I am just so excited to tell someone about this!
I started the SSIW lessons from scratch around the first of this year, but due to my busy work schedule, I have not done as much as I would have liked. I live in the U.S. (Tennessee) and had only been to Wales once before, for a few days in June 2011, so I have never really been exposed to the language and have absolutely no opportunities to use Welsh in the real world. I just decided I wanted to learn Welsh because 1) I really fell in love with Wales last summer, 2) my great-grandfather came from Fachwen, near Llanberis and Caernarfon, and 3) I just think Welsh is a very cool language. 
Anyway, a couple of months ago I signed up for a week-long Welsh course at Nant Gwrtheyrn, and I have just spent a week there. It was fabulous, and I highly recommend it!
I signed up for level 2, fully intending to finish the SSIW Course 1 before getting there, but that just didn't happen. I had only gotten through lesson 21 of Course 1 before coming to Nant Gwrtheyrn. I REALLY figured I was in over my head when the teacher started the week by saying that since this is level 2, she assumed that everyone had already had a full year of Welsh classes. OMG, I thought, I'd better just check out now, pack up, and go home. 
BUT... it turned out that I knew a lot more than I thought I did, and, in fact... would you believe... I even knew more about some things than a lot of other people in the class, including people who live in Wales and hear the language all the time!
The ONLY exposure I have ever had to Welsh (other than the little I heard in the 5 days I spent in Caernarfon last summer) is SSIW. That's all. And just 21 lessons at that! And, as I said above, I have not even been able to listen to Welsh radio, since there seems to be no station I can get in the U.S., even online.Anyway, would you believe, the first afternoon I even had to start pretending I didn't know stuff I actually did know, just to keep from looking like a show-off?!
One thing I did particularly well was when we had a bunch of scrambled sentences (individual words on slips of paper) and had to put them together in the right order. I was able to put them together correctly straightaway, even if I didn't know exactly what all the words meant. After I zipped through a couple of them, I had to back off and let other people in my group try it, and I had to restrain myself when I knew they were wrong. 
There were even lots of verbs I knew that other people didn't know. Also, nobody else knew anything beyond the present tense, nor did anyone know "Mae gen i..." and "Does gen i ddim..." The only thing I have taught myself outside of the SSIW lessons is numbers. I just sat down and learned those one day on the train several weeks ago when it was too noisy to listen to a lesson. I should mention that in doing the SSIW lessons I DO always look at the written guide to the lessons and try to learn the spelling, but, as per Aran's initial instructions, I only look AFTER listening to the lesson.
I am also amazed at how much I actually know about mutations, even though I have not formally studied that, and even though the SSIW lessons do not dwell on that at all in the lessons. I was even explaining mutations to a fellow student who grew up in Wales!
I do think it helps that the mutations are so much like Spanish (I teach Spanish at the university level), although in Spanish the "mutations" don't change the spelling of the words, just the pronunciation. Oh! And I seem to know more about forming questions and answering in the negative than some other people as well, since the SSIW lessons stress that a lot.Well, dw i wedi blino, and besides that, I am absolutely knackered, and I'm beginning to sound like a swot.
(I'm learning a few new English words as well as Welsh...) SO... I just thought Aran, the rest of the SSIW crew, and other SSIW learners would like hearing this great success story. I think Aran should give himself a little pat on the back. Oh, what the heck, I think he should give himself a BIG pat on the back!
Diolch yn fawr!!!
Karen
Cookeville, Tennessee
Looking forward to hearing more about Nant Gwrtheyrn sometime when your feet are back on the ground. 
Please feel free to correct me. Thanks! 
= "Oh, is that how it's spelled!"
