SaySomethinginWelsh.com

markwatkinprice wrote:And have you seen amd even worse,heard the world's only course in Slovak?

I would love to see SSiSlovak. What is your interest in Slovak, Mark?

Aran wrote:we do also have the very first baby steps of a course to teach French happening

A true story! I'm currently a bit preoccupied with job applications and another project I'm working on for a friend, but I hope to get back to working on it soon. The broad plan is to follow along behind the development of SaySomethinginSpanish, adapting Aran's lessons from Spanish to French - initial indications suggest that SSiS works really well as a template for a French course

kinetic wrote:

Aran wrote:we do also have the very first baby steps of a course to teach French happening

A true story! I'm currently a bit preoccupied with job applications and another project I'm working on for a friend, but I hope to get back to working on it soon. The broad plan is to follow along behind the development of SaySomethinginSpanish, adapting Aran's lessons from Spanish to French - initial indications suggest that SSiS works really well as a template for a French course

Wow! I would love to learn a bit of French some day!

Hi Iestyn,

I have a Slovak friend who speaks very good English and has now gone back home. I wanted to learn the language as we go over there occasionally and apart from the fact that my appalling pronunciation makes them wet themselves laughing I figured I ought to do a bit more in the interests of international relations and at least have a few useable words. So found the only course available which is reasonably designed as coursebooks go. I very recently found the CD that is an add-on to the book. It has to be heard to be believed. If you're interested I'll e-mail you a (short) mp3 lesson just to hear. The book is at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Colloquial-Slov ... 898&sr=8-1

Anyway, it's a monstrous language but I still aspire...

After I started and then abandoned the Slovak, I was put onto SSIW by that most active of Chaps, Jonathan Simcock.

Turning to your ideas for the future, I would certainly subscribe to the Spanish course as it's a language I've never tried and would also brush up on my school French. The idea of doing them through Welsh means my Welsh should benefit no end. An excellent concept.

If it hasn't already been said, thank you so much for a witty, intelligent and beautifully designed course that makes language learning fun.

I don't often browse the forums, but I did today and was moved by the predicament described in the Interesting Times message. I hope things pick up. I think the marketing idea to a warm web audience is an excellent idea, but immediate money may be more useful. Is there no way that you could get business sponsorship or some sort of Welsh grant? Or even licence the teaching method to other commercial language teaching systems?


Congratulations on the award. Good luck. And I hope in a year from now I will be reading that subscribers will have doubled and a regular subscription revenue is coming in.

Would you have a look at www.kateskitchenband.com. I can't promise as the band doesn't make much, but the site badly needs upgrading
a) so that the b***dy Paypal button works 100% not 60% of the time, and b) we need the ability to put up mp3 tracks for listening and for sale rather like the now rather sad Myspace. Could you give me a no strings ballpark price for redesigning? Thank you

By the way, some forums have a tick-box that triggers an e-mail alert when there is activity which means not having to dip in in case there's a response. It was only chance I picked up your response tonight to my comment.

All the very best

Hwyl fawr
Mark

Thanks for your kind words and ideas, Mark, very much appreciated indeed...

markwatkinprice wrote:Would you have a look at http://www.kateskitchenband.com. I can't promise as the band doesn't make much, but the site badly needs upgrading
a) so that the b***dy Paypal button works 100% not 60% of the time, and b) we need the ability to put up mp3 tracks for listening and for sale rather like the now rather sad Myspace. Could you give me a no strings ballpark price for redesigning? Thank you

It's a bit tricky to see, because of the heavy use of frames (which is a bit of a no-no these days in most circumstances, won't do you any favours with search engines), but I suspect the issue with the Paypal button is either in the way the code has been cut&pasted in (Paypal can be fussy sometimes about line breaks and stuff) or with the way it's responding to being inside a frame. Fixing it would just be a matter of running a few tests and seeing what happened - but having said that, I wouldn't expect to have any issues with it on a fresh build with the software we use...

Costwise, it's mostly about what you feel you need - have you had a look at http://www.saysomethinginwelsh.com/hosting for the price range? - I see no reason in what you've said here why that shouldn't all fit neatly under the most basic option. The best thing for the mp3s would probably be to use a third-party option for digital sales and then just call it from the site - a little bit of extra fiddle, but not that much.

I also suspect, in passing, that you would be well-advised to get a couple of videos made of the band in full flow - you look a colourful lot, and seeing you in action would be likely to have a much more powerful impact on potential clients...

markwatkinprice wrote:By the way, some forums have a tick-box that triggers an e-mail alert when there is activity which means not having to dip in in case there's a response. It was only chance I picked up your response tonight to my comment.

If you scroll down right to the bottom of the page, next to 'Board Index' bottom left, you should see a link called 'Subscribe topic' - click on that and you'll be subscribed...

We don't tend to flag it up all that much because if too many people subscribed to too many topics, we'd start to have issues with the amount of emails we're allowed to send per hour, so it's very much something for people to use only with particularly important topics...

Otherwise, the 'View new posts' [every thread with comments since you last visited] or 'View active topics' [every thread with comments in the last seven days] links up at the top on the right there are a great way for seeing where there's been activity...

Hi Mark - I'm with you on the Slovak learning resources. My best man's wife is from Bratislava - she's also Godmother to Ioan - and they now live there, so i have picked up bits and pieces of the language. Simon tried using "Colloquial Slovak" to learn, and failed miserably, and I understood why when I tried a bit of it myself, but as you say, that is the best available.

I've seriously considered looking at some of the far better Czech courses on the premise that the two languages are almost identical in writing, and in different circumstances would probably qualify as dialects of the same language. It's on my list of stuff to do (I love the Slavic languages - they are so beautiful and, yes, monstrous!), but a SSiSlovak would kill any desire to learn Czech.

Maybe if the kids suddenly learn to look after themselves, I'll have a go at putting a skeleton together sometime...

Thank you for the compliments to the course. I guess I can claim responsibility for some of the wit and intelligense for those doing the southern course, but the "beautiful design" is almost entirely down to Aran's working, reworking and blood-sweating over the north Wales course.

It's great that you're enjoying it so much!