Sori, Louis, just seen your query! No, you’re absolutely right, the BNC is English only, but if you use it to derive a wordlist on frequency, it’s going to be the best equivalent for Welsh until the Welsh National Corpus is complete…
A common theme for a lot of us at Bootcamp in April was vocabulary, and how to build it. For some of us, it was via nature, with a lot of help from Iolo Williams’ excellent books. That’s not quite as much my thing though, and I’m more interested in general vocabulary.
I’m quite happy to read light fiction, and try to pick up words that way (e.g. the Novelau Nawr series).
I kind of feel though that a more SSiW-ish way of doing it is to be hearing words, and then try to work them out from context. I can occasionally do this (from S4C/Clic or Radio Cymru, but “Duw it’s hard” sometimes
And once having “captured” a word so to speak, put it into some well known structures where it seems to fit, and kick it around, SSiW style.
I bought a voice recorder with the express purpose of doing this…really must try to find out how it works now …
I’m a real memrise addict. I make up lists of words I’ve encountered and then practice them to help them stick. I find then I start noticing the new words when listening to Radio Cymru.
Mike Ellwood: I kind of feel though that a more SSiW-ish way of doing it is to be hearing words, and then try to work them out from context. I can occasionally do this (from S4C/Clic or Radio Cymru, but “Duw it’s hard” sometimes
Repetition helps loads. With songs it’s easy to listen to the same song repeatedly. With spoken material, harder, but try maybe listening to a segment of Radio Cymru’s podcast Pigion, and then going back in a couple of weeks and listening to the same segment again, and then a couple of weeks later…? Or maybe there will be other short spoken material that you’d rather do that with.
@Diane Owen (Tahl):
Pigion is working pretty well for me a the moment, so I’ll keep at it for now.
Yes, going back to them a week or so later definitely helps.
Diolch Diane.
Tahl: try maybe listening to a segment of Radio Cymru’s podcast Pigion, and then going back in a couple of weeks and listening to the same segment again, and then a couple of weeks later…?
That’s a very good suggestion, Diane. I often listen to Pigion just once and, because time is in short supply, try to fit in things like Taro’r Post and, more recently, Caryl Parry Jones and Mae Wythnos yn Amser Hir, in the attempt to get a wider exposure to accents and vocab (sometimes!). But when I think about it, there’s plenty of variety in one episode of Pigion, so it makes more sense really to revisit that and maybe actually retain some stuff (especially because they have the accompanying vocab sheets)! Quality, not quantity. That’s what I need to remind myself! Diolch Diane.
There are vocab sheets for Pigion?? O.o
Amy J There are vocab sheets for Pigion?? O.o
Yes, there is a link to them, but it’s kind of hidden, and isn’t even set up as a proper link actually, so you have to copy and paste.
(I think they should have tried a bit harder there, frankly).
So anyway, you go here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/pigion
Then at the bottom of the intro text, there is this text, which should become a proper link here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiocymru/authors/_Pigion
Goes back to December 2013, so you can catch up with the notes for quite a few episodes.
Mike: I think they should have tried a bit harder there, frankly.
Yes, I agree. It’s too easy to miss, and it doesn’t even mention the fact that there’s vocab waiting at the other end to help you out. I only found out about it in the first place because of an old post by Diane (Tahl).
Amazing! I never would have found these on my own. I’m tempted to put them into a memrise course or something and practice at them in conjunction with listening.
Let us know how you get on.