Bwtcamps 2021

This looks like a fantastic idea! Please put me on the list and I will cross fingers it goes ahead.

1 Like

I would love to do this too. Please add me to the list. Diolch y fawr.

1 Like

We don’t usually keep a list of names in advance, though people that booked last year will get priority. When we know when a bwtcamp will take place, we advertise the date in plenty of time and take bookings then :slight_smile:

4 Likes

Thank you for that. I’ll have to factor dog care into my plans then!

It’s difficult, isn’t it? I try to do something Welsh every day: I’m doing level 3 again, just to make sure it’s properly sunk in, or I join a group speaking practice or listen to Radio Cymru or watch something on S4C but I’m really looking forward to the day I can go to my cousins for tea or spend a couple of hours in the pub with some friends, just speaking Welsh.

1 Like

Sounds great, i would be like to, BUT still to early to guess where we will be in six months, especially when big events like the Eisteddfod and the Royal Welsh show already cancelled for this year yet again.

1 Like

Yes, would love a bootcamp but is there one for south welsh speakers?

The ones held in the South tend to have more South Welsh speakers and the ones in the North tend to have more North Welsh speakers, but neither are exclusively for North or South.

2 Likes

How about a Zoom Bootcamp on the lines of the Aberystwyth University Welsh language intensive? It would be very demanding especially on the tutors. DysguCymraeg do have teams of people in backup and support producing web promotion, coursebooks etc so it may be a non starter for our more homely SSIW community. Anyway: Just a thought xx

1 Like

The special thing about our bwtcamps is that they are less of an intensive ‘course’ and more of a holiday with new friends that just happens to be in the medium of Welsh. The learning that takes place is incidental rather than planned, and comes about spontaneously due to being in different situations and talking with different people. It’s a bit hard to organise that sort of experience online unfortunately, so I think we’ll just have to be patient.

6 Likes

I can’t wait until these are up and running again. I had secured childcare and dog and cat care over a year ago, whilst I plucked up the courage to apply for bwtcamp, then covid hit.

That day will come, and it will be as amazing as you think it will be.

2 Likes

I would love to try bootcamp.

Quick question…

I know the rule is supposed to be no English but what happens if you’re having a conversation and you can’t think of the particular important word you need in Welsh and the nearest you can think of doesn’t quite convey the intended meaning? You see plenty of people on S4C who you’d consider pretty fluent suddenly throw in the occasional English word in a sentence.

You get creative with the Welsh that you do know and find ways to talk around it. Someone else there will know the word you mean and can often fill in the gap if you ask. Or draw it, mime it, point at it, anything but English. I went after just 7 weeks of starting to learn (so couldn’t say much) and I managed to get through the whole week without English. It was a great opportunity to listen to better speakers and in turn get the confidence to speak…and it also highlighted areas I needed to work on.

I would thoroughly recomend it.

3 Likes

Just as @Mira says. You mime, you describe around the word you actually want, you do the best you can. As @Iestyn says, it is the most 100% Welsh you’re likely to have anywhere, any when. It’s about dampening down the part of your brain that speaks, knows, thinks your mamiaith, mother tongue, to allow the part that’s using Welsh to develop. And every English word that you use fires up not only your English bit of brain, but those of your listeners as well, throwing them off their stride as well. Bwtcamp isn’t about being taught new Welsh words and grammar, although of course you will learn it, but about using the Welsh you’ve already learned, through SSIW and whatever other methods you might have used, in new and unusual ways to get what you want to say across to the listener, either another SSIWer, or people out there in the big wide world.

3 Likes

Hoffwn i fynd i’r bwtcamp

Reading @Mira and @margaretnock’s descriptions it seems that in the Bwtcamp you basically have to walk in the shoes of any English-language student coming to the UK for the first time! :sweat_smile:

3 Likes

Liciwn i fynd i’r bwtcamp 2021, hefyd.:crossed_fingers:t2:

1 Like

@gisella-albertini…they probably come with a dictionary…