What’s the rule on dictionaries at bootcamps?
Are bilingual dictionaries (e.g. English–Welsh + Welsh–English) allowed, or are those forbidden under the “you shouldn’t read (or think in) any other language than Welsh during this time” rule?
Are there any monolingual (Welsh–Welsh) dictionaries suitable for learners?
They’re not forbidden, but you shouldn’t be taking one everywhere with you. Struggling to find a way to say what you want to say is part of the point - a desirable difficulty, to use the technical term - because the effort involved makes it easier to adapt what you already know to say something new. Simply looking it up, on the other hand, merely makes you better at looking things up.
Y Thesawrws Cymraeg? But Hector’s advice is to the point.
I have to confess, part of the fun of Bootcamp are those times when you don’t know the word for something and you have to try to explain to someone else what it is - a bit like a parlour game! My word of the week was ‘weighing scales’ - I was told the word often, but it just wouldn’t stick, and I spent a lot of the week miming it: “y peth 'ma, t’bod?”
It can lead to mistakes too!! Anyone noticed the name change of the thread about my progress through the northern Challenges? I looked up Resolution and got the one that described the emotional state of resolve instead of what one is resolved to do!! Very grateful thanks to @netmouse for telling me! oh, and @aran, she told me we aren’t supposed to correct each others’ mistakes, but how will we learn if we don’t?
Please folks, correct me!!!
Through exposure, and hearing common patterns of usage.
If someone specifically asks for something to be proofread, that’s fine - but we strongly discourage random ‘thought I’d tell you that you were wrong’ stuff, because it can be so very disheartening for learners.
Oops, I didn’t know that!
Makes sense though now that you’ve explained it.
Nope, very much not! 
Nothing in particular against Welsh-only dictionaries, but you’ll be better off focusing on the week-long opportunity to be engaging with other people…
Ok, I can’t travel. I am loath to Skype until I can speak a lot better. So, for now, I WANT to be corrected! I will NOT be discouraged! If it is a typo or ipodism, I’ll grin and say so!
I’d add, specific words aren’t the point, it’s the path to find them (or a way around them). It’s about using what you know, not building vocabulary. That’s an added extra that you do through exposure.
One person that I’ve shared a bootcamp with (I’ve been on 4 so no clues as to who) would disappear into their room every time we struggled to come up with the correct word for something and appear a couple of minutes later having miraculously remembered the word we were all struggling for.
Just saying.
On a different note I don’t like the idea of a dictionary on bootcamp. The hours of fun we’ve had trying to explain the meaning of a word have been priceless. (suppositories anyone? 
)
@philipnewton, you will find out prety soon you don’t need one at all. I’ve asked the same question about Cymraeg/Cymraeg dictionary but ended with not taking one at all and to be honest I didn’t miss it a bit. I had my tablet with though but it was offline and I used tablet only to write my Noson Lawen story which was never finished in written form but I just made up something to finish it at the event itself. It was actually fun as I didn’t have a clue when I started my performance what an end I’d make (I had a vision what to do but it ended way different (better) way though).
So, paid poeni about dictionaries. You won’t need them especially with your range of vocabulary. I’ve experienced how many words are in it so don’t say the range of it is not wide enough even now. You still have some time until bootcamp so no worries at all.
My advise: go with the flow and just overhear your mistakes. I did them many and I am sure I said plenty of “stupid” things but I pretended nothing has happened at all.
So go for the fun of it. Sing a lot (even if you might thnk you don’t sing yn dda iawn (but I think you do though)) and you’ll learn a lot not even knowing it. When you come back home you’ll at one point find out you’ve improved enormously and that mistakes and not knowing all words really doesn’t matter too much. One or two English word in the whole week isn’t such a sin by my opinion anyway (but just 1 or 2 not more… 
) (ummm … did I say them more? noooo, surely not. )
Good question, well answered by experienced bootcampers!
Just to add - on Tresaith bootcamp, I make a point of bringing some excellent dictionaries with me, particularly the “geiriadur lliwgar” and "1000 gair cyntaf Sali Mali. They are books of labelled pictures rather than translation / definition dictionaries, and can be used for all kinds of purposes, from random vocab acquisition to after dinner parlour games.
You can take a quick pip at the two books on the very good Gwales site here:
http://www.gwales.com/bibliographic/?isbn=9781855969766&tsid=3
http://www.gwales.com/bibliographic/?isbn=9781848514539&tsid=7
But other than those, you really don;t need dictionaries. If you don;t know a waord, you’ll get far more benefit from talking around it and having the occasional hang-up (I still can’t remember it) and mistake (What’s a Mor-Forwyn (mermaid)? It;s half woman and half chip…) than you would from looking it up, using it once and forgetting it straight away.
Plus, the whole point of bootcamp is to pretend that neither you nor anyone around you speaks English. It’s a pity to spoil that little illusion too regularly!
Thank you!
Thank you for asking, @philipnewton - bootcamp introductions are always shorter when people have asked questions on the forum before coming!