The Audio Long Read Where Duolingo falls down: how I learned to speak Welsh with my mother
May 4, 2026
A personal quest to revive a family language after a grandmother's funeral. Stories of childhood Welsh phrases, domestic rhythms and landscape memories. A history of Welsh decline, schooling punishments and political revival. Trials with language apps, stumbling over tricky sounds, and finding conversation methods and community in New York. A mother and son practicing together to reconnect with heritage.
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Childhood Home Where Welsh Was Always Alive
- Dan describes living at his grandparents' Shambarwen where Welsh filled daily life: radio, chapel, kitchen phrases and lullabies.
- He learned small words like Nine, Tide, diolch and cariad as sensory, rhythmic fragments rather than spelled vocabulary.
Use Apps To Reconnect With Familiar Language Sounds
- Dan downloaded Duolingo in lockdown and used it to reconnect with familiar sounds and basic phrases as a portable inheritance.
- He practiced tourist-style sentences, walking around repeating phrases to internalise rhythm and accent.
Why Welsh Sounds And Spelling Feel Alien
- Welsh orthography and phonetics differ markedly from English: 29 letters, several digraphs treated as letters, more vowels and sounds like ll and dd.
- These features create unique rhythms and challenges (mutations, no single word for yes) that apps often omit.