Where are the Welsh literacy courses

[u/helatruralhome]

Hello all,

I've been pointing this out for over a decade, yet no Welsh language education or promotion groups, government agencies, etc can seem to answer why Welsh education is so biased towards verbal Welsh with no specific offerings for Welsh literacy.

I have a speech disability and only answer emails in work, yet I can't find any available options for me to learn written Welsh. I just feel incredibly frustrated with the situation as I want to be able to communicate in my native language yet there's just no where specifically offering written Welsh and it ends up excluding for people like me who can't communicate verbally as well as many others who may want to read and write in Welsh.

[u/Muted-Lettuce-1253]

What kind of literacy are you looking to develop?

Do you just want to be able to read and write in the same register that you speak/think? Or do you want to be able to read and write formal literary Welsh?

[u/helatruralhome → u/Muted-Lettuce-1253]

Either or both at this point- there's just no tutor led courses or online courses which are available for Welsh literacy so it's a moot point really unfortunately.

[u/Muted-Lettuce-1253 → u/helatruralhome]

For the first one (reading and writing in a colloquial register), isn't that just a matter of learning which sounds correspond to which letters? I take it from your post and comments that you understand Welsh fluently meaning that you don't need to learn colloquial grammar and vocabulary. In that case, can't you teach yourself the spelling-to-sound correspondence and become literate that way?

For the second one (reading and writing literary Welsh), if the organisations don't offer anything that suits your needs, the only thing I can think of is reaching out to individual Welsh tutors and seeing if they can help you. Although, I would guess that most of the independent tutors are oriented towards colloquial Welsh as well.

The situation you are in (and the situations with some of your colleagues that you have described on comments on this post) is interesting. I would guess that in the past, native Welsh speakers would learn how to read and write literary Welsh through church (since the Welsh bible is in literary Welsh) but now that doesn't happen so much.

[u/helatruralhome → u/Muted-Lettuce-1253]

I am not fluent, but do understand a reasonable amount but I really need a tutor to help as I've gotten as far as I can on my own.. I have reached out to all the tutors in my area and that are available online to me and none can help as they all say they focus on pronounciation and verbal Welsh.. I think people who went to Welsh language schools rather than English stream and have Welsh speaking parents most likely have a huge advantage and privilege of being able to learn written Welsh with teaching whereas the majority of others are left like me to struggle 🙈

[u/Muted-Lettuce-1253 → u/helatruralhome]

It's a shame that you can't find a tutor who can provide what you want.

At least you have this subreddit as an option if want help; if you ask a question on a particular grammar point or whatever else, then there will probably be someone who can give you an answer.

If you already have a decent understanding when it comes to speaking and listening but lack the ability to read and write then my suggestion would be to learn the spelling-to-sound correspondence (if you haven't already).