to any country but Canada, well passports cost money too so too poor to travel period), but I want to be able to read and write in it, but I do listen to music in the language so I want to make sure I'm hearing the right word (though that problem can be solved with looking up the lyrics). Duolingo is okay for helping me hear how words are pronounced, but the accents the robots speak with aren't German accents, so I rely on songs to help me hear how words are supposed to be pronounced, and any videos I can find that have English subtitles. The other night I was listening to a song called "Siamesische Einsamkeit", and now I can pronounce " einsamkeit" okay but "Siamesische" I pronounce like the English "Siamese", it's not the first time I've heard the song either so I should get it by now, that is just an example of how I can mispronounce words. Though I do mispronounce words in English too and that is my native language. I am getting a little better at pronouncing words even if I've never seen them before or heard them pronounced out loud so that's a plus.

The words that sound the same but are spelled.differently will get me though, I found a couple more, "das" and "dass", "ist" and "isst", and I think "mir" and "mehr" (though I am probably wrong on that and Duolingo pronounced "mehr" wrong), same with "dir" and "der" (though again Duolingo could be pronouncing "der" wrong, think I heard it prounced slightly differently in a song). So learning this is fun until I start crying over pronounciation, grammar, and vocabulary.

Yeah, Duolingo will mess with you in this respect... I've heard a few polyglots recommend the site forvo.com for the purposes of pronunciation, although I don't really use it. Well, after I've learned English I tend to stick to languages with more or less strict phonetic spelling (which isn't actually one of my rules... but I suspect it helps me keep my sanity anyway). So I learn the pronunciation rules once and mostly don't have to worry about it anymore... Although on second thought, German is a language that benefits from double-checking, due to, well, compound words among other things.

Well, I just had to bring that up, didn't I? It turns out Welsh pronunciation is a giant bloody mess... Well, the spelling is supposed to be almost completely phonetic, but those phonemes have quickly gone from funny to headache-inducing. For example, I'm reading 8 rules for deciding if a vowel is long or short, each rule pretty much an exception to the previous one, in the form of "in the ending syllable vowels are long, except if the ending consonant is ll, ff, or dd" (yeah).

Lesson 3, have to mentally substitute Spanish verbs for the given English ones, because it's easier... I mean, they are explaining the concepts by referring to some distinctions in Spanish that don't exist in English.

Thanks for the website recommendation, I'm sure it'll be helpful to me, Duolingo though good for an absolute beginner like me has things that don't make sense. Even Google translate mispronounces words, "ich" and "Deutsch" were grossly mispronounced. I also heard German has flexible sentence structures which makes the language hard to pick up as I'm finding out. I'm also finding out the words in German can have many different translations, one word in Englis can be up to eight different words in German, so it'll be fun looking for the most commonly used words for the translations. I picked a hard language to learn, someone told me it shouldn't be a hard language for English speakers to learn as there are similararities, but other than having some same or similar words, I dont see any other similarities.

Okay Welsh sounds like an even harder language than German.