I want to learn a Celtic language

Yeah, it isn't the best app, but for me it's better than nothing, I do wish it explained grammar and sentence structure and things like that, and the lessons were on more useful things. But for me it is more a starting base, I do have one book and one dictionary, but plan on getting more books, listening to music in German amd looking up stuff on YouTube, I just wish the app Babbel wasn't so expensive to subscribe to, seems like a good app.

Duolingo might actually be almost perfect if it's your first foreign language. But I've studied whole 3 languages with it and on the fourth its flaws became too glaring to be able to cope with...

Also the majority of courses is in English. The problem with this is that for me, being familiar with several different languages, it might be unnecessarily complicating my life by starting from English instead of another, more similar language. For example, my native language is Russian, and in grammar and vocabulary it's way closer to Polish than English is. And there's only an English-Polish course... And at this point I'm not 100% convinced that English is the best entry point into Welsh, either. They say there's a lot of similarities with Italic languages (such as Spanish)... Although, of course, there's almost no chance I'm finding Spanish-Welsh resources.

By the way, have you checked out Duolingo Flashcards? It should be somewhere in Labs (or just search for it).

I've seen the app for the flashcards, but it seems that it is for other subjects and the only language subject it mentions is Spanish. I heard German is supposedly a good language for English speakers to learn because there are some similarities (though I'm only noticing a few mainly just words being either the same or similar). Because English is supposedly a Germanic language (though English also steals Latin and I think words from a few other languages too), but German is a tough language as I'm finding out, but there are books on Amazon that I've bookmarked to my web browser to buy for beginners.

I wish I could help you more with finding resources to learn Welsh though.

No, there should be a complementary German deck on Tinycards (just checked what it's called). At least I've got it (although I haven't done anything with it)... Of course I'm not really recommending it (since I haven't used it myself).

On the topic of books, I surprisingly managed to find a lot of free study materials for a non-language-related topic that I want to learn. I almost gave up on it because all the decent books seem to be at least $20, everything below is filled with typos and in general low quality... And then somehow (after a lot of googling) I ended up on top of a heap of free quality introductions... Plus a couple book drafts (which I don't know if the author is that generous or forgot to take them offline).

That is all to say that I'm suddenly much more optimistic about human generosity in this area. I hope it turns out similarly for you with German... Well, and for me with Welsh, eventually.

I know my local library has audio books that you can check out so there's my free option for German, one of the people in my group therapy checked.

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...