On 2002-11-19 15:45, claudine wrote:
Hello my little cutie-pie >
Mais cherie, pas ici, je tâen pris! 
Youâre all cutie pies. Iâd like to add a vote for regional accents and idioms (thanks, Walden!).
I grew up in the Deep South and shed my accent pretty early, partly, Iâm sure, because such a negative perception is attached to it. I have also learned that my co-workers wonât understand me if I say I âcarriedâ someone when I mean I âdrove him/her, who was a passenger.â
As an aside, I had stopped telling people where I was from, but I think Iâll resume keeping my mouth shutâlast summer at a local Irish festival I was insulted twice by people who thought they were being funny. Yes, I am literate. No, none of my cousins are married to each other.
On the Creationism/Evolution topic: I recently described myself to someone as a ârecovering Baptist.â
M
- For me as a Czech, it was very useful to learn English - in Czech language, there is emphasis to relations and opinions of speaker, in English, there is a emphasis to âreality independent of my opinionsâ, mainly thanks to a fixed order of the words. So undoubtly, learning English helped me (to some degree) to see reality from two quite different points - âmy opininonâ versus âthe realityâ. I suppose that this experience can be generalized, i.e. any new language (from diffrent language group) helps to think âbetterâ and more precisely.
- Czech language was âdyingâ in favour of German about 1800, it was not speaken in the cities. Only farmers were speaking Czech. Between 1820-1860, Czech reestablished. My grandfather was mixing Czech grammar and German vocabulary (even about year 1968), now it is really rare to hear those semi-German words. The only reason why Czech re-established, was a patriotism. So perhaps the same will happen with Irish language.
Be proud to be Irish. Comments as to why learn it are from those who would like to claim Irish descent but have never lived in Ireland. Playing trad music doesnât give a licence to be called Irish. Where ever you are from never apologise and be proud of it. Does anyone disagree?
Avan
A true Irish man will never question his roots. It disappoints but is of no surprise to see those (many) who on one hand try and claim an irish identity and search an historic family link to Ireland and yes of course maybe a wee holiday and play a tune or two. However I am an Irish man and the comment about Irish language is something that an Irish man is proud of.
Okverka Youâre Chzech? Great My family name (Panovec) is Chzeck my Great grandfather moved to the USA when the Chzech Republic was still Called Bohemia.
Thats my Story
Justin the mad Whistle Doctor Signing off:
The gods created whisky to keep the Irish from rulling the world, then gave us TinWhistles to keep us happy.
[ This Message was edited by: Cyfiawnder on 2002-11-19 18:34 ]
So when that Mexican guy told me I had a âduty mouseââŚ
On 2002-11-19 17:45, manunited wrote:
⌠Where ever you are from never apologise and be proud of it. Does anyone disagree?
I do. But I donât think youâd quite understand.
This is a pretty interesting thread! Thanks! Iâm finding it interesting because (like everyone educated in Ireland) I studied Irish for 14 years at school, but also French for 6 years, German for 7 years, and now Italian (my minor at university) for 3 - and the way I learn a new language/part of a language is by relating new words/structures to those parts of the languages I know already that are comparable. Since this is confusing even me, let me give an example: French and Italian are pretty closely connected (in terms of grammar, and some vocabulary), so when I need to translate something from Italian to English, what I tend to do is to translate first to French, and then to English. While this sounds a bit complicated, it gives me more certainty about my choices of words - because French is the language which I know better. (This also happens when Iâm learning tunes - especially in a session situation; Iâll âtranslateâ particular phrases or note patterns from other tunes and then relocate them, so that I can assemble the new tuneâŚ)
So it definitely helps to know at least 2 languages - and I think that if your mind is used to knowing words/phrases in a different language, then it is more attuned to remembering those words in a third (or fourth or fifth) language - I didnât start French or German until I was 12, and Italian until I was 18!
Plus, you discover word connections and underlying meanings that you never would otherwise - heaven for my (slightly) obsessive personality! 
Deirdre
Why learn Irish? Why not? I mean especially for us here on C&F as lovers and performers of Irish Music, I would think that everyone would want to learn at least some Irish. Learning some Irish IMO is a natural ânext stepâ of immersing oneself into the Irish Musical Tradition.
When I used to go to Sweden a lot on my vacations, I taught myself the language over a couple yearsâ time so that I could get around easier. Although I havenât spoken it actively for several years, I have to say that it certainly made my experiences there (and among swedish people here) more enriching.
Likewise, even though not many people speak Irish around the world, knowing the language would make the musical/cultural experience for folks like us all the more wonderful.
I think that those on the board who can already speak Irish are very lucky as it is a very beautiful language and it is after all at the roots of the music we love.
I donât at all buy that Irish is a dead language. is probably more of a miricale that it isnât dead and a testament to the Irish people that it is still actively spoken by young and old alike there. When I was in Armagh this Summer, for example, I was channel-surfing one morning and found some kiddie cartoons in Irish on TV. I have met more than one Irish-Language speaker here in Atlanta, BTW.
I for one would love to (and hope to one day) learn Irish but right now, my business eats up an amazingly huge amount of time and in what little spare time I have I am trying to learn Uilleann Pipes Whistle and Banjo. So, I just pay attention here and there hoping to pick up snippets of it bit by bit until I have the time to devote.
Slan
-Paul
On 2002-11-19 17:45, manunited wrote:
Be proud to be Irish. Comments as to why learn it are from those who would like to claim Irish descent but have never lived in Ireland. Playing trad music doesnât give a licence to be called Irish. Where ever you are from never apologise and be proud of it. Does anyone disagree?
I disagree on one point only, and only speaking for myself⌠I have Irish ancestors but never lived in Ireland, and I see nothing wrong with learning Irish, in fact, Iâm one of those eager Americans who would love to learn it herself. But I know you didnât mean that we all thought that. Iâve tried to learn it a bit but donât know where to get lessons (within my means) and itâs a tough language to study on your own. Iâd love to just learn the pronunciation⌠I think that would make the rest a lot easier. It would be fun, in any case.
In high school I started to teach myself Irish. After a few weeks, however, I began to reflect that I didnât know anyone who spoke it and that there were no books I would really rather read in Irish than in English. My only connection to it was as my ancestral language, and through Irish music. Before too long I quit and switched over to Latin, which I still study, and which comes in enormously useful all the time.
There is more than one way for a language to live or die. If you claim that Latin is dead youâre either uninformed or have a pretty narrow notion of a living language. To me it seems less and less dead the better I know itâcertainly itâs not dead the way, say, Assyrian or Gothic is dead. I would bet good money that there are more people fluent in Latin than there are in Irish today; I bet the number of books and journals, etc., put out in Latin about equal those in Irish. Also I donât think one can really understand English without it, at least not to the fullest possible extent.
Iâm not saying that Irish is deader than Latin, but that neither is dead and there are excellent reasons to study either or both. But honestly it seems sillier to have to come up with good reasons to study Latin that to study Irish for people not living on the emerald isle.
Let me put in a good word for English too: donât knock it. It is a noble and beautiful tongue often put to ignoble use. Shakespeare and Milton and King James and Jane Austen and Yeats, even Irish Yeats, would not have been themselves in any other language.
Langauge broadens the mind.
Itâs noticeable that people who speak more than one language rarely stop at two.
One reason that I am relatively poorly travelled is that I am ashamed of my schoolboy French & German, and even my inability to get my ideas across clearly in English at times.
I wish Foreing languages had been taught better, for longer, by people who were native speakers themselves, when I was at school. But thatâs probably more of a comment on the English School system of the 70s and 80s than anything else.