#irish study

[aimchase]

Study in Ireland Spot Assessment Session Conducted by IBAT College Dubli...

[vintagehomecollection]

In the upstairs study, the William Morris wallpaper 'Blackthorn' decorates both the walls and ceiling.

In an Irish House, 1988

[a-study-in-bullshit]

is it not a shame my native tongue is not mine?

[gayinajar]

"Irish is a dead language" "no one uses irish anymore" you can pry this language from my cold dead hands. It's not dead and if it was I would still love it (my ancient greek and latin homies know what's up)

Is breá liom ag caint gailege agus ní féidir leat stad mé <33

[lionofchaeronea]

An Irish Wolfhound, Edwin Landseer (1802-1873)

[llyfrenfys]

I'd like to preface this with that this is a screenshot of a post I saw a few days ago in the #welsh tag and that the OP has since deleted this post, but the sentiment is something I'd like to address since I see a lot of parallels with this kind of thinking in other contexts, such as in LGBTQIA+ rights conversations.

So, the most obvious elephant in the room is the idea that Welsh is super widely spoken in Wales now and that it isn't in as much danger as other Celtic languages. This idea is wishful thinking at best and erases the very real danger that Welsh is in and that it could be lost just as easily as Irish or Scottish Gaelic. Cornish (which is related to Welsh) actually did die out and has had to be revived. To make a metaphor out of this, we classify languages on a scale of non-threatened to endangered in a similar way to how we classify species.

Here are the statuses of Welsh and Irish as of 2010 (above) and the statuses of Lions and Tigers (below).

On paper tigers are more 'in danger' than lions. But that does not mean that lions are suddenly not in danger at all. The little bracket above CR, EN and VU labels all of these classifications as threatened. It isn't (and definitely shouldn't) be a competition of 'who is most in danger' because you do not want the thing you care about (whether it be a species or a language) to be in danger.

To come back to the original screenshot "they* [Welsh speakers] have always had the means and the ways because the English didn't beat or slaughter them for speaking it"- on the most basic of levels, this is just incorrect. The Welsh Not was a wooden token hung around schoolchildren's necks if they spoke Welsh in school. If someone else spoke Welsh the Not would be hung around their neck. At the end of the school day, whoever was wearing the Not would be beaten and caned by their teachers. I needn't go into much detail but there have been concerted efforts to beat Welsh out of schoolchildren. With the lions vs tigers metaphor, making the claim Welsh speakers have never been beaten for speaking Welsh because they always had the means and ways, while Irish speakers were beaten and never had the means or ways is like claiming poachers have never shot lions, only tigers. Bottom line is, lions and tigers are both victim to poaching and both species have suffered as a result. Similarly, Welsh and Irish have both suffered language loss and both need conservation efforts in order to survive.

(*sidenote- the consistent use of 'them' and 'they' in the original post is definitely indicative of a 'us vs them' sentiment which is a deeply unhelpful attitude to have when it comes to endangered languages and the Celtic languages in particular)

I see parallels with LGBTQIA+ rights in this situation. When equal marriage came in for gay and lesbian couples in the UK in 2014, many allies began to act like gay rights had now been achieved and that gay issues had been done, they're solved. Except, they really weren't (and aren't). Progress has been made in Wales and undeniably Welsh is doing the best out of the living Celtic languages. But that doesn't mean Welsh has been saved or that full equality for Welsh speakers has been achieved. It very much hasn't. The sentiment of the post in the screenshot is not conducive to helping Irish or Scottish Gaelic. Putting down Welsh speakers and erasing Welsh-language history will not save Irish or Scottish Gaelic. Pretending Welsh has had it easy in some kind of lap of luxury is a deeply harmful and bogus claim.

I'll address the tags under the cut as this post is getting long.

To address the tags, personal feelings ≠ an accurate reading of a situation. Nor is it praxis, for that matter. Why is pride in Welsh different/less good than pride in Irish? Is it the assumed proximity to England? If so, that's a terrible claim to make. Not only that, but Scotland is also next to England- does that make pride in Scottish Gaelic the same as pride in Welsh according to this metric? It's a ludicrous thing to say and deeply insensitive to the needs of Scottish Gaelic and Welsh speakers, who cannot help any current or former proximity to England.

Additionally, proximity to England ≠ worse. I know it's a popular internet joke to hate on England because of English attempts to eradicate the Celtic languages, but when the joke becomes praxis, it does not help. England ≠ a place devoid of Celtic languages either. Many English counties near the Welsh border actually have communities of Welsh speakers, such as Oswestry (Croesoswallt) in Shropshire. Cornwall is also home to many speakers of revived Cornish. It does a disservice to Celtic speakers in England to insinuate that proximity to England taints or corrupts them somehow. This is how ethnonationalism starts and we ain't about that.

And "#it feels a little.... blehhhhh you were seen as sophisticated and english enough and you assimilated however the Irish and the Scots? #brutish animals that need to be culled". So, this is arguably one of the worst things to say about a Celtic language- or any threatened language in general. First of all, the 'you were seen as' - 'you' is very telling. The switch from 'them', 'they' to 'you' indicates that this sentiment is aimed at Welsh speakers directly. This was likely a subconscious thing that OP wasn't thinking about when they wrote this. But it does indicate unhealthy feelings of jealousy and bitterness unfairly directed at Welsh speakers, who are also struggling. This righteous anger at the decline of Irish and Scottish Gaelic would be better directed at efforts to help promote those languages- some useful things to get involved with are LearnGaelic, similar to DysguCymraeg but for Scottish Gaelic or supporting channels such as Irish channel TG4 by watching their programmes.

The idea that Welsh speakers were or are 'sophisticated and english enough' is insulting and carries with it a lot of baggage of how any of these assumptions came about. Welsh speakers were definitely not seen as sophisticated. Where Welsh was 'tolerated', it was treated as a curiosity, a relic of a bygone age. Classic museification which all Celtic languages and cultures suffer from as well. Welsh was not tolerated in any legal sense since 1535- with English becoming the only valid administrative language and the language of Welsh courts after England annexed Wales into its Kingdom. Monolingual Welsh speakers suddenly had no access to any legal representation, unless they learned English. This is no voluntary assimilation- it is an act of survival for many speakers of minoritised languages to 'assimilate' into the dominant culture, or else risk losing access to legal security and other kinds of infrastructure. You need only ask any non-native English speaker living in an Anglophone country what that process is like. Welsh people did not see English incursion as an opportunity to become 'sophisticated and english enough', they had to assimilate in order to survive.

The "Irish and the Scots? #brutish animals that need to be culled" is also painfully misrepresenting a very complex social and political process that unfolded over the span of hundreds of years. The phrasing itself of 'brutish animals that need to be culled' speaks to righteous anger at the damage done to these languages and cultures, but it reinforces negative stereotypes about the Irish and Scots themselves. It also is more complicated than a simple English hatred of anything non-Anglo, since the English conception of particularly the Irish changed a lot over the centuries. It was (and still is) rarely consistent with itself. See: the enemy is both strong and weak. The very earliest Celticists were by and large, Anglos or French.

Ernest Renan (1823-1892) for example, was an early French Celticist who published La Poésie des races celtiques (Poetry of the Celtic Races- English translation) in which he says:

"... we must search for the explanation of the chief features of the Celtic character. It has all the failings, and all the good qualities, of the solitary man; at once proud and timid, strong in feeling and feeble in action, at home free and unreserved, to the outside world awkward and embarrassed. It distrusts the foreigner, because it sees in him a being more refined than itself, who abuses its simplicity. Indifferent to the admiration of others, it asks only one thing, that it should be left to itself. It is before all else a domestic race, fitted for family life and fireside joys. In no other race has the bond of blood been stronger, or has it created more duties, or attached man to his fellow with so much breadth and depth"

Yeah. This guy (unsurprisingly) was a white supremacist. Note that this sentiment is being applied to all people considered Celtic by Renan- Irish, Welsh, Breton, Scottish, Cornish, Manx etc. None unscathed by the celtophobia of the day. In this period, Celticity was romanticised (yet disparaged at the same time). It is less 'brutish animals' and more 'archaic, time-frozen peoples' in this period. Of course, 'brutish animals' attitudes towards Celticity did still exist, but it is disingenuous to act as if it was this attitude alone which drove English celtophobia. Like many things, it is always more complicated and never clear cut as it might seem.

I'll bring this to a close shortly, but returning to OP's suggestion that the Welsh assimilated and the Scots and Irish did not, is also incorrect in that some Scots did have to assimilate to survive as well. The Statutes of Iona (1609) required Scottish Gaelic speaking Highland chiefs to send their sons away to be educated in Scots and/or English in Protestant schools. Many did as the statutes required, which led to further language loss in the Highlands of Scottish Gaelic. These are acts of survival- and not ones always taken willingly.

This has been a long post but it's one which I felt I wanted to address. There's no need for infighting between speakers of Celtic languages over who has it worse. There isn't any answer to that question, nor is it a good use of time or energy. All in all, the Celtic languages have suffered greatly over the years and its only just now that some of them are turning a corner. If you care about these languages, put your energy into something good. Only through active work will these languages be saved for generations to come.

[learnelle]

An afternoon in Dublin marvelling at all the cute bookshops and the red brick buildings. I’m always so happy to come by here to stock up on English books~

[thunderstruck9]

George Atkinson (Irish, 1880-1941), Anatomical Study. Pencil and watercolour on paper, 69 x 42.6 cm.

[ashs-nerd-den]

Gearrscannán ar YouTube

Short films on YouTube

(Don't worry, everything has English subtitles in the videos themselves)

Fán https://youtu.be/e3xnvkMp_1Q?si=i-4pmljDbzA8bRtu

Created by the incredible @nibmoss, an absolute queen (Bánríon). It is a short sapphic story about 2 best friends who end up together and it is my favourite short story ever!!! It is also my favourite piece of Irish media in existence!!! I love it!!! It is incredible!!! BEYOND AMAZING!!!

Yu Ming is ainm dom https://youtu.be/JqYtG9BNhfM?si=jnZjP4LozqOhNxkI

This is a classic. Ive had 4 different teachers show me this over the years, and my first year Irish class studied it exam style. It was the first piece that we studied and everyone LOVED it, people were quoting it all the time. Every second conversation had someone using a line from it. It's a crows pleaser and simple to listen to even without the subtitles provided. It also has a great storyline about a man who is fed up with his life in China and learns Irish to move over here, and well (bhuel) , I won't spoil the plot twist for you

Lipservice https://youtu.be/4QP0eEhhTSo?si=1DLvo_ECRhwGI5s8

It's the day of the oral exams and everyone is terrified (bhí imní an domhain ar gach duine), people are rehearsing in the bathrooms and speaking French instead of English, the stuff that half of them come out with is absolutely gas, this one is such a bit of craic, I was in stitches. And the bit at the end is so sweet. Is breá liom an gearrscannán seo agus beidh mé mo scrúdú béil i dhá bhliain 🙈🙈🙈 (I loved this short film and I've my speaking test in 2 years🙈🙈🙈

Filleann ar feall https://youtu.be/Tay7eMxas2k?si=q3ksVJVYJ7E_xxoa

IT'S CILLIAN MURPHY AG CAINT AS GAEILGE!!! You can't beat a bit of Cillian, he's a national treasure. And this is 2000 Cillian, he's so young (this was before I was born) he's in the Gaeltacht for his holidays with a grumpy friend, on a job to sell some Putchín, and he is everyone's favourite sweetgeart, a bit of a himbo, and a respecter of old ladies. Agus deir duine sa sna tuairimí (a person in the comments said that it's like Breaking bad, but with an Irish teacher that instead of a chemistry one (I've never seen Breaking Bad, so I don't know how true that is, but I do know that this was AR FHEABHAS!!!

Rúbaí https://youtu.be/jjYx5v2BUWo?si=tFu1ektBvHNkoQFB

This is a short story about a little girl (cailín beag) who's class is about to make their 1st Holy Communion, but she doesn't believe in God (ní creideann sí i nDia). She's everyone is trying to convince her that god is real and she's just like "nope, read a bit of Darwin, he's great, I'm off to collect worms", even to the priests face and towards the end there's a bitter sweet twist which gives a LOT of background. This was a nice, easy watch, the little girls was so cute, there were a couple of laughs (cúpla gáire) and the vocab was nice and simple

Gaiste https://youtu.be/Xr-V7vg_Y2Q?si=cMMNqPLkmtugbg8t

Very simple vocab, good message, kind of like a fable, big "One of us is Lying" vibes. Nice short film overall

Fíorghael https://youtu.be/t3Kv4fZ2SOE?si=bHibiFJyRUcvZ-TZ

This ones a bit older, but it's still a good bit of craic. You need to wait a couple of minutes to get into it, but the end is brilliant (Caithfidh tú cúpla nóiméad a fanacht chun dul isteach ar, ach tá an chríoch go hiontach)

Sylvia https://youtu.be/fi_4aweOP4w?si=ZCfUAfYaD73IVn8r

There are plot twists, and then there plot backflips, this was the later. This is so weird, but I really enjoyed it at the same time

Ciúnas https://youtu.be/cGfuQ-HeTmk?si=WRPGmo-UNQ0bw9mA

There's not much dialogue, but all of it is very casual, so you still get to pick up a few words that you wouldn't find in a textbook. The storyline is quite sweet, but please be careful watching because it although it centres around her family's love for her, it is set on the way home from the hospital after she tried to end her own life

[victusinveritas]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

From The New Yorker - 'The Call to Worship' by Bob Hicok...

[Irish Centre for Poetry Studies]

[mali-umkin]

Irish, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic speakers, I need your help! 🇮🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

For a piece of academic writing I am working on right now, I was wondering if in the context of those three languages, you have positive or negative examples of:

1) The presence of non-standard dialects digitally or in the media (any content creator you know, any regular speakers on the radio that actively uses a non-standard dialect, or on the contrary, you only encounter standard Irish/Welsh/Gaelic. If you have any example of non-standard writing too, for example in the printed press, I am all ears)

2) Do you speak and/or write a non-standard dialect and have been looked down upon for it by other speakers? If yes what dialect and in what context

3) What do you think about purification practices in which loan-words from English are replaced by new words? Which words do you use? If you study the language formally, which are taught to you?

Thank you, and please reblog!

- A grateful Celtic student

[o2studies]

༻`` 22 & 23 Mar 24 — Friday and Saturday

100 days of productivity 65 & 66/100

For some reason I kept thinking today was Friday.. I didn't finish all my chemistry notes but I finished 1 booklet and highlighted previous notes and I'm really happy with that anyway! Also, I did 25 pushups practically in 1 go!!! It's my goal for this month (which I've been building up to since January, around which I could barely do 1 pushup!)

Journalled today too and here is my plan:

I will keep micellar water and nail things by the sink (to improve and encourage general skin care)

I will keep my dog's leash on my desk (to encourage walking them more often —3x a week)

And I will get up to do something at 4.30 every day, even if only to sit back down after (to get some momentum and energy for other tasks)

For the remaining days of my 100dop I will report on my progress, as well as on my sleep schedule (🌙 10.30, ☀️6.30) —I was gonna say that it's 10.25 and I can actually still hit that goal today WOO!!!! But no its 11.25 TvT....

Been listening to this lovely song a lot recently 🎶: Eileen Og by The Dubliners

[khaantengri]

My new old books

My new old books about Ireland. The first one is a collection of novels of an old Irish writer Maurice O'Sullivan translated into English. It's about life on islands near the south-western coast of Ireland. By the way this book is printed in 1992 and it contains an inscription in Russian meaning "To Liana from Nael, Dublin, 1994". Isn't in wonderful?!

It reminded me the other inscription on Bobby Fischer's book I bought in January. According to that inscription a Russian man presented that book which is about an american grossmeyster to another russian man in 1979. And that was in the Iron Curtain period! I love to read book inscriptions).

The second one is an Irish language coursefor beginners. It's good but doesn't contains audio materials so I decided to use it later.

God bless booksellers🥰

[gayinajar]

As we approach halloween, I would love to remind people of Samhain. Samhain is not pronounced "sow-ay-n", "sam-hay-ne", or anything similar. Its SOW-IN. And because I can practically smell the thoughts of "that doesn't make sense", it's not an English word. Irish is not closely related to English. It does not have the same grammatical rules or pronunciation.

Please I am BEGGING people to stop complaining about how irish words/names don't make sense. They make perfect sense if you know the Irish language at all. I'm far from good at irish but even a basic understanding permits you to know how names such as Tadhg or Róisín work.

Anyway, happy Samhain everyone!

[surlifen]

new sona ref at long last! and I named him finally (sort of) (was stuck between two so I've uploaded different versions of the ref in different places LMAO)

just in time for artfight teehee