I got interested in Irish having listened to Clannad in high school; at the uni library, I got hold of an Irish textbook, along with a bilingual anthology of Irish poetry ('An Duanaire: Poems of the Dispossessed', edited by Seán Ó Tuama) where the Caoineadh featured prominently.

Any chance that Irish writing could be re-phoneticized? I tried learning Irish for fun but it was tough because all the letters sounded in a really unexpected way. (I also think that English should be re-phoneticized for what it's worth)

I gather they won their independence in no small part due to infuriating the invaders with phoneticisation.

I live in Ireland and was onde fluent in Hungarian. I laugh at anyone who says Hungarian is the hardest language to learn. They obviously never saw Irish.

Part of the issue is that Irish is - in a large way - a reconstructed language. It was almost wiped out, and then basically rebuilt from a bunch of isolated regional dialects and extremely limited source material. A lot of Irish speaking communities historically had a largely oral tradition.

A LOT of mistakes (or weird choices) were made in the standardisation of the “new Irish” back in the day, which have been made worse by the way it’s taught in most schools - it’s taught almost entirely as a written language, not a conversational language.

Some suspect this might be linked to how it was reconstructed, the people “standardising” the language were focused almost entirely on it being a written language as opposed to a spoken one.

There is very limited focus placed on actually speaking the language as a spoken language in how it’s taught, unless you go to an Irish language only school.

It was THREE YEARS before I figured out “Luas” was not only a pronounceable acronym, but it meant “quick” or something like it.

But yes. Listening to Radio Na Life (best radio in Dublin, and pretty much best radio I ever listened to) it doesn’t sound effortless to speak. And I completely agree the way to inject life in the language is via the Gaelscoil system.

Also, much like Hungarian, an excellent language to keep secrets.

My wife and I spent a few years practicing Irish. Enough we could have small talk in it and when we traveled to Ireland we could read all the signs and understand when people spoke it.

I look at welsh and still go wtf lol

I find Irish easier when you put on the accent tbh. Makes much more sense when you read / speak it like that

> I look at welsh and still go wtf lol

Ironically, Welsh is a much simpler language than Irish, and easier to learn for an English speaker. Almost completely regular orthography, much simpler grammar (with no grammatical cases). But, simple or not, the grammar and orthography are very different to English.

Do you mind if I ask how you learned Irish? It's a language that I would like to learn a little of at some point, but so far I've been too daunted to attempt it.

Late to the party but Duolingo is pretty good.

My understanding is that Irish orthography is different, but highly consistent. So once you overcome the initial hurdle of understanding how different phonemes are pronounced, you're mostly good to go.

I tend to think of the Irish alphabet as similar to but subtly distinct from the English alphabet: the two languages use the same Latin characters, but have different sounds associated with them.

I tried to learn it and basically it helps if you at least know the sounds of H letters/consonants which throw off English speakers.

mh or bh = V, ch = sloppy och "loch" (means lake) rhymes with Bach, dh and gh = guttural G, fh = silent.

Good start but mh and bh can also be W, dh and gh can also be Y or silent.

I'd add: ph = F, sh = H, th = H or silent.

Yeah dialects throw a monkey wrench into it I think some bh can be V or W. Maybe concentrating on a specific dialect may help with learning. Maybe that was my problem if I though it was W and then V and then W again.

Manx orthography has gone that way. Try it out!

I married into a large Irish family and goodbyes take bloody forever as everyone has to have a ten-minute conversation with everybody else on their way out the door. Irish ghosting goodbye my eye.

Colombians are Irish who can’t hold their alcohol and who take even longer to say goodbye.

Giggled at this one. Kinda true in Fairness.

The Irish goodbye exists because the alternative is a long ass poetic farewell. So, if you want to avoid it, you give a couple people key goodbyes and check out.

...or just a sneaky nod to someone who understands what you mean. They're left to tell people that you went home, if anyone asks. Just don't do that when your round is next.

That's with family, with the lads/co-workers the Irish goodbye it's not saying anything and leave.

I love that Roy Keane has 5% of these entries. Saipan was nearly the beginning of a civil war in this country!

It was a huge cultural moment. If you look at the impact of the 88 euros and subsequent world cups, we had songs, books, movies. And then, it all just died because someone never put the cones out for training, on a field in japan

I don't think we've ever processed that as a nation. Sure we struggled to process a civil war, we have no chance with saipan.

American of mostly Irish extraction & raised spending a lot of time in the Boston metro area; I get a bit more than a tenth of these. (It’ll inspire reading next time I’m hungry for roots.)

I am disappointed that the "Irish goodbye" didn't happen at around number 82 with no items following it.