Congratulations to Conn at An tImeall for reaching his 100th podcast. Quite a milestone. I’m downloading as I write this. I sent him an audio note of congratulations, in Hawaiian, of course. Wow, it’s just short of an hour long. I wonder what I’ll do for my 100th podcast, if I ever get there
Irish language under threat in Glencolmcille
Oideas Gael’s Language Director Liam Ó Cuinneagain is concerned that the Gaeltacht status of Glencolmcille could be under threat unless more of a community effort is made to use Irish as a daily language. They found that less than 50% of people in Glencolmcille rate themselves as fluent in Irish and only around 20% speak it every day. My wife and I spent three wonderful weeks at Glencolmcille and were well served by Liam, Siobhan and the staff there.
Who’s Martin?
“The Irish language award went to Martin from an tImeal, who said he hopes to see Irish language blogging go mainstream by next year.” Perhaps the author had a difficult time with “Ó Muíneacháin.”
Woman Gets Beer From Her Kitchen Faucet.
This is the kind of thing that you might expect to happen in Ireland, not Norway.
More Irish Blog Awards Coverage.
Go raibh maith agat a Bhernie for the coverage of the awards, congratulations to all of the winners, particularly to Conn at An tImeall. If I do make it back to Éire, hopefully I can witness the 2008 awards in person.
Slugger top Irish political blog.
Congratulations to Mick and the crew at Slugger O’Toole for being named best political blog. No word on the other awards yet.
WWPD? What would Patrick do?
“It’s a quiet January afternoon in O’Hooligan’s Irish pub in Heaven. There’s a rambunctious character sitting at a table surrounded by cronies doling out free pints to him. He’s singing and yelling and generally holding court. Quietly, a small, wizened old geezer wearing a leather biker jacket and a faded Iggy Pop T-shirt walks into the pub and ambles over to the table. The place falls silent. ‘Patrick?’ ‘Oh, flip.’ (He’s been waiting for this. Fixes best smile and turns around, expecting the worst.) ‘Yes, God?’” Click on the link above for the rest of the adventure.
Ulster Irish study group at Yahoo Groups.
Go raibh míle maith agat a Chionaodh! While I’ve been working through Learning Irish with the gang on the Cois Fhairrge group, I didn’t realize that a similar group had just started working on Ulster Irish. As it seems that Queen’s University-Belfast is my most likely destination for Ph.d. work if I do indeed make it to Ireland next year, working on the Ulster dialect makes sense. Someone in the group located this great resource on the Cumman na Gaeilge site. The audio there sounds much more like the Donegal Irish I heard at Oideas Gael, though there still seem…
Edge Case – thoughts in two languages, from the author of An tImeall.
Conn at an tImeall and I seem to have a competition going to see who can juggle the most blogs and podcasts. You win, Conn; I surrender. His new site, Edge Case is predominantly in English (at least so far), though covers a lot of the same ground as An tImeall. All of this and a two year-old to boot. Amazing.
The kind of comment that can make your day.
Or year. ‘Analu is a student in our online Hawaiian language class, and I can relate to his feelings. Since returning from Ireland some 3 and a half years ago, I’ve tried to make some progress with learning Gaeilge, only to give it up after a few weeks, and then starting from scratch again months later. Here’s the best part: “I do have a cassette for studying the language, but your podcast was the first time ever that I was able to hear Hawaiian as a true living language!” I know exactly how ‘Analu feels, as An tImeall and Cumann…