Cyfres Amdani: Wynne Evans - O Gaerfyrddin i Go Compare

by Elin Meek

Llyfr o gyfres Amdani, i ddysgwyr Lefel Mynediad. Bywgraffiad Wynne Evans. Darlun personol a gonest iawn o hanes Wynne a'i deulu, ei brofiadau fel tenor enwog, a'i ymdrech fel oedolyn i ddysgu Cymraeg. A book for Welsh learners, Entry Level. Biography of Wynne Evans. A very personal and honest history of Wynne and his family, his experiences as a famous tenor, and his efforts to learn Welsh.

Genres: Nonfiction

52 pages, Paperback

Published June 7, 2018

Reviews

[Emma Griffiths · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is definitely my favourite book for Welsh Learner (so far!). I enjoyed reading about Wynne's life and how he became an Opera singer and found it really inspiring - At least what I understood from it with the help of my Welsh dictionary! For somebody that didn't enjoy school all that much, I think he should be really proud of his achievements, He's worked so hard! His passion for music and the arts really shines through. As somebody that is a Welsh Learner, loves listening to music and playing piano (Or should I say, Dw i'n dysgu Cymraeg, dw i'n caru gwrando ar cerddoriaeth a canu'r piano). I feel that this has been the perfect book for me and I've really enjoyed learning some new words! Diolch Wynne!

[Phil · Rating 2 out of 5]

The feeling of relief at having finally finished this book is immense. It is definitely my least favourite Welsh read so far, and I've had to really push myself to finish it.

On the positive side, it is a biography of Wynne Evans written interview style, so there is lots of opportunity to practice reading questions and answers and past tense.

On the negative side, it is extremely boring. I really am not interested in learning about Evans' least favourite school subject or his first job or his favourite food or... When reading takes a lot of effort, as it does when learning a new language, you really need some incentive to keep plugging away at a book and this had none apart from the grim hope that reading this much must have done something to help the learning process.

I also found it frustrating that so much of the new vocabulary was unlikely to be of any use to me in the future, or at least not unless I become extremely fluent (maybe in 2050?) I can't think of any situation in the near future where I'm likely to need to discuss the British honours system or the architectural details of world opera houses...

Maybe if you are a Wynne Evans fan, you'll get more out of this. But I'd never even heard of him until I started reading this book (I don't like opera and I don't watch tv!) and I was bored to tears. Two stars for the endless repetition of past tense Q&As. Zero stars for interest.

[Nicola Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A levelled up challenge for my Welsh learning - my first non-fiction Welsh read! I enjoyed reading this and the vocab help at the end of every chapter was super helpful to fill in any gaps of words I didn’t know. It’s a solid recommend for those learning Welsh (esp on the Mynediad course).

It was great for teaching me some new words I hadn’t come across before and I found it enjoyable to go through page by page, translating and referring to the vocab when I needed it. Great learning tool! I also felt like an utter champion when I could go from page to page reading this AND understand what was written. Makes me feel like maybe I’m getting better at Welsh after all!

My goals for fluency continue even if I am currently 100 years of doing so! Keeping at learning Welsh is such a rewarding experience I’ve found so far and these books really help in that!

[Robyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actually the audiobook, not the Kindle version, but it would take months to get the audiobook version added to goodreads, so I'm not worrying about it.
Again I found my mind wandering, but it was a bit worse with the audiobook because the book is structured as a Q&A but the audiobook only has one reader. He doesn't change his intonation when he asks the questions, so it's difficult to tell when he's reading the interviewers lines and when he's reading Evans' replies. It all melds together and is a bit difficult to follow as a result. Now that it's been two years since I read the print version, and I'm trying to improve my auditory comprehension, I don't have to work so hard to translate it, I just didn't find it very interesting.

[Robyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a book for Welsh learners to practice the past tense, this was fine. I just didn't find it interesting. It was hard to keep dragging myself through the mental process of translating it, when it was all "where did you live in London?". I'm sorry, but I don't care where he lived in London, or what his brother did for a living, and after painstakingly making my way through 17 pages of that level of detail I cared less about the actually interesting parts of his life that came later. Probably would have been better as a narrative, rather than in Q&A form, but likely they wanted us to practice the question form of past tense verbs.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've finished Sylfaen level 2 but found this a good mynediad, beginner level for revision. I read the book then tried listening to the audio version. You can listen to it at a slower pace but I didn't find it very enjoyable to listen to. It would have been better to have Wynne Evans narrating his own story with an interviewer as set out in the book.

[Vcmc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dw i wedi mwynhau llawer yn y llyfr- yn enwedig stori ei dad-gu o Frwsel. Perffaith i’w ddarllen gyda’r gŵr sy’n dechrau dysgu Cymraeg.