There are many resources that can help you on your road to language fluency. Here's some that I've used and some thoughts on each.
Apps
Duolingo
Duolingo is the elephant in the room here. A dominant player in the app-based learning space and the first port of call for many. I started using Duolingo in January 2023, during a visit home to Swansea, and I’ve used it every day since.
In that time, the Cymraeg course has received one major update, and it’s now a good way to get yourself into a kind of lower-intermediate level. It tries to cover Northern and Southern dialects, but is very much schoolroom Welsh. A solid start and worth keeping on when you’re done as a refresher.
It uses a number of different learning games. Sometimes you’ll listen in English and pick the correct Welsh word to fill a gap from a list. Other times you’ll write a whole sentence in Welsh. Other times you’ll listen in Welsh and make the English translation, either by choosing words from a list or by free typing. It also allows you to make minor errors and typos, which is good for early learners and bad typists.
Cymraeg doesn’t have the popular “Stories” feature, let alone the video chats, and doesn’t have the “speak” feature which exists in a number of other courses, but it’s a very enjoyable course and fun to use. And if you’re learning other languages, it’s worth subscribing. Stories, however, can be found elsewhere (see “Books” later)
Clozemaster
Clozemaster is, like Duolingo, an app and browser learning tool, but this one very much focuses on one of the games that Duolingo uses.
It’s all about picking the correct word from a list of four options. Depending on which game you pick, you are either reading an english sentence and a welsh translation with a key word missing, or you’re listening to a welsh sentence and finding the missing word, or, harder, you’re transcribing sentences or spelling out the missing word.
I’m using the Fluency Fast Track packs, each of which provides a thousand sentences in Welsh. There are ten in all, so there’s plenty of content here.
Beware, though, the packs generated by ChatGPT. They have glaring errors, mistranslations and nonsensical sentences scattered among the good stuff.
Excellent for expanding your vocabulary. Probably not great for a new learner. Start with Duolingo, move up to this when you’re running out of content on Duo.
Glossika
Glossika is all about typing entire sentences, with or without hints. It’s tricky, because unlike Duolingo it does not tolerate a single typo. You can listen to the sentences, or read, and flash up the solution if you need a hint. But don’t make a typo!
You can also speak to this one, and I’ll make an effort to review that in the coming days. This one, to my mind, is the most strict and has the most advanced content. It also makes an effort to test you against CEFR criteria, which is really valuable if you want to use Welsh in any kind of professional capacity.
Books
There are plenty of books available on the obvious suspect, but I do also recommend you look at World of Books, as well as independent stores - especially bricks and mortar stores in Wales.
I am very fond of two bookshops in Swansea in particular - Tŷ Tawe and Cover To Cover. Please support them if you can.
TV and Video
You should absolutely get an account on S4C. If, like me, you’re overseas, you will need a VPN to access most of the content. If you’re in Cymru, which I am absolutely not… turn on your TV and run S4C in the background.
Podcasts
BBC Radio Cymru have several rather useful Podcasts, especially what used to be Pigion (is now the Podlediad Dysgwr Cymraeg). S4C does too, and there are a bunch of independent pods that you should probably sub to. A list - and an importable OPML file, may follow.