Yn dod yn fuan...
My languages:
English (C2), Welsh (B2), Irish (A2), Cornish (A2), Scots (A1?), Breton (A1), Italian (A1), Esperanto (A1)
Introduction:
I'm a twenty-two-year-old, currently doing a bachelor's degree in Celtic Studies. I'm Welsh, and from a Cornish/Scottish/Irish family (and more distant English and Ulster Scots heritage). I'm very interested in comparative Celtic linguistics, preserving/revitalising minority languages, Celtic diasporas, Lowland/Ulster Scots diasporas, and in my family history.
Welsh:
I've been learning Welsh in some capacity since I was three, although in the early days it was mostly only phrases like "bore da" and "diolch" in my nursery. I went to English-medium schools, so I didn't learn lots of Welsh and I didn't have a passion for it until I started studying it on my own outside of school hours. In high school, I realised that languages are taught awfully in school (both first-language English classes and 2nd-language Welsh/French/etc. classes), so I started using Duolingo to improve my Welsh, in about 2017/2018 when I was starting to do GCSEs. This was my first time learning grammar and actual useful things I could use to construct my own sentences in Welsh, and not just the vocabulary lists and pre-made phrases they gave us in school. I really fell in love with learning Welsh thanks to Duolingo (although, most Duolingo courses, including the Welsh one, no longer have the grammar notes so I can't recommend it as a resource anymore), and I went on to do Welsh at A Levels, and then a Celtic Studies undergraduate degree at university. Despite the education system's efforts, I can speak Welsh quite well, and I've been having university classes through Welsh since 2022 and I use it to communicate every day at university. I would like to integrate the language more into my non-academic life too.
Cornish:
My father is from Cornwall, and from a young age I was taught some Cornish words by him, but mostly by my paternal grandfather who was mostly just curious to see how they compared to Welsh words. I have no idea how fluent my grandfather was in Cornish, but I have a lot of Cornish resources that I inherited from him after he died. I have no idea who the last fluent Cornish speaker in the family was. I've been trying to get back into teaching myself Cornish over the last year or so. Unfortunately my university doesn't teach Cornish.
Scots:
My mother is from Scotland, although she moved to Wales as a child, and I learned some Scots words and phrases from her and my maternal grandfather. I believe my maternal grandfather was fluent in Scots. I distinctly remember him teaching my Scots words and phrases when I was 10 for a school project I was doing on Scotland. I don't really know my CEFR level in Scots, because I can understand more than I can say due to picking up words as a child and the fact that Scots is the most closely-related language to English, an also because I've never sat down to learn the language. I always feel like there's a larger mental block preventing me from learning Scots than my other heritage languages, I think due to the fact that it's mostly perceived as a funny, uneducated dialect of English, and I'm afraid of coming across as mocking because I don't have a Scottish accent. My Scottish family also have Ulster Scots and (Ulster) Irish heritage, although I never really learned anything about Ulster Scots and Irish through my Scottish family members
Irish:
My maternal grandmother is from Ireland and learned some Irish as a second language, so I grew up knowing little bits of Irish from her and my mother. Irish was probably the heritage language I grew up knowing the least of, although I taught myself a bit in 2019. I started studying Irish at university in 2023 as part of my Celtic Studies degree.