Tag Archives: irish
Bhí scéal agam (I had a story)
Every Monday night in Irish class we are all supposed to tell a scéal–a story about something that had happened in our lives. The idea is provide to practise composing and speaking Irish. The truth value of the scéal is not particularly important–It can be completely made up. This is personally difficult, since mistakes are inevitable and I do not deal well with making mistakes in public. But it is obviously important, so I go ahead.
In the scéal I try to talk about something that really happened, simply because I want to relate Irish to the rest of my life. Last night I said a little bit about Convergence. This may have been too ambitious, since I had to look up some specialized vocabulary. However, the work was fun. Continue reading
Irish Spam
Fuair mé turscar as Gaeilge. (I received Irish language spam today) Continue reading
Warfare in mid 17th Century Ireland
I have been reading Confederate Catholics at War: 1641-49, by Pádraig Lenihan. It is about the Irish part of the British Civil Wars. Quite a number of interesting points. Continue reading
Flashcards for the 21st century
An Críochnaitheoir
Arnold Schwarzenegger as Gaeilge. Continue reading
A really strange Irish word
ainbhlinn = “froth from the mouth of a decaying corpse” — from last night’s Irish class.
Another Reenactment Group
Clan MacColin of Glenderry, based in California, reenacts part of the Scottish Highlands c. 1570, so they could be grandparents of colgaffneyis. Their focus is much more on the Gaelic culture and society of the Highlands and Ireland, which I don’t think receive nearly enough attention in Clann. Most of our military interpreters wrongly portray Highlanders as simple impoverished barbarians, when in fact they were part of a rich culture with a written literature older than English can claim. As I have written before, I have a big problem with this attitude in colgaffneyis.
Still, it is the only game in town.
Different Monday Night
Gaeltacht Minnesota has gone to its summer schedule, so I have (roughly) alternate Monday nights free. I had planned on going to a class at Woodcraft, for which I had registered by a telephone conversation with wolfsword. However, I got a voicemail this morning that the class had been canceled for lack of students, and that my payment would be refunded.
So I ended up going into Minneapolis with mia_mcdavid for a session of the Speculative Readings Series at Dreamhaven Books, where haddayr read three excellent very short stories and another author read a single longer work, which was very different but also very good. Gaeltacht Minnesota was quite well represented there–All three teachers and several students came to hear haddayr.
Seeing myself
I was looking at an Irish Grammar Book today, and working through a variation on an example in the text. I came up with
Ceannaím an iomarca leabhar.— “I buy too many books.”