My wife and I both laughed out loud this morning when we heard 1170 KFAQ’s Chris Medlock relate that when he was a kid his mother sent him to school on St. Patrick Day wearing orange to make a political statement. (And you wondered where his contrary …

My family and I visited Scotland this past spring for the second time and for a couple of weeks. We fell in love with Scotland and the Scottish people. My wife and I will return for an extended visit someday to the Isle of Skye. It is one of the most beautiful places on earth. I have experienced that “homesick” feeling about no other place that we have visited.

What doesn’t taste better with Guinness?

reaganaut on March 17, 2008 at 3:28 PM

Oh. Profound truth.

Hey Ed, are you willing to have a weekly ‘Learn Gaelic’ installment? I would be down for it.

Pent. on March 17, 2008 at 10:18 AM

I second this!! Would love to learn some Gaelic. Going to the Isles in June!

tickleddragon on March 17, 2008 at 5:38 PM

That sounds like pure fun!

Hey Ed, are you willing to have a weekly ‘Learn Gaelic’ installment? I would be down for it.

Pent. on March 17, 2008 at 10:18 AM

I second this!! Would love to learn some Gaelic. Going to the Isles in June!

Starting near Galway or the Aarons would have been a bit brighter, Dublin was a Viking city a thousand years ago and has been something a bit separate since.

I alos love making Guinness Stew, but also Guinness pot pie, and Guinness French Onion Soup.

What doesn’t taste better with Guinness?

Like it says on the signs as you cross over to the island, “Caid Mille Failte”

http://www.gaeliccollege.edu

Oh, for those that may not know, St. Patrick was a Welshman!

SeniorD on March 17, 2008 at 9:55 AM

Quite possibly; and born to a Roman decurion. My Welsh-Italian wife reminds me of this from time to time.

I’d love to have the recipe! I was just looking up how to make colcannon!

BNCurtis, I will try and pry the recipe out of him. I do know it’s not written down anywhere.

Sorry Ed, I must agree with the Redhead. I do love Ireland but the Scotland tugs on me. I must return to both countries.

d1carter on March 17, 2008 at 11:52 AM

We can’t wait to return to Scotland – and we most certainly will. I may be a well-mixed Nordic-American mutt: Scottish, Norwegian, German, a wee bit Oglala Lakota and of all things – Laplander! – but the Scot is what I feel most. I never understood that feeling until I wandered around the Highlands and Orkney (fierce!!) for two weeks. It’s the only time a hard-nosed gal like myself waxes remotely poetic – when I consider Scotland. It’s probably the only place on earth that could lure me away from the good ole US of A.

Everyone now speaks ‘Merican … even the english.

Anyway, have a Guinness today for the Irish. Slainte!

Sorry Ed, I must agree with the Redhead. I do love Ireland but the Scotland tugs on me. I must return to both countries.
BTW, Tommy Smythe is the St. Patrick’s Day Parade Grand Marshall. The first native born Irish to do so and not a bad futbol commentator.

I don’t understand this affection for little-used languages and dialects. Why should people in Ireland go through all the time and effort to learn a language, when they can already communicate perfectly well in a language that they share with billions of people?

Clark1 on March 17, 2008 at 10:04 AM

Blithering dunderhead.

As a full-blooded Scot and proud second-generation American, I can tell you with all authority that the purpose is not to replace english and communicate solely in gaelic, but to try and reconnect, if only a wee bit, with the dying language of one’s ancestors and history. We do it because we wish to, and it’s fun.

As has already been well explained, there are a wide number of gaelic dialects among the celtic kith and kin that are NOT mutually-comprehensible. One of my grandmothers was raised in a tiny village named Dalchork, while the other grew up in far north Dounreay. Both women insisted it was impossible to understand the other unless she was well into her cups. ;-) It’s kinda like growing up in Lacombe and trying to talk to a fellow Louisianian in Dulac.

I admittedly know very little about Ireland, but in Scotland, get out of the modern cities and into the Highlands or the westernmost Isles (Skye, Benbecula, Harris, etc.) and you will find that Gaels are prevalent. For we transplants, learning the language is a hobby. For them, though, it is their spoken language and an intrinsic part of life.

While honoring the family tradition today of wearing an dath ruadh and pinching anyone in green, I do wish the good Cap’n and fellow Irishmen a Beannachtai Fhéile Phádraig (in the Irish form) today.

My husband makes the most delicious Guinness soaked Irish stew I’ve ever had in my life.

I’d love to have the recipe! I was just looking up how to make colcannon! I’m a McDonough descendant, from Sligo and possibly Roscommon. They settled in Richmond, VA around the time of the Civil War, and some moved to New York just after. I’ve always wondered if they spoke Irish.

http://u.tv/newsroom/indepth.asp?id=76553&pt=n

it’s always good to have a language that the tourists don’t understand.

A Happy St. Patty’s!

And read “How the Irish Saved Civilization” for an intriguing little history of this unique folk.

And if I were dictator for a day, every schoolchild would learn basic Greek and Latin.

I can dream.
the goddess anna on March 17, 2008 at 9:17 AM

Definitely a dream ;-) The teachers union would never allow that!

Once again, from an American perspective the non-Catholic Irish are written out of the story – assuming that Irish=Gaelic ignores that other Irish language, Ulster-Scots, which is now quite rightly an official language in the North.

Leaving aside the Irish, it is nonsense to say that English was forced upon the Scots – long before the 1707 Union, Scots (which grew out of middle english) had supplanted Gaelic in most of the nation, and had become the language of the original Scottish parliament. I can understand sometimes why British people are irritated when Americans foist their misunderstandings of British history upon them.

Forcing people to learn a language of limited use is almost always counter-productive. Yes, 42% in the Republic claim to use the Gaelic language once a week or so, perhaps meaning a few stock phrases, but only 3% speak it fluently. It is a good thing to protect a language in communities where it already spoken, but to impose it on those whose families may have stopped speaking the language generations ago, or who never spoke it in the first place, is the behaviour of authoritarian government. If it were not compuslory there would be far more enthusiasm amongst young people for the language.

I wonder how much time we would give to attempts in the US to force indigenous language learning down the throats of communities here. Not much, I hope.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day……

I grew up learning Polish and English concurrently, but as I went through school my second language knowledge was discouraged by my teachers.

I’ve taught myself some Polish, and wish my family had done more to preserve Polish and Slovak, which were last spoken fluently by my grandparents (although my dad retains a bit of Polish learned from his mother).

The Slavic languages diverged relatively recently, giving them a pretty large common “core” vocabulary. While in Krka National Park in Croatia, I heard a woman shout what sounded like “czekaj” to the kids she was attending, which I understood to mean “wait”.

Ireland was soft and green and beautiful, but I’m sorry, nothing can match the brutal grandeur of the Scottish Highlands.

I’ve been to those places, too. Except for the Connemara and the Burren, Ireland is amazingly green. But if I want to hike or view scenery, I’ll take the Highlands.

Try finding a hearty Irish stew in any of the pubs in Ireland – it can hardly be done!

I had a great bowl of Irish stew in Brugge, Belgium. And lamb with mint sauce at Durty Nellie’s, next to Bunratty Castle.

Which in fact brings us to one of the advantages for teaching Latin to the general public: to help them understand their own tongue (as well as to train the mind and to give them access to two millennia of western culture).

Tzetzes on March 17, 2008 at 9:56 AM

Right on. It’s sad to see how little Latin is offered both in public schools and in colleges these days (no Latin classes at all at my college! And 15,000 people come here…).

Hey Ed, are you willing to have a weekly ‘Learn Gaelic’ installment? I would be down for it.

What I had not factored for was the animosity

French as been manditory in most Canadian schools since the 70′s when official bilingualism was introduced; try finding someone from outside of Quebec, Acadia (in New Brunswick) or one of the tiny French enclaves scattered around the country. The only people who speak French as a second language are those with government ambitions, federal law enforcement, or military officers. Making the learning of a language mandatory does not guarantee that language will be used any more than is absolutely necessary.