Cymraeg · Beginner 1(a)
Learn to type in Welsh
Home row anchors
Settle both hands on the home row: A S D F for the left, J K L ; for the right.
These are the keys you press, and in Welsh they produce the letters printed on them. The one character beyond a-z in the practice words here comes from a modifier or a dead key rather than a key of their own, so it is not shown here.
Learning to type in Welsh
Welsh uses the Latin alphabet you already have. The practice words here add 1 character beyond a-z — ŵ.
If you already touch type English, most of Welsh transfers on the first session. What does not transfer is the 1 character this bank reaches for beyond a-z — ŵ — and it is not decoration: leave it off and the word is misspelled. The occasional word in this bank needs at least one.
One number is worth carrying into the first session. About 71% of the letters in these Welsh words come from just ten characters. Get those ten genuinely automatic — not merely findable — and the rest of the layout stops being the thing standing between you and a readable sentence.
Most people arrive at Welsh able to type and unable to type Welsh, which is a narrower problem than it feels. The letter keys are already done. What is left is a small number of positions, and the willingness to reach for them rather than paste them in.
The speed test and the games draw on one bank of 92 common Welsh words — 21 distinct characters in all, averaging 4.4 written units per word. The lessons come at it from the other end. Nothing is generated on the fly and nothing is padded: each drill is a fixed sequence of the keys that stage has introduced, in an order that starts at the two index fingers and works outwards to the keys you reach for least.
- Writing system
- Latin
- Keyboard layout
- Latin QWERTY family
- Direction
- left to right
- Practice words
- 92
- Distinct characters
- 21
- Average word
- 4.4 units
Characters beyond a-z in the Welsh practice words
- ŵ1
Counted across the 92 practice words. 1% of them need at least one.
The drills do not include ŵ. The beginner course builds each drill by remapping the keys through a language’s layout, and there is no key map for Latin QWERTY family yet — so these stages work through the plain a-z letters. The one character Welsh needs beyond them appears in the speed test and the games, which draw on the word bank, and the keyboard guide above shows where they sit on the layout you have selected. It is one of the two things most worth fixing here; the other is that 2 languages have no layout map at all.
a y yn i o ar ac yr am at gyda ondDigraphs that count as single letters
Welsh treats eight digraphs — ch, dd, ff, ng, ll, ph, rh, th — as single letters of the alphabet. They are alphabetised as units, so in a Welsh dictionary "llan" comes after "lwc", and a crossword puzzle puts ll in one square.
This has no effect on what you press: each is typed as two keys. It does affect how Welsh words look to an English eye, and it explains why Welsh place names appear to contain improbable letter runs that are in fact ordinary sequences of letters.
Welsh also uses the circumflex — â, ê, î, ô, û, ŵ, ŷ — to mark long vowels, including on w and y, which are vowels in Welsh. Those two are the reason a UK keyboard alone is not quite enough.
Questions about typing in Welsh
Do I need a Welsh keyboard?
No. Your operating system already offers a layout that produces ŵ from the keys you have — through a dead key on some, a modifier such as right Alt on others. Which one depends on the language and on the layout you select; the hardware does not change either way.
Which Welsh keyboard layout do these lessons use?
Latin QWERTY family, plus the 1 character beyond a-z that these practice words use. The 92 practice words between them use 21 of those 27, so 6 characters never come up in the practice text — these are the commonest words rather than an even sweep of the layout. The keyboard guide below the typing area shows the keys you actually press, which for an input method are the Latin ones already printed on them.
What will I actually be typing in Welsh?
Sequences of the keys each stage has introduced — single letters first, then pairs, then short chunks — written in the Latin QWERTY family layout. The point of the course is the position of a key rather than the vocabulary. The 92 common Welsh words in the practice bank are what the speed test samples and what the games pull from, once the positions stop needing thought.
Is Welsh hard to type?
Only slightly, if you already touch type. 1% of the practice words need a character outside a-z, one such character appears in total, and the rest is a keyboard you already know. The difficulty is concentrated in a handful of positions rather than spread across the layout.
How often should I practise Welsh?
Briefly and often. What you are building is recall, and recall decays between sessions, so ten minutes on most days will take you considerably further than an hour once a week. Stop while it is still going well — practising past the point of fatigue rehearses sloppy motion.
Where should I start with Welsh?
At the beginning of the beginner course, even if you already touch type in another language. The nine stages start on the home row and add keys outward, and the early ones are short. If Welsh is a script you have never typed, the first stage is doing more work than it looks like — it is building the map, not the speed.
How long does learning to touch type in Welsh take?
Longer than a week and shorter than you fear — and it depends far more on how often you practise than on how long each session runs. Short daily sessions beat long weekly ones by a wide margin, because what you are building is recall and recall decays between sessions. The streak counter exists for that reason.
Do I need an account, and is it free?
Neither. There is no paid tier and no required sign-in — the 92 Welsh practice words, the speed test and all three games are the whole product, available immediately. Signing in is worth it only if you practise on more than one device.
Also in Welsh: the speed test and typing games.
Other languages written in Latin: Yoruba, Zulu, Afrikaans, Albanian, Azerbaijani, Basque. Or browse all 86 by writing system.
Further reading
- Adding a keyboard layoutThe step before any of this works: turning on the layout in your operating system, switching to it, and what to do about the wrong letters on your keycaps.
- Which finger types which keyThe standard finger assignment for every key on a QWERTY keyboard, why the index fingers carry two columns each, and the keys people get wrong.
- The top rowQ through P sit one row up from home, and every key there is a reach and a return. Which fingers do what, and why E and R feel different.