I joined a cult! Or at least it feels like it.

Normally I would do a travel writing style piece after my holidays to share some of my experiences but I've just spent five days in remote, rural West Wales where I was at a holiday camp with 11 other fluent Welsh speakers at a Welsh boot camp. The rules of the boot camp are simple: this is a Welsh speaking environment, English is banned and if you need to say anything to anyone else, you must do it in Welsh and not English. The whole purpose of this is that we're all enthusiastic Welsh speakers stuck in an English speaking country, hence we are artificially creating an environment where we are speaking Welsh all the time in order to get as much practice as possible. During the boot camp, various fun activities are organized: trips to the beach, a wine tasting session at a local vineyard, a guided tour of a special exhibition at the national library of Wales in Aberystwyth, a visit to a local organic farm and loads of hikes through the beautiful Welsh countryside. Speaking English remained banned during all of those activities. So the owners of the vineyard and the farmers at the organic farms spoke only Welsh to us and not a word of English - it is a weird situation of course since everyone there spoke English fluently and probably as a first language and/or mother tongue as well - true Welsh first-language speakers are virtually impossible to find these days as English dominated every aspect of life in Wales. But this is why it feels like I've joined a cult - it's not just because 'ooh we have our own secret language that no one else can understand'; but in so many other ways, the social dynamics in this group are so different from anything in the real world. 

Firstly, just how good is your Welsh? 

I think I was the joint weakest student in the group. The biggest difference between me and the rest of the people in the group is that they mostly only spoke Welsh and English (though one guy in the group spoke Spanish pretty well - we actually got round the English ban by speaking to each other in Spanish). I celebrated my 11th anniversary of learning Welsh at the boot camp, so I've studied Welsh for 11 years and that's a long time. Most people would have attained native standard proficiency in any language after 11 years, but my problem is that I speak 25 languages, 7 of them fluently so I lack the focus to improve any one language amongst the languages that I am learning at any one time. So I'll describe my Welsh as 'advanced, competent' but not fluent yet. The key problem I have is that most people think I'm fluent because I am able to say grammatically correct sentences in Welsh, expressing complex ideas with pretty good pronunciation - so they think, aha Alex speaks Welsh, so when they reply, they speak at what they think is normal speed for them but because I lack practice in being in a Welsh speaking environment, my listening comprehension isn't that good and I often have to ask them to repeat or speak more slowly. It is immensely frustrating of course because I can be in a normal conversation, I feel like I am genuinely participating in it and being a part of that discussion then someone says something that I just didn't catch or understand because they said it too fast and I get a bit lost trying to follow the conversation. I would say I'm okay when in a conversation with just one other person but if it is a group conversation, I tend to struggle a lot more. But that's the whole point of going to the boot camp, it is to improve that aspect of my Welsh. 

Are the other participants in the boot camp Welsh?

Yes. They are either Welsh people from Wales or Welsh people living and working in England now. One woman is English but she has lived in Wales for a long time and has a Welsh-speaking husband. I stood out as I'm not from Wales, I've never lived in Wales, I was the only non-white person there, the only immigrant and the only one who has learnt Welsh outside Wales. It was a big ask for me to try to keep up with these others there who were far more fluent than me. 

Do people speak Welsh in Wales? 

For centuries, the English have tried hard to wipe the Welsh language out of Wales and forced the Welsh to assimilate by destroying their language. Welsh was banned in schools for a long time and children caught speaking Welsh amongst themselves were severely punished. It was really only in recent times when the Welsh have found their voice and reclaimed their language. So even in the 1980s, hardly anyone spoke Welsh and it was only after 1990 that it became a compulsory subject - but even today, the bar is set so low that it is a sad, pathetic joke. You have students in Wales who are subject to Welsh lessons and exams for eight years or even ten years and still walk away from all that unable to say more than ten words in Welsh. Thus if you want to become fluent in Welsh, it has to be a personal mission - you can't rely on the education system in Wales. The situation today is less clear because of politics: we have three numbers for the number of true Welsh speakers today. The population of Wales today is 3.1 million. The first number is 1 million, which includes anyone who has ever had a Welsh lesson and know a few words of Welsh - that number is just plain bullshit as that includes loads of people who can't even string a basic sentence together in Welsh. But that number is often used for political purposes and to demonstrate that this is a living language with so many people who have some knowledge of it. The second figure is half a million, that's people like me with a working knowledge of Welsh, we're not fluent but the bar is set quite high. The third figure is 60,000 to include only those who are properly native standard fluent but even I think it is unfair to set the bar that high and exclude people like me, thus I tend to use that half a million figure. 

So why do you say it is like joining a cult? 

Everyone on the boot camp were so super nice to me in a way I didn't expect at all. I would compare it to showing up at a church for the first time, you don't know anyone but they're happy you've turned up that they go out of their way to make you feel welcome there. This kind of kindness to strangers is completely different from the kind of customer service I would receive when I go on holiday and book a suite in a very nice hotel - sure the staff there would be extra nice to me as well but I have paid a lot of money for that kind of service. In this case, I suppose I earned that warm welcome by speaking Welsh to prove to them that even as an outsider, as someone from Singapore and not Wales, I've embraced their language and want to be like them. So let me give you an example, we went to the beach at Aberaeron and there was a famous ice cream shop there, so when I tried to pay for my ice cream, one of my boot camp mates paid for me and I was not expecting it at all - I haven't spoken that much to her and I didn't think I knew her well enough for her to want to be that nice to me, but she paid for my ice cream and that's the kind of niceness I am talking about. Then later on, the same thing happened when we went for coffee, another boot camp mate paid for my coffee. But it goes beyond people buying me free food - it's the way I was embraced by my boot camp mates that made me so surprised. After all, these people don't know me well at all since I'm only communicating with them in Welsh and not English, French, Mandarin or Spanish; so it's not like they really know me well enough to genuinely like me beyond the fact that I am an immigrant who has learnt Welsh - get to know me better: there is a lot more to me if we can speak English to each other. 

All hail the high priestess in the cult: hysgewyll!

There's another fascinating aspect of the boot camp - what you did in the outside world or how rich you may be didn't matter to the others at the boot camp, all that matters is your ability to speak Welsh. I have no idea how much money these people earned in their jobs, but we were in an environment where something else was valued a lot more by the group. When we were at the organic farm, the Welsh farmer was telling us about the different crops he grew on the farm (all in Welsh of course) but the Welsh farmer used two English words to describe a crop: Brussels sprouts. I have absolutely no idea how to say that in Welsh and quite frankly, I don't even like Brussels sprouts. But this lady raised her hand and corrected the farmer with the proper term in Welsh for Brussels sprouts: hysgewyll and everyone else in the group (including the farmer) looked at her like, "all hail the high priestess, she knows the word for Brussels sprouts." I could see this other woman in the group with that look on her face like, "oh I knew that word too! I should have shouted it out aloud then they would all be adoring me instead!" I have met people like that in church before, it would be that woman who would say something like, "I think you would find that this verse is from Ezekiel 36:26." Then she would go on to quote an entire verse from the bible and everyone in the bible study group would look at her in awe because she had memorized it. Of course, when someone tries to show off their knowledge like that, it is a calculated move because your audience can either be very impressed or they could be annoyed by your behaviour and thus within this context, our very own Welsh boot camp high priestess who knew the word 'hysgewyll' really impressed everyone at the organic farm! 

But aren't such relationships somewhat superficial? 

Yes and no. Whilst I did make some good friends whilst at the boot camp, I don't pretend that they are somehow now my new best friends. No, instead I finished the boot camp, I came home to London, went back to work and got back in touch with my (mostly English-speaking) friends. But I think it is pretty straightforward what the deal is: these people were willing to be very friendly with me if I adhered by the rules of the boot camp by avoiding English altogether and in return, they were willing to extend their hand of friendship to me. Imagine if I turned up speaking virtually no Welsh, would they have been as nice to me? No, clearly not. By the same token, imagine if I turned up at a church and made it clear, "I'm a Buddhist - I have no intention of converting to your religion, but I'm just here to see what you Christians do." I think I might get a rather frosty reception if that was my opening line! Just yesterday, I was at a pub in Mayfair with my boss and some of my colleagues - my boss was buying us loads of food and drink. The reason why my boss was so nice to us was because we had been working hard for him and achieving great results, so he wanted to reward us. But would my boss have treated us as kindly if we had a crap week where we got nothing done and made many mistakes? Of course not, such is the nature of the relationship: it is conditional, there is an element of give and take in every relationship. If I had paid the price to earn my rightful place in that relationship by either speaking Welsh with my boot camp mates or delivery good results at work for my boss, then why can't I just enjoy the cordial relationship, even if it is a conditional or somewhat superficial relationship? By that token, are there unconditional relationships out there? Don't all relationships come with some kind of terms and conditions and would you bother with a relationship that you got little or nothing from? 

What's wrong with shallow, superficial relationships?

Sure, I have more normal, ordinary friendships with friends whom I have known for ages.  Allow me to contrast this with something that happened in the office recently: a colleague said something quite stupid, it was an attempt to be funny but it failed. Did it bother me? Not really, I thought, so you have poor social skills and your attempts at humour are pathetic, but I'm here to make money not friends - I shall ignore your awful jokes and as long as I can count on you when real work needs to be done, that's all that matters. So my low expectations of my colleague actually allowed me to brush off that incident like water off a duck's back, rather than upset about the rather offensive content of his stupid joke. Now had a close friend I cared about made that stupid joke, I would have taken him aside and gave him a lesson in social skills but as this was a colleague, I could just ignore it and say, "that's his problem, not mine." By that token, shallow relationships are less stressful because of our much lower expectations. So sure there were instances at the boot camp where people did do or say something stupid but because of the inherently shallow nature of such relationships, I wasn't stressed our or bothered at all. I believe there's really nothing wrong with forming shallow, even temporary relationship with people under such circumstances. I acted like these people were my best friends during the boot camp, we were all so nice to each other, then we went our separate ways at the end of the camp - what's wrong with that? It's a  kind of social contract: for the rather limited time we were at the boot camp, we agreed to treat each others as if we were all best friends, so we can all have a really good time there. We all wanted a lovely holiday and so it was just a means to an end. 

There was actually a beginners' group that I could have joined. 

I did speak to the boot camp organiser about this because he did organize two boot camps, one for advanced and one for beginners; he noted that I would have been one of the weakest students in the advanced group and by the same token the strongest students in the beginners' group. A lot more English would have been spoken in the beginners' group of course but would I have benefited from it as much? No, I would have actually taken on the role of the teacher to help the weaker students there if I was the strongest student in the group. But he pointed out to me that I would benefit a lot more from the experience by learning from fluent speakers rather than spend my time there helping him teach the beginners, besides, he also told me that there was something very interesting about my story - about the way I had picked up Welsh as a foreign language, as an outsider, as an immigrant and had then become a lot more fluent than the vast majority of Welsh people. So he assured me that he had considered all of those factors before placing me with the advanced group and that it was the right decision for both the group and I. It sounded like a pretty sound rationale to me. 

Did you enjoy the boot camp? 

Yes and no, let's start with the parts I found most challenging. My listening comprehension isn't good enough in Welsh, especially when people speak very quickly. So there were a lot of games and these were of course all conducted in Welsh - sometimes I struggled in those games because I didn't understand what was being said and that caused me a lot of frustration. Note that this is pressure that I put on myself, it wasn't like the others were berating me for not being good enough. Oh gosh and one morning, we were put in pairs to play a complex word game - I swear my partner in that game Nick did 90% of the work in our group and I barely contributed 10%, that was always going to be the case as Nick's Welsh was so incredible fluent and so much better than mine. I did feel so ridiculously frustrated at my inability to pull my weight in that pair, but that's just me - Nick didn't complain at all about being paired up with me and took great effort to help me with my Welsh. Like I said, people there were so incredibly nice to me. There were aspects that I did enjoy - simple things like when we were in Aberystwyth, we went to an outdoor cafe. We were just having a conversation in Welsh and I did make a real effort to take part in that conversation; so I felt quite proud that I had literally earned my place at that table. Did the people around the cafe witnessing me speaking Welsh realize just how hard I had to work to be a part of this group? So it wasn't all hard work - there were parts of it which I did enjoy a lot and there was a massive sense of accomplishment that went with that. This sense of accomplishment wouldn't be there without my massive effort. 

Would you have liked to have done anything different at the boot camp? 

Well I know this might be quite controversial but I would have loved to have at least had one designated hour a day when everyone is allowed to speak to each other in English. Then we could use that one hour to get to know each other a bit better, then once that speed dating process has been conducted in English, we could then go back to getting back to our Welsh language practice having already established that friendship. I think it's a lot harder and slower to establish that kind of deeper, more profound friendships if you were to totally ban English from the very moment the boot camp began. 

Is there anything else you learnt from the experience? 

I now have a new appreciation for how hard it is for immigrants and foreigners to make friends in an environment whereby they are struggling on in a foreign language they aren't fluent in. Furthermore, I  also think it is good to be placed in an environment where you're taken out of your comfort zone and made to struggle - it makes your brain work a lot harder to learn new stuff, you're constantly being kept on your toes and whilst that can be a rather exhausting experience, I believe it is not just good training for your brain but I'd like to prove to myself that at the age of 45, I can still learn new stuff all the time. A lot of old people stop bothering to learn new stuff and they're full of excuses: they are too busy with work, they have children to care for - but it is this learning of new things that keeps your brain young and fresh. 

Would you go for a similar boot camp like this in the future? 

Yes, I think so. I do know just how much hard work the organizer put into taking such good care of everyone there and all he wants is to have enough people to want to participate in order to do such activities - mind you, this isn't his job at all, it is truly a labour of love. So the least I can do is give him my full support, by attending the next boot camp he organizes it!

So that's all from me on my rather unusual Welsh boot camp experience! You can see more videos and photos from my trip to West Wales on my Instagram. Do leave a comment below - let me know what you think. Many thanks for reading.