Comments to Rob's bloviating

[fuzzyoctopus]

I just remember the coed jokes from JadeKnight freshman year.

Still have the textbook and the dictionary for the welsh class I never took, though.

[The Jade Knight]

Oooh.  Old One, do you ever get on AIM?  I tried and failed to learn Gàidhlig, but I know a fair bit of conversational Welsh.  I'm a Celtophile (with an interest in minority languages, to boot), but have very limited exposure to speakers of Celtic languages.

I consider "Undead" languages only those languages which have died officially and been resurrected (with new native speakers).  Manx lost its last native speaker in the 70s but now has new (very young) ones.  Cornish died in the 1700s but is now back (by some miracle).  Welsh is thriving, and never has fallen bellow a few hundred thousand speakers, to my knowledge.

Another minority language I pay attention to, Jersey Norman (Jèrriais) is very close to dying, as well.  It has less than 4,000 speakers, I believe, though there are also speakers of other Norman dialects on the other islands and mainland France.  I think Jersey Norman is generally considered the dominant dialect now, however.


... I had almost forgotten about Coed.  I write my name in Chinese now as "Sen lin" (Forest), though, so it goes on.  =]

[Oldie Black Witch]

Gaidhlig is a rapidly dying language. If anyone cares. But this makes me all kinds of happy.

I'm actually not on AIM, JK. Someday I'll have to fix that.

Ciamar a tha thu?

Mise, gu maith.



Donnaidh (my old teacher) would be horrified.

[Oldie Black Witch]

Wait. Dictionary? Fuzzy, are you looking for a nice home for that Welsh dictionary? (I've been coveting a Dwelly's for years).

[fuzzyoctopus]

I'm sure not using it.  And I think I even know exactly where it is.

*rumages around*

Hippocrene Standard, Welsh-English English-Welsh dictionary.

Yours if you want it.

[Oldie Black Witch]

I want. Do you have my phone # or email address to arrange it?

[fuzzyoctopus]

No, but I know where you live.  

PM me.

[Oldie Black Witch]

PM sent (now that I've hijacked the thread).  

[The Jade Knight]

Tha gu math, tapadh leat.

And, umm, yeah.  That's about the end of my Scots.  (Not really, but I can't remember anything else that I know that I could ask you).

But yeah, get AIM.  Also, there's a pretty decent Welsh dictionary online.  =]

http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/fun/welsh/LexiconForms.html

[stacer]

Ciamar a tha thu?

Mise, gu maith.



Donnaidh (my old teacher) would be horrified.

!!!

I think we had the same teacher. Blond, lived in the Hebrides for a few years? Did you learn from him at BYU? We may have taken his class together! If it was the class through the Highland club.

[Skar]

There were british troops guarding the entrances to Ali Al Salem air base in Kuwait while we were all waiting to go north into Iraq.  Whenever my team and I would drive through we'd yell, "Erin go bragh" at them.  From the dirty looks some of them gave us I suspect they'd heard it before.  Does it really mean "Long live ireland" ?

[fuzzyoctopus]

That seems like a peculiar thing to do.  Did they ever try to similarly taunt you?

[Entsuropi]

Not surprised they gave you dirty looks, dirty colonial savage.

Welsh is fairly strong on the visual side at least - i've been there every so often, dual language everything. Plus they tend to swear at english users.

And i've not heard a single word of scots in real life. Though when I looked up scotland on wikipedia it said there is actually 2 or 3 scottish languages other than English - a highlands, a lowlands and an islands language. My dad speaks the Aberdeenshire dialect though - it's a mix of german and english. Named 'Dorric' I believe. It's long dead, died back in the 50's or so, and i've never learned any of it.

[Skar]

That seems like a peculiar thing to do.  Did they ever try to similarly taunt you?

Nope.  You should be appraised, however, of the fact that of our twelve grandparents (three guys on my team) ten had names like Mitchell, Ryan, Kerr, and May.  Bloody English wankers.  

But primarily it was amusing.

[The Jade Knight]

Apart from English and Gàidhlig, I know that Scots is also spoken in Scotland, being a language descended from Old English but having evolved quite differently:

http://www.scots-online.org/
("Scots for thaim that's efter lairnin Scots or for thaim that haes it an is efter enjoyin hit.")