This is the end of a tough day - 6 hours of exercises, an hour of accelerated listening, and then 2 hours of forced speaking.
At this point, they’re not trying to have a conversation - they’re just taking turns to say anything at all they can think of in Welsh…
You can hear how tired they are already… (oh, and you’ll need to crank your speakers up nice and high, because the phone wasn’t picking up their speech as clearly as I would have liked).
Mae’n ddiddorol… on the course I remember thinking that level 1 session 6 was really hard and wanting to repeat it. Went back to it on the drive home from work today and it was hawddu pawddu (? spelling)!
Hilary and Olwen:
H: Dw i isio siarad Cymraeg yn dda iawn
O: Dw i ddim yn moyn siarad Cymraeg nawr
H: Dw i’n licio siocled a coffi
O: Dw i’n hoffi bara brith (I think)
H: Dw i ddim yn licio rhedeg
O: Dw i ddim yn hoffi gwin coch
Hilary and Simon
H: Well i mi siarad Cymraeg
S: Dw i’n siarad tipyn bach Cymraeg
H: Dw i’n mynd i anghofio Cymraeg
S: Dw i’n mynd i’r Caernarfon yn y bore… mynd i’r Tesco
H: Dw i isio ymarfer siarad Cymraeg
As you can see, we’re still finding our way around the language and trying to think of something we could say from all the things we’d learnt
Ooh, that’s incredibly brilliant - because I was thinking that I ought to grit my teeth and subtitle these at some point!
Yes, there’s the magic working! [By which I mean the way that I can rarely say anything apart from hawddi-pawddi - 5 days is clearly enough for that to break you… P.S. Hawddu pawddu is a fine alternate spelling (for a word that doesn’t actually exist!)… ]
Putting the headphones on it sounds great (regarding sound) but, yah … very, very tired! I’m trying to figure out if I’d be able to speak after such intense of work at all. I’d probably just whisper and you’d be forced to put subtitles on the video.
Crossing fingers - whatever threw our local network off line yfory isn’t doing so now! I am on my laptop with easy sound control and turned volume right up. I could hear everything! I was forcibly reminded of my own efforts on Skype! After only two days, brilliant, Pawb!
Here’s an approximate transcript of Day 2 (carbuncles and all…). I couldn’t quite catch it all, so there are a couple of gaps [@OlwenR and @simonadeydavies, if you can remember what you said and let me know, I’ll edit the transcript ]
Hilary and Olwen:
H: Dw i wedi blino heddiw, achos dw i 'di bod yn dysgu siarad Cymraeg eto
O: Dw i’n hoffi darllen llyfr am heddlu
H: Dw i’n licio darllen pan mae gen i amser
O: Alla’ i ddim cofio beth dweud
Olwen and Simon:
O: Wyt ti’n hoffi coffi?
S: Mae glaw yn ddim yn braf heddiw ond mae … yn y bore yn iawn
O: Dw i ddim cofio rhywbeth
S: Dw i ddim yn licio yr tân yn y tŷ
Owowow … Thank God (read thank @aran ) the videos are short. Would I speak after day 2 at all? I’d probably just mime yet … And I’m lousy at miming (ask my co-bootcampers. I did almost absolutely nothing in 10 mins of mime) so it would be little anything in deed.
It’s interesting how @OlwenR appeared to me much more tired when recorded with @hilary then with @simonadeydavies. At some point I had a feeling in 1st video she wouldn’t be able to say anything at all.
Great to make transcripts @hilary. I’ve heard it all but when seing all written I have a feeling I didn’t hear everythig. Diolch.
Great all. And to the next one tomorrow (I presume).
Not entirely true, although I can well imagine it would have felt like that - but in fact you were very rarely quiet for more than a few seconds during the speaking sessions (and it’s worth noting for everyone else that this quick clips are taken from a full hour and a half of speaking… ).
You can’t tell here, but I did try and keep back a decent phrase for when the camera was rolling! Oh the vanity of not wanting to look like (too much of) a doofus on film…
I mistakenly promised them that Day 3 would be the low point, and that things would start to get easier from then on.
As it turned out, Day 4 was even more brutal - but at least we had extra chocolates, cider, beer and wine arrive on Day 3 - with everyone under instructions to have a couple of drinks before the talking session.
Here are Simon and Olwen:
And here’s Hilary:
By this point, I was already hugely impressed with them - with how much they were producing after just 3 days - and I was hoping that the extra exhaustion of the last 2 days wouldn’t undermine that…