I’d started the level 2 challenges last month and while looking at the blurb by @aran on my SSiW app the gauntlet was thrown down when it said "Most people who get used to life without the pause button can manage 10 challenges in one day".
Well this morning I accepted that challenge, and I’ve just finished the 10th one in a row although admittedly I did backtrack to challenge 2 which I was a touch wobbly on but I’d only got half way through challenge 3 yesterday so most of what I’ve worked trough today were new sessions. After some bits which felt like swimming through treacle, challenge 11 was really rather relaxing! Start time 8am, finished 7.30pm with breaks between challenges.
It’s time now for a dark room, a cold compress, maybe a tot of brandy and some smelling salts?
Over the weekend I’ll revisit some of them, see what I remember…
Brilliant. Just in time for mini bwtcamp!
Awesome - HUGE congratulations! It takes real strength of mind to do that - but it’s a massively useful and effective bulk input - you’ll be getting benefits from it for weeks, some obvious, some not… 
When did you eat? When did you cook? When did you do all the other things? I am awed by your persistence, but no way could I do that! I have to rest my voice after about half a challenge, never mind 10!
Many thanks. I’ll be interested to see as the first couple of challenges of level 2 caught me off balance a bit, not sure why, I think that it felt a bit like things had stepped up a notch higher than expected. I revisited level 1 for a bit of a ‘comfort blanket’ (of course I’m sure that that was one of those infernal plateau moments!) and then earlier this week level 2 was tantalising me again so time to go!
The 10 challenges were pretty tiring, and I know that by the time of the 9th things felt like such a blur that I feel like all I was doing was mumbling and stumbling through without a clue and I did shout at you a couple of times along the lines of “you’re 'avin a laugh int ya” when seemingly impossibly long sentences were being expected of me.
But then this morning I revisited challenge 4 and, even though yesterday was the first time I’d done it it, it felt like a familiar old friend. Then I went into the Welsh shop in town and had an actual conversation with a real first language speaker, unplanned, several sentences, understood, box ticked off we go!
So onwards with high hopes and as I was writing this I’ve counted that I’ve only been learning for 6 months which is all a tad overwhelming really!
Anyway, diolch yn fawr iawn & ymlaen![quote=“Pete2, post:2, topic:7470, full:true”]
Brilliant. Just in time for mini bwtcamp!
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Absolutely, and hopefully with a belief in the possible rather than with self-consciousness and self-doubt!
Many thanks, well 3 of our children were off school yesterday with conjunctivitis so I knew it was a day that I couldn’t do any other work so I resorted to a rare day of lazy childcare and sat them down to watch films though puffy, sticky eyes and I learnt Welsh while I cooked and cleaned the house around them!
Of course 10 challenges is around 5 hours and I spread that over a 11ish hour period so there were 6 hours of relative rest between (but in one of these rest sessions I read a bedtime story to children in Welsh, so maybe not a rest?)
No need to worry about self-doubt. I can assure you i’m a past master at that!
Just enjoy the weekend. If stuck point, mime, draw pictures, use ten words when one will do eg rhywbeth fel oren ond yn llai na hynny. (Tangerine!)
I discourage dictionaries and phrase books unless no one can think of how to describe something. In which case i guess its fine but we should try and stay within our known vocabulary but learn through stretching what we know in different contexts.
And if you say something noone understands it’s your job to try to get them to. In welsh of course.
Eg.
Gei di roi fo yn yr oergell?
And if you understand that its “can you put it somewhere” but don’t know where, pointing at the fridge may help.
I coldn’t resist looking up tangerine, which is apparently tanjerin which is Wenglish - no j yn Gymraeg! Actually, I presume all names of fruit imported from far flung climes are variants of the names used back there and not really ‘English’ per se!
I met ‘oergell’ in a very useful S4C program, part of Cyw. I forget its name, but children are teaching a significant adult Cymraeg, (Mam, Tad, ‘nanny’(male!!!)) Hasn’t been on for a while, at least not at the w/e when I record the ‘omnibus’ early morning edition.
That’s huge - when you have actual, personal proof that the system works, you can throw yourself into it with more and more confidence - you’ve shown that you can do this, so now it’s just a matter of carrying on ticking off the boxes until you get where you want to be…
Dwi’n addo adrodd ar ôl y penwythnos 
I promise a report after the weekend
Well done! I know what that’s like and it’s pretty mind-melting! You’ll find that it all kind of beds in over a few weeks. I did the intensive course back at the beginning of Feb (both level 1 and 2 in 5 days). Went back to the end of level 1 last week and found that I could manage most of it, even though, at the time, I felt like hardly any of it was going in!
Oh my word…
Thats really interesting and encouraging that so much can be done in a short space of time. The amount of retention is obviously going to be interesting to test. I’m thinking of doing more sessions of days of multiple challenges in an overlapping format (and it would also be interesting to have @aran thoughts on this). The plan over the coming week is to do 6 challenges a day, structured, as an example;
Day 1 challenge 1 to 6
Day 2 challenge 3 to 9
Day 3 challenge 6 to 12 and so on
This coming week my partner is working fewer hours so, since I have the chance to commit to 3 hours equivalent a day, it’s not an opportunity I can waste!
Yes, this would be my (possibly reluctant) instinct. I did, however, spot a Welsh thesaurus - without any english - and am tempted to buy that as a vocab builder[quote=“henddraig, post:7, topic:7470”]
tangerine, which is apparently tanjerin which is Wenglish - no j yn Gymraeg
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which has led me down one of my serendipitous rabbit holes! Apparently tangerine is named after Tangier in Morocco. My welsh altas has Tangier as Tanger, but the Berber is Tanjer (arabic Tanjah) so it could well be that the Welsh for tangerine is more faithful to the original transliteration from Berber than English is?
Wha-hey! 
[tries to do maths] - so how long was that before the re-run?
I used overlapping when I first started experimenting with bulk input.
It’s not necessary or particularly helpful, though - just gives you a little more certainty that the process is working, but at the price of slowing you down quite a lot.
You could do Day 1 (1 to 6), Day 2 (3 to 9), Day 3 (6 to 12) or you could do Day 1 (1 to 6), Day 2 (7 to 12), Day 3 (13 to 18) - and it’s the second one which will get you further, faster, even though it will feel much more out of control…
About a month. I have a complete mental block with he/she told me but most of the rest was pretty good.
Many thanks, advice noted and will give it a go!
I’m really looking forward to meeting you at mini bootcamp and chatting to you in welsh.
It should be a great experience. Nearly two whole days heb saesneg. Your welsh should come on in leaps and bounds.
“Don’t get stuck on this session though, it’s challenging for a purpose” Aran’s advice at the end of level 2 challenge 15. Funnily enough I’d already reached reached that conclusion 10 minutes earlier!
But, the week of semi-super-intense is seems to be going well, although there are moments when it seems like much more floundering than progressing and other moments when I’m stopped in my tracks by saying a fiendishly long sentence correctly! [quote=“OlwenR, post:13, topic:7470”]
I have a complete mental block with he/she told me
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Yes, I find that a challenge as well. Not quite sure how I can get that locked in my brain!
Bingo! There’s all the certainty you need that the process, emotionally exhausting though it is, is without doubt working for you… 
Richard, its very easy to get bogged down. Move on. Maybe revisit it later. You’ll wonder what the problem was…
Besides at mini bwtcamp you’re down to go into the cafe at oriel ynys mon and say
“We have a table reserved for a group of eight in the name of Nelson. It was booked 11 days ago.”
Back onto the challenge today after pulling a sickie yesterday and not doing any Welsh. (I tried, but realised that focussing on learning isn’t so easy with raging manflu still, lots of sleep over the last 48 hours and lemsip has helped)
So since it’s much easier to talk without constantly sneezing etc, time to take the plunge again today.
Finished, done all of level 2 in a week, now time to find out how the old memory and recall bit goes!
To celebrate I didn’t go for a glass of wine (that can be this evening) but instead made some lime curd, job done!