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[Dee]

Summer Course in Aberystwyth

If you've seen the Hwb interview with Aran and Catrin you'll have heard that Aran started off learning Welsh with an intensive course in Aberystwyth. Here's your chance to have a little of the same. There will be a 4 week intensive course held in Aberystwyth across the summer:

29th July to 23rd August

The closing date for applying is the 14th June, so you need to think quickly and get your application in if you'd like to go.

There will also be short courses, from 2 to 5 days in length, in Dolgellau, Y Drenewydd, Llandrindod and Aberystwyth during July.

All the information on how to apply for the courses above is on the website for the Mid Wales Welsh for Adults Centre http://www.aber.ac.uk/welshforadults/ or you can email ccm [AT] aber.co.uk

[hewrop]

I found it quite difficult to find information on the Summer School from the Welsh for Adults Home Page. To save other people searching, the following link takes you to a pdf file which seems to contain all the info including prices: http://www.learnwelshinmidwales.org/uploads/na100_manylion.pdf (You'll need the free Acrobat Reader but most PCs have that installed)

I have attended two of the Aber summer schools at different levels in the past and found them invaluable. If you can afford the residential course (I couldn't) you have a much better chance of living a Welsh-only month.

[Dee]

Thanks for that Huw! I've just made a last minute addition to the weekly email

[DavidHT]

Summer Course in Aberystwyth
There will also be short courses, from 2 to 5 days in length, in [..] Aberystwyth during July.

Do they speak Gog or De in Aberystwyth? Very tempted by a shorter course but a month would be impossible for me sadly.

[hewrop]

Do they speak Gog or De in Aberystwyth? Very tempted by a shorter course but a month would be impossible for me sadly.

Aberystwyth is predominantly De. The tutors (many of whom were learners) have a mixture of accents. There was an excellent tutor in my day o Lydaw (Brittany). There was no trace of a French/Breton twang but he had a strong Gog accent but that didn't make him a bad person.

Other people who have attended for a week or two rather than the whole course have still found it well worth while. As I have said before, however, the SSiW Bootcamps themselves are where I have made my most significant progress in Welsh.

By the way, Aber which is just South of the De/Gog "Mason-Dixon line" is the classic example of how little the linguistic divide matters.

[Spenny]

By the way, Aber which is just South of the De/Gog "Mason-Dixon line" is the classic example of how little the linguistic divide matters.

I remember on Bootcamp when I was in a shop chatting in pigeon Welsh to a couple of shopkeepers in Ceinewydd who were convinced that Gogs were entirely unintelligible foreigners - even though as a Gog learner I was coping, erm, adequately.

[RobertBruce]

I remember on Bootcamp when I was in a shop chatting in pigeon Welsh to a couple of shopkeepers in Ceinewydd who were convinced that Gogs were entirely unintelligible foreigners - even though as a Gog learner I was coping, erm, adequately.

I was in Belgium recently, right up near the border with the Netherlands, and met a woman whose father had come originally from Aberfan. I told her that I worked for a company whose parent company is based in Kortrijk, just by the French border. "Oh, those people', she said, "We don't understand them, we have to communicate in sign language". This despite the fact that I'd earlier been in a meeting with people from Kortrijk and people from Rotterdam (even further north!) who had been chatting away quite comfortably.

Maybe it a universal human thing. How many times have you heard a cockney claim not to understand Geordies?

[hewrop]

Maybe it a universal human thing. How many times have you heard a cockney claim not to understand Geordies?

I like the following story which I have translated and moderated to get past (I hope) our in-house censors.
Conversation between Rab, a broad Glaswegian docker and Rupert, a city gent from the Home Counties:-

Rab: "Good morning James (the default name for all strangers ). Could you tell me what time it is, please?" (Originally - "Hallorer, Jimmy. Whit time is't?")
Rupert (curtly): "I don't understand a word you're saying."
Rab: "I was intimate with your wife last night."
Rupert: "Why, you absolute bounder!"
Rab: "You understood that, all right, didn't you?"

[DavidHT]

Aberystwyth is predominantly De. [..] Other people who have attended for a week or two rather than the whole course have still found it well worth while. As I have said before, however, the SSiW Bootcamps themselves are where I have made my most significant progress in Welsh. By the way, Aber which is just South of the De/Gog "Mason-Dixon line" is the classic example of how little the linguistic divide matters.

Very interesting many thanks for posting that. No doubt they'll laugh at my fledgling Valleys accent ("cymrâg" as opposed to "cymraeg") but it may well be worth me having a look into this. Food for thought for me.

[SaraR]

I did the month-long course in Aber a couple of years ago, and I thought it was great. There were 4 or 5 different levels, from absolute beginner to quite advanced, and they were happy for you to change level if you felt you were in the wrong one. We had a different tutor every week, so that we would be exposed to different accents. I started understanding both gog and very south walian as a result. It was also good because different tutors explain things differently. In the evenings there are social activities (in Welsh) and helpsessions, which are optional, but usually good fun. We covered 1.3 year's worth of ordinary 2x2h/week course material in 4 weeks!