Here's a fantastic and thought-provoking quote from a fantastic and thought-provoking book ... Travels in an Old Tongue by Pamela Petro...
" These folks must realise that Welsh has vowels, their ears confirm the fact. It's what their eyes show them that seems to contradict the sounds they've heard. Herein lies the hard lesson ....... languages are vocal beasts, spawned of the larynx, teeth, tongue and nose. Like beached sea creatures.... they die, or are at least sadly misunderstood, beyond the waves of speech. "
When I started to learn languages, it was French I tried first ... largely because I discovered that I already knew hundreds of French words from what I did at school centuries ago. I was very peeved and irked after a year or so of becoming pretty good at zipping through French novels to find that when I tried to speak with French speakers I could hardly say a thing! Ouch ! Gadzooks ! Zut alors!
So .... get speaking is the obvious message ... more about methods and stategies next time .. and now here's a quite remarkable bit of music ... Gyfodwyr Piws .... Dynion..... there's about 30 seconds of normal stuff, then the actual band and song kick in ... watch what's going on carefully folks ..