2026: The year I (finally) learn Welsh

Ella Groves

Like so many of us across Wales I did my Welsh GCSE at 16 and since then have floated between evening classes and Duolingo, all whilst never really finding a way to make the language stick.

Life gets busy; university, work, friends, and learning a language gets pushed to the side, and it becomes something you’ll do ‘next year.’

Well, I’ve decided this is it, it’s finally ‘next year,’ 2026 will be the year I learn Welsh.

I know saying ‘this will be it’ in the first week of January is often far too optimistic, a new year’s resolution destined to fail, but this time it’s different – because I’m bringing you all along with me.

Over the next few months I’m going to document my journey as a Welsh Learner sharing all the tips and tricks I pick up along the way as well as all my many, many mistakes.

‘Say Something In’

Most of my learning will be done through the app, ‘Say Something In’ – an app with the Welsh language at its core.

Although it now offers courses for a range of languages, SaySomethingin was created to reverse the language shift in Wales and to foster a community of new Welsh speakers.

The app describes itself as “the natural way to learn a language,” with founder Aran Jones having developed the methodology based on his own linguistic experience.

Back in 2008, Aran had taught English overseas, tried and failed to learn the local languages of each place he worked, and then successfully managed to learn Welsh.

He said: “I started building SaySomethinginWelsh because I’d struggled to learn languages all my life, growing up and/or working in Germany, Portugal, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Zimbabwe and Dubai.

“When I came home to Wales and became a Welsh speaker, I felt as though all the other ways I’d tried to learn had been over-complicated – I thought if I could build something simpler which took less time, it might help other people have the same extraordinary experience of becoming Welsh speakers.”

With ideas of neuroplasticity, memory formation, and how they affect language acquisition at its core the SaySomethingin method promises a different, and supposedly, faster, way to learn Welsh.

Repetition and failure are ultimately the keys to success it seems.

I will also be attending, as and when work and life allows, Dysgu Cymraeg evening classes to complement my learning on the app.

‘The design’

With its simple red and white design, the app wastes no time on fancy gimmicks or eye-catching graphics. It is instead minimal, straightforward, and distraction-free.

Split into four pages – ‘Home’, ‘Learning’, ‘Stats’, and ‘Account’ – the app is easy to navigate and focused entirely on the user’s learning experience.

The home page is where you select the language you wish to learn, and it was there I noticed what is perhaps the holy grail for Welsh learners – the ability to opt for south Wales or north Wales Welsh.

As any Welsh learner knows, it is all too common to find what is seemingly the perfect app or resource to learn Welsh before quickly realising it is the wrong dialect for you – or, even worse, a weird combination of the two.

SaySomethingIn instead offers dedicated courses for both Welsh dialects allowing learners from across Wales to use the app.

The learning itself is simple. It is a basic listen and repeat framework. The app gives you a sentence in English, you attempt to say it in Welsh, and the app then plays the correct translation whilst you listen to see if you were correct.

You move through levels called ‘belts’ – think Karate belts beginning with white, ending with black, with a whole range of colours in between – which slowly increase in difficulty introducing new vocabulary as you progress.

‘The first week’

So, this week I set myself the goal of committing to half an hour every day of learning Welsh.

What this looked like varied day to day, some days I found time to set up a dedicated half hour of learning, on others I did quick five minute bursts whenever I had time until I’d reached my half hour goal.

At the beginning of the week I moved through levels at rapid speed.

The first few ‘belts’ are relatively short and if you already have a basic understanding of Welsh from school as I do these are unlikely to challenge you too much.

The first time I noticed myself having to work slightly harder was once I reached the Orange belt, where new words began to appear dotted amongst already-familiar sentence patterns.

The Orange belt feels as though it is the first of the longer belts. Having reached it on Wednesday it took me two days to complete the level where previously I had jumped through all three yellow belts in just one session.

After reaching the Orange belt, I really began to feel I was making progress. The combination of the language from the earlier levels with increasingly complex sentence patterns allowed me to notice how much I was learning – with relatively little effort!

What is clear so far is the progress I have made. At the beginning of the week, I was hesitant and unsure of my own language capabilities, but with just half an hour of learning every day it is clear to me that my Welsh abilities are stronger than I first assumed.

So, join me on my language learning journey and we’ll see if this really is the year I learn Welsh!

If 2026 is going to be the year you learn Welsh, or any other language, you can find out more about SaySomethingIn here.