One thing is for sure, we're going to need a large dollop of motivation..... a very large dollop.
But here's something for you to think about ..... when you have learned enough of it to trundle your way through an actual grown-up Welsh book, you will have done something that very few people have achieved !
Compared to , say, Spanish or French, Welsh is an incredibly secret language!
Here's a for instance.... a few weeks ago I was sitting outside a cafe having a cup of coffee and got talking a bit to the person next to me.... after a few sentences he asked me what I had been reading. I passed the book over to him ... it was Gwrach y Gwyllt ..... so he asked me what language it was in. He refused to believe it was in Welsh! He refused to believe that I could (mostly) read it! I got the impression that as far as he was concerned, Welsh was a language spoken only by gnarled half-dead sheep farmers living in caves in that place with a long name.
Are you surprised ? No, neither was I. Actually, deep down, I was quite pleased ..... it made what I was doing special ... and it is !
Feeling special occasionally is .... let's admit it ..... quite nice. Selfish, yes, egotistical, yes, big-headed, er, yes ... but nice all the same. Being a reasonably sized fish in a small pondy thing is quite a nice place to be. It's quite a motivation for me to keep going. When I'm reading a Spanish or French novel, I don't get that feeling at all... I always feel that I'm doing pretty badly what billions of people can do brilliantly. Not quite such a good feeling really.
That book up there is by Owen Martell ... it's called Cadw dy ffydd, brawd. Amongst the excellent reviews it gets on Amazon, there's one that implores readers to learn Welsh and read it because it's worth it! I don't think that sort of comment will be found much in the other language sections. I don't think that the reviewer really expected anybody to actually do that, but they thought it was worth a try. After all, how many people in the world have actually read it ?
There are lots of other reasons to learn Welsh of course ... but the big fish small pond one doesn't get mentioned hardly at all. So I just thought I'd bring it up.
So, let's have some brilliant Welsh music ... how about Melys with Un Darllenwr Lwcus ...