piranha | (Reply)

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Thank you, that's very helpful. I found Pimsleur CDs very good for getting some basic Italian, especially for pronunciation, but I think my brain is so visual/text oriented that it's better for me if I learn reading/writing at the same time as listening/speaking. Otherwise part of my brain is distracted trying to figure out written forms for the sounds I'm hearing. So I like Duolingo for that mix, and for the randomness, and for vocabulary acquisition. It was frustrating with Pimsleur that after finishing all the available CDs my vocabulary was still so limited, and I didn't really find a good resource for progressing further at the time.

These days I live in a substantially Welsh speaking area, and have friends who would be patient with my beginner's Welsh, but I really feel more comfortable practicing by myself a lot first. But it's really important to me to learn it -- I don't want to be part of the problem of more and more non-Welsh speakers moving in and making it harder for the language to survive, so I want to make more progress than I currently am.