irish

Jan 10 16:40

Údar

By: Ciarán Tags:

Here's a wonderful short film on Sean Nós singing from Celtic Juice TV, featuring one of a number of our friends whose geographic distance has not dimmed their fascination for Irish language and music. The piece is just over eight minutes long and well worth the viewing.

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Jan 27 17:56

Judge for Yourself

By: Ciarán Tags:

At the risk of simply turning into an aggregator for Crooked Timber, Kieran Healy has done us all the important service of producing a catalogue of Irish public service ads. I certainly remember the Green Cross Code starring Judge from Wanderly Wagon and reading this mention of him has sent me into a bout of WW nostalgia.

None of the ads Kieran mentions are around for us to look at, but here's a clip from Wanderly Wagon, Judge's star-vehicle:

You know, in case you're wondering why the Irish are disturbed fantasists.

On the subject of which (and by way of tenuous thematic meanderings), be thankful you didn't have a Swedish childhood.

Unless, of course, you did.

In which case you'll remember the collective psychosis that was produced by Vilse I Pannkakan. If you aren't from the country that brought us Strindberg then Vilse I Pannkakan involved a David Icke impersonator in conversation with a group of more or less sinister characters who lived underneath a giant pancake. As the series went on the pancake went increasingly rotten and I'm reliably told that the finale involved the characters waving goodbye as the pancake was flushed down the toilet. Think Bosco (Judge's nemisis apparently) in a mashup with Lost, Waiting for Godot and the Shining. Here's the deceptively gentle intro:

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Jan 06 15:02

Cúpla Focail Amhain

By: Ciarán Tags:

Good to see an interesting discussion over on Slugger about this article in the Guardian and (behind the wall) in the Irish Times.

Manchán Magan reports meeting quite a bit of resistance when he wandered around Ireland trying to speak exclusively in Irish. He describes intimidation, rudeness and, as Sinéad Gleeson puts it, weird hostility, especially in Dublin.1

This is all presented as an unfortunate reflection of the attitudes of Irish people to their language, borne of a variety of factors. I'm a little suspicious about this though. As a veteran of the Gaeilgeor movement, I've known many people to expect arrogance and sneering attitudes from Irish speakers towards their own lack of fluency.

I'm sure that Magan was entirely polite, but I wonder if what he was meeting was an impression that his behaviour was borne from supercillious attitudes about people who don't speak the language.

Here's what I think was going on: a man walks into my shop. I knows he speaks English perfectly well. He knows that I know this. He also knows that I don't speak Irish well at all (because I tell him). And yet he insists on continuing to speak to me in Irish.

Not very nice.

1 Let's put aside the fact that the Irish Times carries an apology today because an exchange reported as taking place in the Ordnance Survey Office, where Magan tells of being roundly abused, didn't take place there at all.

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