Tag: Decolonisation
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Learning Irish – Part 3 – Fear & Bean
I’ve been to Irish weddings before in Dublin, Borris and Athlone. Back then I had no Irish to speak of, let alone to speak with. Here’s a fun fact. In Irish the word ‘Fear’ means ‘Men’. ‘Bean’ means ‘Woman’. Now there’s a valuable lesson in not falling for false cognates. These are words in different…
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Learning Irish – Part 2 – Why bother?
“Don’t worry about this when you get started. Most Irish speakers won’t snap your head off for stumbling over a few intricacies as a learner”. “No one speaks Irish anyway, what’s the point in learning it”. I also look at my encounters gender and I encounter the seemingly terrifying síneadh fada. Many of the reactions…
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Learning Irish – Part 1 – Duolingo sucks
In which DuoLingo gets short shrift. Let me begin like a churl. The Irish language (Gaeilge) is far from the beautiful, lyrical, poetic encoding of deep emotions and profound contemplation that some non-Irish speakers might like to believe. It’s a right bastard of a tongue to get your mind around if, like me, you’re a…
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Learning Irish – An Introduction
Before I begin, there’s one thing that I have learnt about myself from this whole thing – and it also explained something to my wife about me. I tell long, tortuous stories where the story itself is less important than the ending. I always have, tá brón orm faoi sin (I’m sorry about this). Apparently…