Interkelta Festo Noz

...de BZH Novjorko:

BZH New York has organized the first Interceltic Fest Noz which will take place in New York on Saturday, January 30, 2010 at Connolly’s Times Square.

The Fest Noz is a celebration of music, dance, and culture of Brittany, Galicia, Ireland, Scotland and Wales and will feature 40 musicians from the 5 Celtic nations, dance sets from the different Celtic cultures and a silent auction.

In addition, the evening will celebrate the Celtic festival of Imbolc. Imbolc is one of the four principal festivals celebrated among Celtic peoples, either at the beginning of February or at the first local signs of Spring.

The current lineup of performers includes the following:

Bretagne: Duo Morgane Labbe and Francois Tiger - Bagad de New York - Marie Martin

Ireland: Washington Square Harp and Shamrock Orchestra Led - Tony DeMarco and Friends - Niall O'Leary School of Irish Dance

Scotland: Wild Thistle featuring Mary Morrisson Abdill and Hannah Maire Marcus – Aodhagán - Capital Region Celtic Pipe Band,

Wales: Honey and Biscuits featuring Helen Ellis and Mary Morrisson

Galicia: Nosa Terra

Silent auction from 7pm to 10pm: Artists Capucine Bourcart and Christophe LeGris will auction 6 photographies with all proceeds going to Action Against Hunger and its Relief Efforts in Haiti...

Teastas Eorpach na Gaeilge

...de la Kilkenny Advertiser:

The fact that it is never ever too late to start something is evidenced by the increasing numbers of adults who are determined to finally make a fist of learning Irish. Reasons abound, whether personal or professional, and numbers attending Irish-language classes and conversation groups in various parts of the county remain firm.

Teastas Eorpach na Gaeilge (the European Certificate in Irish), run by the Language Centre in NUI Maynooth, offers adult learners of the language a series of examinations at six competency levels, from Beginner 1 to Advanced 2, which will act as a structure for their path to fluency. Successful exam candidates are awarded a certificate indicating clearly their level of proficiency in the language.

Until 2009 there were TEG exam centres in four locations in Ireland – in Maynooth, Co Donegal, Co Galway and Co Cork. Year on year there has been growing demand for new centres, leading in 2010 to the opening of five new centres in Kilkenny, Letterkenny, Castlebar, Cork city and in Limerick city, giving Irish language learners an opportunity to test their level of Irish in a centre close to them....

"Filistro kiel Kulturo Ministro"

La Irlandalingvo en Kvinzo

…de Irish Central:

More than 20 Irish speakers and readers gathered in Long Island City to have a raucous round-table talk together this past Saturday. The impressive turn-out had come to discuss the novel “Sobalsaol,” written by the popular author and screenwriter Pádraig Standún.

"Irish speakers make excellent use of the Internet," said Daithí MacLochlainn who organizes Club Leabhar for Irish language book-lovers (hence the name). It's how he explained the group's unexpected size. The club uses a Facebook page; while club member Séamus Blake described the reading material and has promoted the gathering on his bi-lingual Irish language radio program Míle Fáilte on WFUV -available on-line.

The Irish Center of Long Island City plays host to Club Leabhar and is also the home of Maura Mulligan's Irish language school, where she teaches the teanga using total immersion techniques in two classes divided according to different levels of introduction...

Kornvala Infanvartejo

…de la BBC:

A new creche has opened teaching toddlers how to speak Cornish.

Movyans Skolyow Meythrin, Cornish for the Nursery Schools Movement, aims to teach children the language through play while parents also get lessons.

Seven children were registered for the Saturday creche at Cornwall College, Camborne.

The language fell out of use in the 19th Century but there are now believed to be several hundred fluent Cornish speakers in Cornwall.

The first session included lessons in Cornish and songs well-known throughout the county.

Organiser Rhisiart Tal-e-bot said: "This is an idea which I have had for several years.

"This is about teaching parents how to bring up their children alongside our local heritage.

"There will also be classes run at the same time as the creche so that adults can learn a little about the county."

The Cornish creche is the latest in a number of initiatives designed to boost recognition of the Cornish language....

Irlandalingva Skismo?

…de la Irish Times:

A new survey indicates that Gaeltacht and urban Irish speakers are finding each other increasingly more difficult to understand. Could this rift further weaken the language?

Recently, I’ve been meeting a lot of urban speakers of Irish, and was thinking about the Government’s plan to boost the number of daily speakers of Irish from the current 83,000 to 250,000 within 20 years. A threefold increase in daily speakers is a bold proposal, and there’s little doubt that these speakers are going to have to come from the towns and cities, rather than from the Gaeltacht, whose entire population (including several solidly anglophone suburbs of Galway city) is currently 91,000.

This got me thinking. Is there a city version of the Irish language? And if there is, how different is it from Gaeltacht Irish? A conversation I recently had with a speaker from Limerick, who is raising her daughter in Irish, revealed a fascinating fact. She never listened to Raidió na Gaeltachta. Was it that it was a Gaeltacht station and irrelevant to her, I asked? Only partly, she admitted. It was actually because she found the presenters very difficult to understand.

Yet this woman spoke fluent Irish. How could a fluent speaker of Irish have such difficulty with the national Irish-language radio station? What did she listen to?

“Oh, the usual. RTÉ, Today FM, Live95.” Surely she listened to some Irish-language media. Maybe she watched TG4?

“No. Not TG4, sometimes Hector and the sports.” And she let her young daughter watch the kids’ programmes.

My conversations with Gaeltacht people met with a similar bias, but in the other direction. When presenters with so-called “school Irish” came on the radio, my Gaeltacht friends say they tend to tune out, finding the Irish unpleasant, or difficult to understand. They tolerate much of TG4’s output, but grimace or change channels when city speakers come on. As for the hordes of Irish-speaking teenagers and parents who descend on the Gaeltacht during the summer months, they absolutely prefer to speak English with them. They say that the city folks’ Irish is simply too strange...

"Gorm"

...de la Irish Times:

"Is blue the new black?" asked the headline on a recent blog entry by the BBC’s US correspondent.

He was writing about the film Avatar which, while making fortunes at the box office, has also set off a debate about racism.

Apparently some critics are irritated by its patronising portrayal of a blue-skinned race of noble savages, who need a white man to lead them against their (also-white) oppressors.

I haven’t seen the film yet so (a) I can’t comment and (b) I can’t give away the plot (something for which fans of The Wire -on-DVD may be sarcastically grateful).

But the aforementioned headline reminded me of a quirk of Irish-language vocabulary, about which an American reader inquired recently. In this sense, the answer to the BBC man’s question is No. Far from being the new black, blue is the old one.

In Irish, “black person” is translated as “duine gorm”. Thus, in the mother tongue of at least one of his ancestors, Barack Obama’s skin colour would be described, technically, as “blue”....


* "La Vorto Krŝn ( कृष्ण) signifas "la malhela", tial li estas ĉiam bildigita teorie malhelblua, kiel vespera ĉielo; sed ĉar en Hindio rasisma (antaŭ) juĝo favora al blanka haŭto daŭre mergiĝis (angle "pervading"), tiu "malhelbluo" ofte estas tre hela." ~ Vikipedio.

Skol dy'Sadorn Kernewek

...de la Western Morning News:

Young children in Cornwall will be fully immersed into their county's heritage and language when a new creche opens.

The Skol dy'Sadorn Kernewek, which translates as Cornish Language Saturday School, will open in Cornwall College Camborne on Saturday.

The creche, the first of its kind in the county, will involve lessons on Cornish heritage as well as encouraging children to speak some Cornish.

Project organiser Rhisiart Tal-e-bot said many parents had already registered an interest in the weekly creche.

Mr Tal-e-bot, Cornwall College Early Years lecturer and language expert, said: "This is an idea which I have had for several years, and which a lot of people have supported. We have already had seven children register for Saturday, and are hoping we might be able to attract a few more."...

Episkopo Graham Leonard

…de la Telegraph:

The Right Reverend and Right Honourable Monsignor Graham Leonard, who died on January 6 aged 88, was the most senior Anglican churchman to convert to the Roman Catholic Church since the Reformation…

…When Stopford retired in 1973 and was succeeded by Bishop Gerald Ellison, of Chester, Leonard was appointed Bishop of Truro. He was at home in that diocese's strong Anglo-Catholic tradition, getting on admirably with the local Methodists, who had their own reasons for opposing the proposed reunion.

During his first year at Truro he visited 130 parishes and, in 1977, ensured that the diocese's centenary was celebrated with great style. He also set up an advisory board for services in the Cornish language…

Lingvo de la Elitoj

…de la Irish Times:

Irish is the language of the elite in Ireland with speakers of the language enjoying higher incomes than the rest of the population, according to a controversial new report.

The report, compiled by researchers at the University of Ulster and the University of Limerick (UL), concludes Irish speakers are educated to a higher level and are less likely to be unemployed than people who have no Irish.

The main findings of the research published in the Economic and Social Review include;

- Non-speakers of Irish are twice as likely to be unemployed as their Irish-speaking counterparts;

- 42 per cent of Irish speakers worked in senior professional, managerial or technical jobs, compared to 27 per cent of non-speakers;

- Just 12 per cent of Irish speakers are in semi or unskilled jobs, compared to 20 per cent of non-speakers.

- Irish speakers were also seen to enjoy the advantage of a network of social contacts and all of the perks that go with such a network.