Irish Language & Music - Ceol na hÉireann

I knew to expect from history that English was a essentially just creole or mixture of various Gaelic and Germanic languages. Before moving to Ireland to do my masters degree on the ides of March 2021, I tried a little Irish on the mobile app Duolingo and then realised where English gets its soul from.

The body of English is of course Germanic (mostly Frisian, Dutch and Danish). The clothes are Latin fabric made by a Greek tailor. Sometimes the clothes make the man. Don't forget that French (another parent of the mongrel English) is itself just  a vulgar Latin with Norman (Nord-Mann - Norseman - North-men) and Gaulish grandparents. And Gauls are just European mainland Gaels.

But while Duolingo rocked for Deutsch, it sucked for Irish. It was probably made worse by the fact that I studied German for 18 months. And the use of the Latin alphabet with ridiculous pronunciation styles doesn't help. I wonder why Irish Gaelige doesn't use something more native to the language like the Ogham script. Irish needs to show the courage to let go of it's Latin alphabet/script if it wants to survive - preferably a phonetic alphabet.

Let compare some English songs with their Irish cover versions. I want you to watch the Irish version first. Let's start off with "Sky Full of Stars" by Coldplay. Half the beauty of the video is the joy on the faces of the Irish as they sing in their beautiful language. Half the joy is probably because they never imagined that they would be so actively helping in preserving the language of their ancestors. These Lurgan chaps will make you fall in love with Gaelige. 


Pokerface by Lady Gaga

Hello by Adele
It's a beautiful day by U2



Location: The Timber Mill, Beaumont, Dublin, Ireland

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

William Butler Yeats and East of Eire

Image
I set off from my cousin's place with the intention of being the first non-Irishman to set foot on the eastern most point of the mainland portion of the Republic of Ireland. As I wound my way down Thormanby Road I took a  snap of the electric car recharging station in front of the local library. [8:40:43 PM] I took a right turn to get a view of the Howth Church. [8:40:58 PM]. I've become used to it being very bright with sunlight so late in the northern latitudes now. Instead of going down to the pier I found a narrow path to walk between two houses on to the eastern part of the peninsula for my walk. I would have never noticed this path or known about it without Google Maps. [20.52.51] This was what I saw at around 80% of the way ...  just walked by the 🏠 house Yeats lived in, in Howth. I assume he wrote this poem while living there because the view from there looks just like those in this video  And also because the poem is quoted on a plaque on the wall of the house. ...
Read more

Too busy and too much to post

Image
I wanted to post about the flight and arrival in Ireland ,the extreme cold (imo) and landlord issues. But I've had too many things to catch up with and so will post about it "properly" later. For now, here's a partial summary of 15th to 17th ... ---------------- The power sockets here don't match my devices. so got adaptors from a shop nearby. Got internet and power after more than 24 hours. Phone and laptop batteries were dead. Ippozha onnu ushaar aayathu. I feel so homesick So cold I already hate it here dinner at 6:24 PM ☹️ ivade saippum madammayum okke 10PM inu orangum 😒 now my bad sleeping habits when adjusted by 5.5 hours suddenly makes me a gud boi 😀 I usually sleep at 3 AM in India. Here that is 9:30 PM 😛 Madamma Ammachie making some bland meals ... have to eat fast or it gets cold very soon at home even if it is not hot anymore we can eat or use the microwave. here it goes from hot to warm to cold to frozen in 10-15 minutes. I told a friend that I miss...
Read more