Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Welsh Complete Course Audiopackage

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have found it difficult to find resources about Welsh, let alone resources that are decent. Most books about the Welsh language are disorganised. Welsh is a complex language that has an extensive use of auxiliary verbs, a complex system for the verb 'to be', a well-developed system of mutations, etc. Most books handle all this poorly. This book is focused more on conversational Welsh than literary Welsh (which is much more complicated). This book, however, does deal with aspects of the language that are not in the realm of conversation. It offers many examples and much practise on the CDs. It also has a good dictionary in the back, as well as citing other resources for further study. This is one of the best books I have seen for learning Welsh.

Simple to use, audio quality is excellent. It is not easy, but then Welsh is not easy to learn. Could use a more extensive Welsh to English dictionary.

Welsh is not the easiest language to learn, but it is hepful to be able to sound out place names and converse with people in their own language while on holiday. Within a few days of working with the CDs, I was able to read a little Welsh, and then actually carry on a few simple conversations. The book and the CDs work very well together. I highly recommend them!

Welsh is an extremely difficult language to learn. The way Welsh words are spelled is NOT the way they are spoken. If you cannot hear the spoken language, you just cannot learn it well. This course has it all!!
Very comprehensive and, surprisingly, very inexpensive!! I would highly recommend this course to any serious language student.

The Teach Yourself Welsh course is fantastic! I was in doubt a while back when I tried to find a good Welsh program (that wasn't as expensive as Rosetta Stone) and Teach Yourself stands out! The Teach Yourself interface is great and the other Welsh-related books by Teach Yourself work as great additions to your own personalized course. I would highly recommend this to any aspiring Welsh student!

Cymru am Byth!

This is the lousiest TY book I've seen. If you like to learn things parrot fashion then this book may help you a little bit, but if you're an intelligent curious adult (that's the usual reader of TY books) then this book is USELESS. Things are thrown at your face from the word go without any explanation at all. There are virtually no grammar notes. It's the first TY book that doesn't even list the present tense of the verb to "BE," an important verb in Welsh at the beginning; You have to wait until lesson 4. There are differences between written and spoken Welsh; this is not mentioned here; there are differences between Northern and Southern Welsh; this is not mentioned here either. The glossary at the end of the book is a big joke: it doesn't even list words used in the dialogues. Try to look for the words for "he" or "she" there. The exercises are rather idiotic: after telling you the forms for "good morning, evening, afternoon" the author gives you a long exercise asking you what you'd say at 1pm, 3pm, 4pm... . In dialogue 1 of unit 1 there's a sentence "Peidiwch â bod yn nerfus" translated as "Don't be nervous". You can clearly see that it's a totally different structure. Nothing is mentioned about it. No even to say that it'd be discussed later.
I'd suggest you'd try to buy an older version of TY Welsh by another author (Rhys Jones), which is not modernish but at least it's better designed. Julie Brake and Christine Jones, according to the back cover, teach Welsh in Wales. I pity their poor unlucky students and doubt they'll ever learn something from these lousy teachers.

I have been working with this course for a little while now and I have noticed that the vocabulary provided is lacking in some of the most basic words, such as the welsh word for english or mother. This can be remedied with a good dictionary, but shows the lack of forethought in planning the course. Also, the grammar sections are not as clear as I would have liked, I have seen much better jobs done with other teach yourself courses. That said,, this course does provide a good introduction to the Welsh language and phonetics for the absolute beginner.

This is working out very well. The books and the CD's work well together. I recommend it for use. The dialogs in the book help tremendously.

This book is an example of how NOT to teach language. It purports to have small snippets of conversation but they are contrived events with sound effects that annoy rather than enhance. Concepts are not very clearly presented and you will spend more time figuring out what they are trying to tell you than learning anything.

You are far better off going to one of several UK sites (like BBC) where they appear to know how to teach languages.

My 40ish son says that this is TERRIFIC, but I am no judge!