Houston and I went to Ireland over Easter weekend. Flew into Shannon and drove south to Killarney, then the Ring of Kerry, up to Doolin for the fabulous music scene, ferried out to an Aran island and just soaked up the culture. Heard plenty of Irish being spoken, which is very similar to Gaelic and is making a comeback. It's a beautiful language and the further out we traveled, the more prolific the language.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Off to Ireland
Houston and I went to Ireland over Easter weekend. Flew into Shannon and drove south to Killarney, then the Ring of Kerry, up to Doolin for the fabulous music scene, ferried out to an Aran island and just soaked up the culture. Heard plenty of Irish being spoken, which is very similar to Gaelic and is making a comeback. It's a beautiful language and the further out we traveled, the more prolific the language.
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Irish is the same thing as Gaelic, which is what Americans tend to call the Irish language, even though we Irish natives tend to refer to our native tongue as Irish. All part of the celtic culture which would include Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man, Brittany (in France) and northern parts of Spain (Galicia maybe, but I could stand corrected) as well as Ireland, of course!!
FYI, I'm originally from Ireland (born & raised), but have been here in the USA since '94.....
Irish is the same thing as Gaelic, which is what Americans tend to call the Irish language, even though we Irish natives tend to refer to our native tongue as Irish. All part of the celtic culture which would include Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man, Brittany (in France) and northern parts of Spain (Galicia maybe, but I could stand corrected) as well as Ireland, of course!!
FYI, I'm originally from Ireland (born & raised), but have been here in the USA since '94.....
Another Barbara here...I studied Irish for 4 years (silly me) including an intensive course in Connemara. As a result, when I was in the Hebrides a couple of years ago on a boat with a Gaelic-speaking family I recognized its similarity to the Irish spoken in Donegal - NW Ireland. The father of the family said that he could understand Donegal Irish, but not necessarily the Irish spoken further south in Ireland. As a linguist by training, I will add that often the divisions that label one thing a language, and another a dialect are more political than based on real differences. Dialects sometimes are not mutually intelligible while 2 different languages might be easily understood by people who speak one of them.
There has been a notable increase in radio and tv in Irish in the past 25 years since I studied Irish. However, this has occurred when there are probably fewer Irish speakers than ever.
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