DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
Even Greener Pastures
HTML https://evengreener.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: Questions about the Use of Language
*****************************************************
#Post#: 11996--------------------------------------------------
Re: Question for SHL
By: Coligno Date: February 2, 2019, 6:13 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Kseniia, yes, the Hunger Strikes were quite a harrowing affair,
which the film portrayed very well. (Just as a brief aside, an
Iranian friend of mine told me that after Bobby Sands died,
Winston Churchill Avenue in Tehran, which is where the British
Embassy was located, was renamed Bobby Sands Street. Of course
the British weren't too keen on the idea of having an embassy
with an address on Bobby Sands Street, so they sealed up the
main entrance and started using a back door which opened out
onto some other street instead.)
I'm sure the Irish language was a tool of resistance in prisons
long before the Troubles, but I don't know that there had ever
been the Jailtacht phenomenon before, where prisoners as a group
were actively engaged in learning Irish with that specific idea
in mind. Undoubtedly in Kilmainham, and other prisons of that
era, the number of inmates who already had Irish when they
arrived was much higher, and the language probably taken more
for granted.
I'm curious to know what textbook you're quoting from. An
seoinín tusa? Ní hea. :D Ar fheabhas!
#Post#: 12008--------------------------------------------------
Re: Question for SHL
By: Kseniia Date: February 3, 2019, 1:21 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
@Neal, are you asking me or Coligno? Because the answers would
be quite different: Coligno is definitely well read and I'm
definitely not. Anyway, it's not about literature, it's about
history, about some (quite recent) events in Ireland — I think
you know a lot about it yourself but maybe you're just more used
to looking at it from a different angle? "No Béarla" is just an
Irish show about the language, by the way - not even a
documentary, but there are a few interesting things about it. I
was talking about this conversation:
HTML https://youtu.be/GKZ4kAU62JI?t=42
@Coligno, you're right of course, I actually don't know if there
were any Irish-learning groups in prisons in other time
periods... Maybe there was something like this but not in the
form of Jailtacht?
Ah, the page is from the Moscow State University textbook
"Современн
ый
ирландски&
#1081;
язык.
Учебные
диалоги с
комментар&
#1080;ем"
(
HTML https://ufile.io/uulhj
, page 98) — but the author says some
stories are from Irish school textbooks so I don't know where
exactly this particular story is from, originally.
[I thought you might find this a bit amusing but it almost
brought a conflict into my house: I translated it into English
when a friend of mine asked what I was reciting. Well it wasn't
the best idea ever, I might have as well said something like "up
the RA!", the reaction would've been the same I think]
#Post#: 12052--------------------------------------------------
Re: Question for SHL
By: Coligno Date: February 4, 2019, 8:22 am
---------------------------------------------------------
@Neal, I assumed your question was directed at Kseniia: I think
you probably know me well enough by now not to be surprised that
I know a thing or two about Irish. And, to answer it for her,
she's much better read than she likes to admit.
@Kseniia, Ah, Garry Bannister, is it?
This would be an English friend, I presume. The English
generally have very little understanding of Irish history or
their own country's pernicious role therein, or the conflict in
the North (as Brexit is currently making abundantly clear; it's
an amusing irony that the Irish border which is now causing the
English Brexiters so much trouble was actually created by them
in the first place). I think the English press presented a very
one-sided story during the Troubles, and any attempt to try and
gain a deeper understanding or a more balanced picture might be
condemned as pandering to terrorists. But, cogar, where have you
been learning phrases like "Up the RA!"?
#Post#: 12086--------------------------------------------------
Re: Question for SHL
By: Kseniia Date: February 5, 2019, 2:50 am
---------------------------------------------------------
@Coligno, oh, you know him? He's basically the founder of the
Russian centre of Celtic culture, and the explanations for
Russian speakers are written by his student (she's Head of the
Department of Germanic and Celtic Philology at MSU now, as far
as I understand — though I never studied at MSU myself so I can
be wrong here).
Well, it's not that unusual for people to take negative
information about their country's politics to heart (I catch
myself feeling the same sometimes), but you're right, when it
comes to Irish republicanism, the reaction is particularly bad.
*
[quote author=Coligno link=topic=804.msg12052#msg12052
date=1549290160]
(...) where have you been learning phrases like "Up the RA!"?
[/quote]
[s]I'm not supposed to tell anyone[/s] Seriously, though, maybe
I heard it in a documentary or something (I think they mentioned
these slogans in the documentary "Irish ways"
[
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=E-lm6bQEp6I
] —
a very interesting one, by the way, because they interviewed
both republicans and loyalists (and representatives of the
British Army, and of course ordinary citizens). But I'm not
absolutely sure, and anyway in Russia it's relatively easy to
come across this kind of information: for example, one of the
most popular Russian folk-rock singers,
Хелависа, used
to sing Rising of the Moon at her concerts (I remember this
performance of her, for instance —
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=2ogjWwnVxgY
,
from 2:20).
*actually it's a relief that people think this way mostly
because they are not well-informed (not that I claim to be
well-informed myself but still) — I personally know Stalin's
fans and people wholeheartedly supporting Churchill's "I do not
agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger
even though he may have lain there for a very long time"
position, and it's much, much worse.
#Post#: 12132--------------------------------------------------
Re: Question for SHL
By: Coligno Date: February 6, 2019, 5:55 am
---------------------------------------------------------
@Kseniia, I don't know him personally, but I know of him.
[quote author=Kseniia link=topic=804.msg12086#msg12086
date=1549356636]
*actually it's a relief that people think this way mostly
because they are not well-informed (not that I claim to be
well-informed myself but still) — I personally know Stalin's
fans and people wholeheartedly supporting Churchill's "I do not
agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger
even though he may have lain there for a very long time"
position, and it's much, much worse.
[/quote]
Yes, you're right. I don't think most people in Britain are
against the idea of a united Ireland as such (in fact I'm sure
many would be only too glad to get rid or Northern Ireland), but
the only thing many of them know about Irish nationalism is the
IRA, which they, quite understandably, don't like. But with all
this recent talk about the "precious Union" and the "UK family"
and with the DUP looming large in UK politics, maybe attitudes
are changing, but I'm a bit out of touch there, so I don't
really know.
*****************************************************
DIR Previous Page
DIR Next Page