Languages

my Dutch friend flew a Lufthansa flight once, he said when the staff gave the safety speech with its slow, clearly -worded instructions, he was able to follow along without any trouble.

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Yesterday, a language died.

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220216-chile-s-last-yaghan-speaker-dies-aged-93

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Hey, Irish speakers (or people who took it in school)… I was thinking of looking into picking up a copy of the Peig Sayer stories… I’m still pretty much in the beginner (hopefully heading towards something like intermediary) speaking stages, and was wondering how advanced the Peig stories are and if I should look into something easier? I thought maybe something like this would be a better starting point?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/152937720X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_DY71RTVZ38VGJ2Z7NJGJ

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I wouldnt say they’re advanced but you’ll find a lot of slang and metaphor that might not make sense.

My recollection of Peig (her autobiography) is that it is a dreary tome (punishment is more accurate), so maybe skip that.

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Yeah, I’ve heard… apparently decades of Irish children were tortured with the Peig stories… They covered it a bit on that Motherfocloir podcast and one of the hosts made a pretty spirited defense of the stories. Also, Blasket Islands are off the coast of co. Kerry (which is where my Irish ancestors came from). And not to mention, as a historian, I have a high tolerance for dreary tomes! :laughing:

I think I may try that book of short stories I posted and maybe save the Peig stories for later on…

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My Irish teacher strongly recommended Pádraic Pearce’s Íosagán, if you haven’t already got a copy.

Bhí sean-Mhaitías ina shuí le hais a dhorais.

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Thanks! Looks like it’s up on the internet archive!

Will definitely want to look up a more modern copy, though.

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Goodness yes, the old script is very hard to read!

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Yeah… it’s why I’m a modernist… I’m too lazy to learn how to read books from back before 1930 or so… :laughing:

Táim leisciúil…

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May be, may be not. Who knows… The headline is somewhat misleading.

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Browse By Language: Irish | Project Gutenberg

They look to be proofed by hand, rather than OCRed by a program that doesn’t understand pre 1961 fonts.

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That’s an insular miniscule!

I had no idea the Irish used that as a typeface. I guess it’s a direct parallel to the German speaking countries using gothic textura as a typeface until the 40s.

A medieval script rather than a renaissance antiqua as the basis of print.

This is seriously cool!

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Everything old is new again, right? :woman_shrugging:t4: I hope some Millennials or members of Gen Z will help to study and determine the meaning of these symbols. I’ve been complaining those groups were trying to bring back hieroglyphics since emojis became one of their preferred methods of communication.

Talk To Me Hello GIF by Stephen Maurice GrahamConfused Text GIF by Women's History

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has a history of gaelic typography.

Wikipedia has a map depicting the battle of the scripts. Note that Norway used Fraktur. I can’t tell if Austro Hungary is split along lines of taste, or on strictly linguistic lines.

One unfortunate side effect of this typographic diversity is that OCR is made more difficult, and the more commonly available packages produce something akin to chicken scratches. It wasn’t until recently that Finereader got Fraktur support.

Tesseract does have a Irish module, which may help.

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How did we wind up with jerry-rigged? :thinking:

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Merriam Webster had a decent run down of a plausible etymology.

I wonder if 500 years from now, when chemical rockets and invasive surgeries are long gone (reference: Star Trek), will people wonder how the term “rocket-surgery” came to be?

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I suppose those “become a polyglot” language learning videos will get a lot more views in the next week… :thinking:

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