The Irish

Catching more than a few words of Portuguese at a time strains my ears but I can still vaguely read it despite the fact that my mother tongue is the Easternmost Romance language and Portuguese is the Westernmost. Hence my curiosity.

Welsh and Irish don't look or sound remotely similar to me.

yeah, scottish gaelic, irish gaelic and manx are similar - though not mutually intelligible and orthographically very different (especially manx).

i did a wee scottish gaelic class last year but haven't kept it up so i've forgotten everything, need to get back intae it

I will tell you as an English speaker the thing that really annoys me living over here is how often I have to spell my surname - and it’s not, like, Ní Bheoláin or anything, it’s very easy to read and say. My sister and I have a theory it’s the combination of the way the consonant and vowel sounds come together - perhaps “softer” sounding than people here are used to. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I am definitely recording “a cara, a chara, ha cairde” when I get home.

Interesting:

https://www.omniglot.com/language/celtic/connections/index.php

I can recognise maybe 70% of Scottish Gaelic words if I read them but the sounds are very different to me (like spits Ulster Irish).

Idk about Breton but interestingly (or not) enough Irish has some words of french origin because of the Normans.

I had to google Louisburgh. Deems, do you know Blacksod bay?

Interesting that this conversation about mutual intelligibility shoukd come up because I'm working with a woman from Norway and a woman from Sweden right now and they talk away to each other - one speaking in Swedish and one speaking in Norwegian.

Breton is just Cornish with a French accent, they say.

I recently stumbled across a TV show in Breton and was struck by how thick their French accent was. Kind of like if everyone in Ireland had (been) converted to Received Pronunciation and had no phonetic crutch to lean on when attempting to speak Irish.

Re: Norwegian and Swedish, I've heard that their mutual intelligibility is somewhat asymmetrical. Similarly, Italian is fairly easy to follow when you speak Romanian but the opposite is by no means true.

Re french and Irish - garçon and garsún are obvious. Supposedly seomra comes from chambre. I heard in school that the old word for church (eaglish?) is from église, though obvs we say séipéal now.

Btw deems - did ye learn it as gluasteain or carr?

Pom, you might find the Wikipedia page about Hiberno-English interesting.

I'll check it out, thanks.

The whole 'Hibernia' (land of winter) thing is kind of weird given the weather there. But it's North of Rome, so that was apparently good enough for the Empire.

The infamous man on the ice* winter we had a few years back, the pipes in my hometown froze & basically nobody had water (we did cos we were on a different supply, lol). But yeah, it’s a total joke.

Relevant*: https://youtu.be/h3vVDUuC0yw

Breton is just Cornish with a French accent, they say.

― The Inner Mounting Phlegm (Tom D.), Tuesday, September 10, 2019 6:19 PM (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

That's a bit of an oversimplification. The two, at one time, were def closer to each other than they are now. But centuries of English influence on Kernowek and French influence on Breton means a Breton speaker wouldn't necessarily understand Cornish and vice versa.

I'll be at this congress next month.

Re: Norwegian and Swedish, I've heard that their mutual intelligibility is somewhat asymmetrical.

It doesn't seem like it in this particular case.

Can't do much with Welsh beyond lessons about P vs Q: pen ~ ceann, pedwar ~ ceathar, and so on.

iirc the French influence is greatest on Munster Irish

tee-zjokh

tee-zjokh

― Le Bateau Ivre, Tuesday, 10 September 2019 17:11 (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

The dialects of Irish: Munster, Connaught, Ulster, Gaelscoil and R'lyeh

t'shok. a vulcan from yon star trek

Is now the right time to tell LBI I know one (1) phrase in Dutch, and I would massacre it even worse than that?

If ever there was a time!

Did I do this right? https://www.speakpipe.com/voice-recorder/msg/aayp5yeqbjrzjxx8

If ever there was a time!

Did I do this right? https://www.speakpipe.com/voice-recorder/msg/aayp5yeqbjrzjxx8🕸

Your pronunciation is way better than SV’s, put it that way.

Otm (ar an airgead?)

If the Brits won't use our proper titles, we should just call Johnson the British Taoiseach.
In fact, we should call the queen the Banríon.
In fact (!), we should call Parliament An Dáil na Breataine.
I ndáiríre (!!), níor cheart dúinn béarla a labhairt ar chor at bith!

— We need to talk about Caoimhín 2.0 (@Chicken_Caoimh) September 10, 2019

From Old Irish argat (“silver”), from Proto-Celtic *argantom (compare Welsh arian), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂erǵ- (“to shine”) (compare Latin argentum (“silver”))

Kind of dying a bit like this cos it’s very substitute’s bench RTÉ newsreader in slow motion

lol otm or someone from the other side that's been studying very hard

do i know blacksod, ffs

i think i learned it cearr, cos donegal for a few years hei

Your pronunciation is way better than SV’s, put it that way.

― gyac, Tuesday, September 10, 2019 7:41 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

*screenshot*
*print*
*framed on wall*

Can't let you off the hook sharing your Dutch phrase though!

I’ll have to see what I can do. Any requests besides cara/cairde and Taoiseach?

Tbftsv, he did once get an Irish language song featured in the guardian:
https://youtu.be/BNFfDirBE6w

is sharivari the other rubberbandit

No but he did inspire the song Dads Best Friend

Lol “Dutch”
https://www.speakpipe.com/voice-recorder/msg/iwktxh702ep0uwue

https://cdn.webshopapp.com/shops/57105/files/65235074/wit-brood-half.jpg

Coming right up! :-D

Knowing nothing about your origin or native tongue, you sound like either a Chinese or Arabic woman speaking Dutch :)

Got you the first time though, something I can't say about many minority language peers and peeps I frequently meet who try it on. Heel goed!

I learned how to say 'Is tú mo ghrá' when I was sitting in Deems' garden on a sweet pre-hurling finale evening in Baile Áth Cliath for an English lover of Irish descent, but no way I'm recording that.

lol jfc
https://www.speakpipe.com/voice-recorder/msg/ry9bnelv2ucl4z0v
I’m never speaking again

From where I'm standing both LBI's Irish and gyac's Dutch sound impeccable. ;)

Currently sitting in front of the TV watching Ronan Curtis and Callum O’Dowda launch shots in the very approximate direction of a Bulgarian goalkeeper so I struggle to believe my commitment to Irish culture is being questioned atm.

you can’t pronounce madra and siopa correctly, stop embarrassing yourself please

The language of *BEEP* is universal :) I've no idea what you said there Gyac, if it wasn't a string of words instead of a sentence (caught a few mentioned here!).

What is (what sounds like) 'na-kórgia'?

xp lol SV

na cáirde = the friends

lol sv im watchin england

i'm watching a documentary about the Hittites, ftw

xp i mean lolololololz obv

thank you brave people with your sound clips!

I don't have any specific requests, still conceptually/anatomically troubled by https://irishpalatals.sites.ucsc.edu/getting-started/introduction/ though

i think it would be lovely to understand any of that but otoh theres a lot to be said for listening to a bit of it too, imitation is often smarter than learning or, as we'd say ourselves nura mbíonn aon ann agat ach pucín gabhair cur i lar an bpairce leis

which is a rough effort at something a roscommon man of my close acquaintance says at random times, roughly phonetically equates to nurameen ayn on oggot ak pukeen gower curry lower an parka lesh

i have no fuckin idea what it means, something about a mediocre goat i think

ok thats 101

I had a teacher who said “ann” to rhyme with crown, but she was from Cork. But yeah unless you mislearn Irish for your whole childhood idk where you would start as an adult.