Fourth meetup

We had another good session yesterday, talking about a lot of things. I've updated the vocabulary as usual.

-GRG

Conversation Group 06/26/2012

Prynhawn dda pawb,

Looking forward to seeing everybody for conversation tonight.

I will try to upload a vocab list for weather and geographic words this afternoon.

Hwyl - Elis

Fourth meetup

Just a reminder that we'll be meeting again for conversation practice at Wash Park Whole Foods, and hopefully Elis will be with us. We'll definitely be indoors this time, probably at the far end of the dining area, so come and join us!

Third meetup...

We had our third meetup last night - indoors, this time, where it was cooler! Updated vocabulary is here as usual.

Third Meetup

Just a reminder that we'll have our third meetup this evening. Depending on the weather and table availability, we may be inside this time. Also, it might be a good idea to look over the vocabulary from the last two weeks if you have time.

-GRG

Second meetup

We had another good meeting of the conversation group Tuesday night. Elis was able to be there, and we had a new student join us as well! We practiced vocabulary and simple conversational phrases, all without recourse to a book. The Say Something in Welsh approach is proving popular - three of us are working with it now, and our new student Tiffany has already completed the first course. Elis and I also had a few minutes worth of Welsh conversation, so the others could listen to the full flow of a discussion - good practice for us, too!

Again, I plan to be at the meetup location every Tuesday except for July 24th, and Elis is hoping to be there every other week. Come and join us if you haven't already - if you have, keep coming!

-GRG

Elis' Summer Schedule

I 'm glad to hear that the summer conversations got off to such a good start last week.  I'm sorry that I wasn't able to be there.  I am expecting that this summer will be as busy as last year if not more so with an increasing load of travel for work.  However I am going to try to make evey effort to be there every other week on the following calendar.  I have also included some other dates for CWS activities over the summer and of course the most important date - the tentative date for classes to start in the fall.

Hwyl - Elis

June 12^th

June 26^th

June 30^th – CWS Picnic

July 10^th

July 21^st & 22^nd – Elizabeth Celtic Festival

July 24^th

August 4^th & 5^th – Highlands Ranch Highland Games

August 14^th

August 28^th

                September 7^th – 9^th – Long’s Peak Festival (Estes Park)

September 11^th

                September 22^nd – CWS Fall event (Welsh Heroes Celebration)

September 25^th

October 2^nd – CLASS START FOR THE FALL

A grammatical note

During last night's meetup the question came up as to why one says nos da (good night) but noswaith dda (good evening). I thought it was because noswaith was feminine and nos masculine, but recourse to my dictionary disposed of that hypothesis - both are feminine. I promised to research the matter, and this is what I found: nos is indeed feminine, and logically should be followed by dda, but (according to my grammar books) it is one of a small number of feminine Welsh nouns ending in "s" which don't cause soft mutation in the following adjective. Wythnos (week) is another example. As a side note, it appears that "night" nouns in general tend to be feminine - e.g. nos (night), noson (evening, night), noswaith (evening, night), noswyl (eve of a religious feast). (References: Stephen J. Williams, A Welsh Grammar; Peter Wynn Thomas, Grammadeg y Gymraeg; Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru). -GRG

Summer Meetups

We had our first summer Welsh class meetup last night at Washington Park Whole Foods. There were four of us, and we spent an hour working on simple conversational patterns and vocabulary - "I'm speaking Welsh", "You're speaking Welsh", "Are you speaking Welsh?", "Yes, I am speaking Welsh" level, expanding to a few phrases regarding pets and the weather. I plan to continue the sessions on this easy basic level, somewhat like the approach used by Say Something in Welsh. We're also discussing this on Trefor's CWS Facebook Group - feel free to check us out if you're not part of the group already.

-GRG

Last class for 2011-2012

This is what we did for our last class (Elis Owens in the photo):



And here are two of the four surviving students in the intermediate level displaying the book we used:



We'll now go to our summer schedule starting tomorrow -- conversational meet-ups at Washington Park Whole Foods, Tuesday evenings, 7-8 pm.