I reckon this one of the most important lessons I learnt at the bootcamp I just attended -
At the the start of the week I would hear the conversation, understand a fair bit of it, translate it into english in my head then spend 5 minutes wondering whether my reply should start with “wnes i” or “o’ni”, or maybe even “dw’i wedi”, by which time the conversation had moved on considerably!
By the end of the week, I was thinking in welsh not translating into english, gave up on any form of grammar and pretty much said whatever I liked, so long as it was yn Gymraeg. Occasionally, someone would correct me (not in a bad way), occasionally I would correct myself halfway through, rarely was nothing understood at all. Sometimes you get it spectacularly wrong and these moments can be the best - when you turn from being scared of looking like an idiot to finding the whole thing hysterically funny
I’ve just finished reading through all 62 of the messages in this thread, and I’m not a great Forum aficionado (sorry, wrong language…be’ ydy’r gair yn y Gymraeg?). But I was absolutely riveted by all the doubts, reassurances and reminders of how scary/fab Bootcamp actually is. I’m booked on the July course and now can’t wait.
Methinks there can be very little doubt that I was the one wearing that hat…
Walking dictionary, walking thesaurus, walking encyclopedia, walking calculator… you get used to it after a while
On a serious note though, having just come back from the very same bootcamp of which @robscully and @wondersheep speak and knowing full well before going that I would be the weakest one there in terms of progress through the SSiW courses, I spent the week beforehand alternating between mild panic and moderate dread, barely slept the night before, sat in the car outside the cottage when we got there for as long as I thought I might be able to get away with, barely said a word to anyone, looked at poor @gruntius as if he was a Dementor when he offered me a seat in Welsh and within moments of @aran saying ‘no English from now on’ was sat in our (oh-so-lovely-thank-you-@CatrinLliarJones) bedroom, sobbing my heart out, wondering why on Earth I’d agreed to come and put myself through something so horrific, and would probably have stayed there all week quite happily with Jac(uzzi) had my stomach not kicked in demanding food.
Cut to a week later and I left thinking I could quite happily have stayed for longer (if not quite the ‘am byth’ someone suggested!) and feeling quite sad at the thought of leaving my lovely, shiny new friends behind…
I can’t honestly say I enjoyed every minute of the Bootcamp experience, and I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to have been there without @wondersheep (I take my hat off to every single one of the other Bootcampers who were there without their partners) but after the first couple of days it stopped feeling like something I had to endure and turned into something I felt I could enjoy. By the end of the week I was just having fun with friends and the language we were using had become irrelevant. I’m not sure this would’ve/could’ve happened had everyone there been at my level in terms of Welsh ability - having people there who were good/experienced/confident enough to be able to help me out when I got stuck, correct me when I said the wrong thing, fathom out what on Earth it was I was trying to say and fill in awkward silences was, I think, invaluable and helped make Bootcamp that much easier to deal with and that much more of a learning experience.
At the end of the day, I would say that Bootcamp is much like anything else new and scary - you’ll never really know if you’ll be able to cope with/enjoy it unless you give it a try, and it might turn out to be awesome. Would I have gone had @wondersheep not wanted to go? Not a chance. Would I go again? Absolutely.
I’m about an hour away from setting off to my first bootcamp and I just wanted to say a very big thank you to all the Northern bootcampers who’ve posted on this thread. I’m definitely at the more terrified end of the spectrum but all the “I started terrified but ended happy” comments have helped a lot. Diolch yn fawr!
This would also be of great interest to me. I’m going to be in Wales
in September, possibly into early October. If there are others
interested in trying this idea out around that time period, I’d be happy
to help with the organizing.
Can I just give Patricia Mitchell’s recent post a nudge here?
I think it’s worth discussion or consideration.
[I was going to go back to being Bodfarian, as on the old forum, but my user name doesn’t seem to be editable. I’m guessing there **is** a way to edit it, it’s just unknown to me.]
This thread is getting pretty long and started out on a somewhat different topic. Maybe we should start a new topic to give it more attention? I’ll do that when I get to a comfier typing situation later this evening, if no one else has done it already.
And, yes, Huw, if the comfy camp doesn’t work out, we should definitely get together when I’m over!
I think the conclusion is that no one has enough words to do it on their own but put together, with everyone’s skills and abilities, it is possible to enjoy a week in Welsh.
I will be in Wales - near Machynlleth - from July 26th to the end of December. I will be looking for opportunities to siarad Cymraeg if you are holidaying in the area.
No it’s not editable however admins can do that. I’ve asked to be edited and my request was granted.
I’m not quite sure if this topic needs a new thread. I somehow thought on this forum long “conversations” are not something uncommon and disliked though.
Back to the topic … I’m not quite convinced yet how I’d survive in Bootcamp, but am still convinced mixed ones are the only way they should go.
Despite having been hijacked a little by us northern bootcampers, I feel we are still on topic concerning “newer learners” and bootcamp
The main things I wanted to get across were -
Someone who has only done course/level 1 and maybe a bit of course 2 (such as myself) will feel intimidated at the start of any bootcamp, but that is part of the challange
I think that having a variety of different people there with different abilities actually helps us to feel less intimidated and more comfortable with the language as the week goes on and you get more involved in the conversations. With just “entry level” welsh speakers, I think informal conversation in general would be much less quick to progress and there would have to be a lot more structure and organised challenges in the week, leading possibly to more stress, rather than less?
My favourite bits of the week were conversing with fellow bootcampers who had more welsh than I did, seeing them understand me and learning more ways of saying things by listening to them…
It’s my personal opinion that bootcamp is bootcamp - having one just for “newbies” will not make it easier (and may possibly make it feel more difficult)
I do quite like the idea of lots of little bootcamps though - where people who have maybe conversed on the forum, can arrange “extended meet ups” for a few days with no English (subject to the normal cautions about meeting “online friends” for the first time, of course!)
I don’t think anyone was thinking in terms of “hijacking” certainly not I. The posts in this thread following the most recent Northern Bootcamp were interesting, inspiring and motivational and made me recollect the many enjoyable camps I have attended. The usual place for posting reactions and experiences to bootcamps, however, has, up to now, been in the thread relating to that specific bootcamp but there is no reason, of course, why that should continue to be the case.
My first concern was that Bodfarian’s interesting suggestion should get an airing. My second is that the considerable burden on the Fab 4 relating to bootcamps should be alleviated if it’s possible within the spirit of the original concept - fun and learning and confidence building.
could one bootcamp week be set aside for learners who have just the basic entry criteria
I think this topic has thrown up some interesting ideas and good points (including yours in your last post) and if there are no more responses, it will come to a natural end.
Every year I think I’m on the verge of my last Bootcamp, and then every year people like this come along and say this kind of thing and I get roped into doing just-one-more…
Perhaps we could ask those people who have run bootcamps before whether they could put together some ‘how to run a bootcamp’ instructions. That might help get things going? Give people a clearer idea of what is involved in organising a bootcamp.
Yes, the ‘not quite a bootcamp but a holdiay just in Welsh’ idea is somthing I would like too. It worked almost like that at the learnish house shares for various steddfods.
