I want to learn a Celtic language

They have about the same relationship as German and Dutch. And then if you expand the analogy, French is related to them in about the same way as Norwegian to German and Dutch.

Riiiight... I hope your pronunciation is a little bit better by now.

I don't think it is. At least officially. There's criteria for languages, and Welsh isn't doing so bad. There's plenty of American indigenous languages with 100-1000 speakers in total (most of them elderly), and Welsh's 19% actually translates into the absolute number of around 600,000 speakers...

Or there's a much more informative and informed article: https://www.quora.com/Is-the-Welsh-language-endangered

I suppose there's something to it.... Well, it's not a complete loss. There's books written in Esperanto and that one is a completely invented language, which, I suspect, the majority of speakers learn as adults, or at least not with mother's milk... And then there's Hebrew, which was extinct for at least 1000 years, and now is getting spoken at home.

...So, it's far from thriving, but I would say, relatively speaking it's nothing to worry about.

Also, I think all of its close relatives - the titular Celtic languages - have less than 100,000 speakers (and that's even being generous). I've read recommendations to learn Irish or Scottish Gaelic instead of Welsh... Well, on the one hand, a noble goal, but on the other - I'd really have no way of practicing those outside of moving to Britain.

Meanwhile, I've actually managed to find some sort of prolific Welsh writers.

...I don't know why this... endangered thing makes me... sort of upset. I mean, it kind of has to do with pronunciation. I kind of feel like a thriving, living language has a charm, an accent that is very hard to transmit by teaching it, and impossible by writing about it... And I'm not sure if Welsh hasn't lost that already. It's pronunciation is at times so close to British English that it makes me suspect that there's very little native character left to it.

Okay, when I said "it's not a complete loss" I meant actually "not a complete loss of time spent studying a dying language by me"... Because I frankly haven't set off with the grand ambition of saving a language. For me language learning is a kind of entertainment. And I see language change and language death as a natural process, so even if Welsh were dying I'd watch from the sidelines and perhaps record the progress...

Well, I started this reply to try to redeem myself as a non-callous human being, and ended by revealing my complete lack of compassion, I guess. I mean, the majority of the Welsh people don't seem to particularly care for the language's continued existence, and who am I to tell them what to do?

Yeah, maybe that is why I was having am okay time with the couple of Dutch lessons I was doing on Duolingo, because of the base in German.

I spoke a little German yesterday, the words in my signature and I had some hard time pronouncing them outloud but I made it through, the problem with pronunciation is I don't have anyone to speak with so it will be hard to actually speak German. But in my head I can pronounce words (well some not all).

Makes more sense now, it was just that the 19% seemed like a small number, so that's why I wondered whether it was a dying language or not.

You're okay, people still learn Latin and that is a dead language, a guy in my therapy group taight himself Latin when he was in highschool, so even if Welsh was/is a dying language it could still be worth it to learn.

Hm... I think, paradoxically, speaking a language doesn't mean pronouncing it well. It might, if you simultaneousy set to imitate native speakers you communicate with, like children do. But you've probably met or in some other way heard immigrants who had spent a decade or more in America and still spoke English with a terrible accent... Well, take Arnold Schwarzenegger, although he's a bit of a special case.

Anyway, I think I've already mentioned that I practice pronunciation by recording myself reading - mostly news articles... I suppose I'm able to get away with that because I've listened to enough of those languages to be able to tell when my pronunciation is wrong. Although I sometimes consult forvo to make sure.

I can't actually be certain of the efficacy of this method, because I haven't had a native speaker check my efforts, but I know that I do make progress, discovering new ways to approach the native sound every time... in other words, finding new mistakes in my pronunciation, which might not sound so encouraging, but I consider that a sign of becoming more nuanced in listening to the language.

Oh, dear. On an impulse I went to Audible, where I picked up a couple history courses around New Year's for free and very cheap... Anyway, I normally don't care for it, because the one time I was subscribed for any considerable amount of time, books either went on too long, too short, or... well, I couldn't find anything I liked.

Well, I've discovered that they suddenly decided to seriously stock up on my favorite subjects - namely, dinosaurs, and the... well, there a book called 'the Celtic World'. And apparently they have a whole bunch of Wolfgang Hohlbein books, in German - which I'm going to wishlist for a very long term, because I'd like to be at least somewhat fluent before I tackle them in audio form.

Anyway, I've got something to look forward to. And I guess Netflix is off the table for quite a while.

Y'know, I've just indulged in a spell of nostalgia, and I'm realizing that I've probably been rudely impatient with you. I'm remembering just how confused I was while studying Spanish 5-6 years ago... Things that seem intuitive now I had to memorize by rote and... I don't know.

I've certainly managed to assemble a versatile collection of online tools to aid my study in various ways. Or maybe even the Internet has managed to catch up to my needs. I always know where I can look up a definition, examples in context, conjugation, you name it.

Oh, not to mention the fact that I think I started learning Spanish and French within a month of each other, at least on Duolingo. You've shown a remarkable amount of restraint compared to that.

Yeah, I'll be speaking German with a terrible accent, I hate the sounx of my voice on recordings so I may have trouble with that, and even though I have native speakers on my Facebook, I don't think I can get them to video chat with me on messenger (separate app to message people on Facebook).

I'm going to sign up for a Netflix account in June so I can watch German shows/movies with English subtitles, the speakers on my Kindle are working right with my headphones now (I've been listening to Spotify on my Kindle to get around the storage problem on my phone), and I have the Netflix app on my Kindle so that's my plan, I'm not ready for books yet outside of learning books for beginners.

I haven't noticed you being rude with me, I'm just slow on progress, one of my medications causes memory issues so I'm having a harder time learning then I did off medication with Spanish. German is a confusing language, what I can translate the sentence structure may not make sense and I have to rearrange words, take Sterne sehen for example the literal translation is "stars see" but I had to rearrange the words to get "see stars" or "seeing stars" (I'm not sure which translation is correct or if they're both correct). I really should be making more progress than I am, but I guess I'm just slow.

Also sorry if there are any typos in my posts, I had too much coffee and my eyes are now dilated and everything is blurry.

My suggestion is go for it. Now days you dont need a bunch of stuff in your off computer world to learn a new language

And I still don't think you're making slow progress. No slower than I remember myself doing. And I haven't taken anything that affects memory since I started studying German, at the very least (unless you count tea)... Granted, I've been called a "slow" (read: lazy) learner more or less to my face several times in my life, but all in all I don't think you can say that I'm doing badly after 5 years.

As an aside, I'm not sure Sterne sehen is a natural word order even in German. I mean, I don't know where you'd expect to see that as a standalone sentence. And otherwise the translation will depend, and might not be either of your options... Like this sentence I've found: Aber die Sterne sehen hübsch aus - But the stars look pretty. Granted, it's a pretty convoluted example, since "sehen" there is part of the verb "aussehen" - "look, seem, appear".

I used Sterne sehen as an example because it was a song title, and it was an example I could think of off the top of my head of rearranging words/sentences in German to English.

As an aside there is a new song I'm obsessed with it's called Kein Zurück by Wolfsheim. Here's the link to the song



I found the English translation to the lyrics online, but there are 6 English translations, so I checked out the first one, but it's probably not correct. I found the translations on this site;
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/site-...%20&gsc.page=1

So if you're interested you can look it up and see which translation is correct, or give me a correct translation, if you choose to.

I'm wondering what genius decided to allow auto subtitles in English.

Well, the link you gave is not particularly helpful, I must say. I had more success searching for "Kein Zurück" instead. This transcription - https://lyricstranslate.com/en/wolfs...ck-lyrics.html - for example, seems to list all available translations. Although, quite honestly, I wouldn't place too much faith in any of them, because there's a lot of (I think that's the term) ellipsis and other poetry in this song. For example, the line "Dass nicht jeder Abschied heißt" - a translation (at least without an extensive commentary) is almost as much use as putting any random English phrase there. Because on the surface it's nonsense, in German. Literally, "That not every parting means". Either something is missing at the end - but the next line has nothing to do with it. Or you dig into the grammar. This is a dependent clause, where the verb stands at the end. So "jeder Abschied" could be one sentence element - the subject - or several. It could be that "jeder" means "every one", and Abschied is an object. But earlier there's no mention of what that "every one" is. So you kind of have to... Well, you kind of have to go with it, as you often do with lyrics. The point is, a simple translation is likely to give you the wrong idea, especially if you're studying the language.

Okay, I'll just go with what sounds best translation wise, or post the song on Facebook and ask one of my native speaking friends go translate it. But any translation is better than none I guess.

On another note there are some songs Ive been listening to that have mixed German and English lyrics Amerika by Rammstein is one I can think of off the top of my head, it's pretty cool actually because if it's done right it sounds good.

Also I've been only listening to music in German for the last week and can only still understand bits and pieces of what I'm listening to, but lately listening to songs songs in English has been either boring me or giving me anxiety, I can't tell which it is. I think I just needed new music to listen to even if it is in another language.

Right now I'm losing some either focus or motivation to learn, I'm hoping when I start my new antidepressant I get more energy, focus, amd motivation to do things especially since it's very stimulating amd activating. I might just be in a depressive episode right now so that probably explains my motivation issues. But I love the German language and will continue to try to learn.

Okay, it feels like for the past week my job and relatives conspired to make my life a nightmare. But last night I sort of finished the current job task and the majority of relatives left this morning. So maybe trying to recover some mental balance, including foreign languages.

Anyway, on the recurring topic of Scandinavian languages, here's an interesting video outlining what's going on with Swedish/Norwegian and Finnish:

One, I think, important takeaway is that the distance from those Germanic languages to Finnish is comparable the distance to Japanese or any such exotic language.

Also I wrote a post in Dutch on italki yesterday as a test and got very encouraging results... well, one result - one reply. It may sound presumptious on my part, but what that person put forward as grammatical corrections looked to me more like stylistic suggestions. Like, "you shouldn't start a sentence with 'but'". But I can say the same thing for English.

Hey at one point I wanted to learn Finnish, but took one look at the language and was like nope, though I chose German such is a hard language too. I bookmarked the video so I can watch it later (it's a holiday here and I have things to do).

So the speakers on my Kindle with headphones in started working again, that was fun for about a week or two and now the left ear won't work right (sounds like you're listening through a tunnel, the left ear works but very, very quietly). All this right before I decide to sign up for a Netflix account on the 1st of June. So I've been listening to only music in German without headphones and it isn't easy hearing the words without headphones in. I think it's about time for a new Kindle mine is 6 years old and acting really weird.

And yeah I don't think you're supposed to start sentences with "but", but I do though unless I'm writing an essay or research paper (which I haven't had to do in about 6 years). I'm also not sure you're supposed to start sentences with "and" either, but again I do unless it's an academic paper then I won't.

Oh god, I'm so frustrated, and it has to do with German.

I went to the site of the "official German language dictionary" (I'm always skeptical of something that purports to define a language - which is a constantly evolving entity, after all) - Duden. Got greeted with an invitation to a survey. Accepted it because I was feeling generous. Never going to get that quarter to half an hour back...

I'm still not sure how that flies, since they at one point asked for my work email, which I would expect from professional scammers, not dictionary makers. I guess I was able to refuse, which is one point in their favor.

Anyway, one thing I should have remembered, that is a good reason to avoid such surveys from foreign countries is education. Every country actually has its own system, with its own naming. For example, I still don't know what my higher education qualifies as in American units. And much less in German. Their concept of Fachschule requires me to read the entire Wikipedia article each time I come across it.

And then I was presented with at least 3 pages of various printed media which I'd never heard of, much less held in my hands, and with good reason since I don't live in Germany.

Well, that's done at least (with a bunch of "Nie" and "Keine" clicked through). Now the reason I came to a dictionary... and that only adds insult to injury.

I'm going over the words I marked in the book I occasionally read. So, everybody seems to use the combination "schon mal" to mean "already". Except in this sentence it doesn't fit!

"Wenn man die Bullen schon mal brauchte, dann kamen sie zu spät" - "When you needed the cops *already*, then they were too late."

******mit... Well, the "mal" part of it is among the German words that I've kind of grown to hate, because it seems to get used without any rhyme or reason.

I mean, what makes sense in that sentence, would be something like "actually", but that's normally "eigentlich".

...Okay, maybe if I deconstruct it very analytically:

"mal" is colloquial for "einmal" and that can be used to mean "ever".

"schon" is, according to Duden, used to "strengthen" (or accentuate) the meaning. Which is kind of hard to visualize, but I suppose I could try translating "schon mal" to "ever at all"...

Anyway, a look at the dark side of the German language, or something like that?