September 2024. Duolingo Steak 610 Days. Coming into Spring here in Australia, so occasionally getting out to the pub and waiting for the proper warm weather to kick in.

Apps I’m using

• Duolingo (every day. Welsh, Dutch, Swedish)
• Clozemaster (most days, try to get about 500 points while building vocabulary on the Fluency Fast Track)

My iPhone’s language is set to Cymraeg, which is OK. It’s not ideal, because support is only partial. I work most days on a Mac which is also set to Cymraeg. Most apps don’t really respect the setting though, so my daily exposure is mixed at best. I also run a Linux (Ubuntu Studio) laptop, which does not have a complete Cymraeg language pack, so that particular environment is entirely English.

I don’t want to go back to Windows (despite being a former Microsoft Employee), but I have to admit that Windows does, at present, have better support.

What I’m reading

Lleidr Amser - the Cymraeg translation of terry Pratchett’s “Thief of Time”. As far as I know it’s the only Welsh Translation of a full Discworld novel, and to be completely honest, it’s not one of the easiest to deal with even in a first language.

It deals a lot with time-bending, if not actual time travel, which obviously implies mangling of verb tenses at minimum. Pratchett’s prose in this phase is obviously very playful too, so not an easy read. There’s some deconstruction of part one here. My technique for readiing this is to have the English audiobook playing in my noise-cancelling headphones while I read along. The linked blog post will expand on that.

What I’m watching

Occasionally, Sam Tân on YouTube, while I’m pottering about in the kitchen, but I’m not really on an active TV watching phase. I did watch a rather gorgeous version of Under Milk Wood in English the other day, which is worth a look even though it’s not in Welsh because I will be covering Dan y Wenallt on this blog soon.

What I’m listening to

Not a lot. I’ve subscribed to a bunch of Welsh Language podcasts, but I’m mostly listening to the audio books of Thief of Time and Under Milk Wood in English, to keep myself familiar with the story structures as I follow the texts in Cymraeg.