Mahmoud Darwish

…de la Electronic Intifada:

At a time when many feel that the Palestinian cause is dying, the death of the poet Mahmoud Darwish following open-heart surgery acquires added poignancy.

Variously described as "the Palestinian national poet" or "the Arab poet laureate, Darwish was 67, exactly the same age as his friend Edward Said when he died five years ago. Both men were seen as embodying the aspirations of their people, both served on the Palestinian National Council, and both resigned in protest against the Oslo Accords which, as they rightly anticipated, sold out Palestinian rights for no tangible result….

…It was in Paris -- over coffee! -- that I met him in the spring of 2003, an encounter arranged by his old friend the historian Elias Sanbar (now Palestinian ambassador to UNESCO). I secured his autograph on my copy of the French edition of his selected poems, as translated by Sanbar, and invited him to visit Ireland at his earliest convenience as a guest of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign. He expressed his enthusiasm for the idea, and wondered whether he would be able to meet Seamus Heaney. He asked me about the Irish language, and seemed genuinely shocked when I told him that only around one percent of Irish people spoke it as their first language. "You cannot have a national identity without a living language," he exclaimed. He was a little nonplussed by my lack of enthusiasm for the Celtic tiger, and I got the impression that his view of Ireland was colored by Edward Said, who saw the country through rose-tinted post-colonial glasses…

Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg

…de la Daily Post:

Two members of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg will appear before magistrates today after slogans calling for a new Welsh language act were daubed on shops..

Former Cymdeithas (Welsh Language Society) chairman Steffan Cravos and Osian Jones – the organisation's North Wales organiser – are due to appear before magistrates at Caernarfon charged with criminal damage.

The two were arrested on June 9 for allegedly painting slogans calling for a new Welsh Language Act at Superdrug and Boots stores in Llangefni, Bangor and Caernarfon.

Two school girls, also arrested, were given an official warning by police....

Peticio por la Irlandolingvo sur Aer Lingus

…de la “Facebook” Grupo:

Anocht, tá 4,600 ball againn. Rud an-mhaith ar fad mar thósaigh an iarrtas i mhí Feabhra seo!

Ar dtús, búiochas leis na mball nua. Ná rinne dearmad do shinú a chur ar an iarrtas @ http://tinyurl.com/AerLingus.

Sa dara cás, ma ghlac a lán duine eile pháirt leis an ngrúpa agus a chuir a shinú ar an iarrtas, beidh seans an mhaith againn chun dul i gcion ar chinneadh as Aer Lingus. Tá tu abalta cuireadh a chur le daoine nua ag usáid "Invitie Friends to join" ar taobh an idíorlíne (http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10205170675). Fós tá tu abalta sceal nua a chur ar do "updates" nuair a lúb idíorlíne ar do phróifil. Tá orainn an sceal a chur amach le gach duinne agus ag meadú leargás leis an ngrúpa!

Belfasta Zoo

…de Belfast Telegraph:

In the zoo we offer self-guided trails in French and Irish. We started with French after discussion with a French teacher from Little Flowers Secondary School who thought this would help pupils.

We were then approached by Gael-Linn, an organisation for the promotion and development of Irish language, who asked if we would offer a self-guided trail in Irish.

To encourage visitors from other communities we also place some of our ads in the Polish magazine, Glosik. As an education officer it's part of my job to provide information around the zoo, including the availability of different languages.

Google!

…de Reseller News:

...How many other languages does Google use? Maori is the latest in quite a long line – there are 117 languages currently listed that can be used for the homepage; 118 after you include Maori. Everything from Afrikaans to Zulu, Breton to Welsh, even Klingon and Twi (!). Some, though, look a bit suspect. There’s Elmer Fudd, Pig Latin, Hacker and Bork Bork Bork!, for example. (There are people with way too much time on their hands!)

The Maori version isn’t one of them. I’m not sure if anything has been linguistically created to fit the Google model, but that’s hardly the point. It will be a valuable addition to the language. In fact, it looks like everyone involved has done a fine job. Congratulations. It’s a significant boost for the language and, for those Te Reo-challenged people like me, it certainly makes it a fun and interesting challenge...

Timothy Armstrong

…de la Press & Journal:

Post-graduate student Timothy Armstrong has been named Sabhal Mòr Ostaig UHI’s student of the year.

The Seattle-born PhD student first studied at the college, Scotland’s only Gaelic language college, on a summer short course. He returned as a full-time student in 2002 for a Gaelic immersion course.

Despite not planning to stay any longer than the year-long intensive language course, he completed a BA in Gaelic language and culture and is now researching language planning and the revitalisation of minority languages...

Faktoj kaj Ciferoj

...de la blogo, From the Balcony, de Máirtín Ó Muilleoir:

Some figures to crunch:

The Welsh language TV channel, S4C, gets £90m from London with around another £20m in programmes provided by BBC. Welsh speakers also have a full radio service.

In Scotland, there is £12m for tv programming with BBC providing an additional £8m of services, including Radio na Gaidhlige.

In the South of Ireland, TG4 gets around €35m with RTÉ providing an additional 365 hours per annum. Raidió na Gaeltachta broadcasts around the clock.

In the North, through the Irish Language Broadcast Fund, £3m goes into Irish language programming. BBC NI provides about 17 hours of programming a year, though it recently upped its paltry expenditure from £400k to £900k per annum. Nothing to write home about but by leveraging this money against funds from the ILBF, it can up its Gaeilge content. The BBC also provides around 260 hours of radio programming.

The way forward is for TG4 to truly become a national TV provider, admittedly letting the BBC and UTV off the hook in the North, but dramatically upping its content (and Ulster representation) to service the six counties.

With the Irish language getting more than 100 times less than Welsh, the case for a proper broadcast service in Irish for the North is unanswerable.

Aloysius O'Brien

...de la St. John’s Telegram:

A St. John's man believed to be the last speaker of an obscure dialect of the Irish language died Wednesday morning.

Aloysius O'Brien was 93.

O'Brien, a St. John's farmer, spoke Leinster Gaelic - or Irish of the books - a dialect now extinct in Ireland, which was passed down to him from his Irish-born grandmother.

The Leinster dialect became extinct during the 20th century, and O'Brien was thought to be the last person in the world who could speak it….

Madison Tazu

...de la BBC:

An English-born woman with an Irish background has been named the 2008 Welsh Learner of the Year at the National Eisteddfod.

Madison Tazu, who started learning 10 months ago, received a trophy and £300 at a ceremony in Cardiff Castle.

Although she was brought up in Cardigan and now lives in Cardiff, she said she had earlier rejected the language.

Her next challenge is to learn Spanish and she hopes then to go to Patagonia to help in Welsh schools.

Sankta Gallus

...de la blogo, From the Balcony, de Máirtín Ó Muilleoir:

But two days after the talk on St Gall, Irish language circles are still buzzing about the St Gallen lecture.

One veteran Gaeilgeoir described it as "the best Irish language event I've ever been at". Which isn't bad since most of it was in English.

Anyhow, as a favour, we've put up the striking display boards about St Gall and his colleagues (not St Colmcille) on the web for From The Balcony readers in pageturning format...

.cym

…Wales Online:

Welsh companies should have the right to use .cym as well as .com on their websites, Deputy First Minister Ieuan Wyn Jones said yesterday.

Mr Jones said £20,000 of WAG funding would go towards preparing a formal bid for the .cym suffix to be used on the internet.

In June ICANN, the international body which manages internet domain names, decided to relax the rules and allow bids for suffixes other than the well-known .co.uk, .com and .net endings...

Kenneth Murray

…de la Press & Journal:

The organisation created to maintain and promote the Gaelic language has lost its second senior official in the space of two months.

Bòrd na Gàidhlig chief executive Kenneth Murray has quit after just a year in the job. In a statement, the organisation said the decision was “taken jointly”.

Matthew MacIver had earlier stepped down as chairman to take up a professorship at the University of Highlands and Islands Millennium Institute.

Mr Murray, 46, joined the board from the Forestry Commission last September, two years after moving to Inverness as the commission’s parliamentary and cultural programmes manager and its Gaelic language policy officer. In a statement issued by the bord, Mr Murray said: “I was honoured to have been given the opportunity to lead Bòrd na Gàidhlig at an important stage in its development...

Sankta Gallus kaj Pádraigín Ní hUalacháin

...de la blogo, From the Balcony, de Máirtín Ó Muilleoir:

The Irish manuscripts at St Gallen are the oldest in the world and among the most beautiful depicting in stylish script and with great ornamentation the story of the Gospels.

The Irish monks, who worked under a vow of silence did write small poems and notes in the glosses. One, said Frau Hufenus, wrote "rough parchment, thin ink", giving out about the quality of his tools while another, correcting a poorly finished page, wrote: "too much beer".

Sean-nós singer in residence at the Queen's Séamus Heaney Library, Pádraigín Ní hUalacháin, had put poems from the glosses into music and sang for the packed Cultúrlann audience last night — a courageous and generous act given that her son Macdara was in hospital in Italy being operated on for a broken back suffered during a climbing accident in the Alps. Reports from the hospital were good. Go raibh sé ar ais a sheanléim gan mhoill.

Cuil

...de PC World:

Seeing as how new search engine Cuil.com is, well, a search engine, its founders might have known that people could easily check online the company's claim that the word "cuil" means "knowledge" in Irish. Because, in fact, it doesn't.

Members of an online Irish language forum have been discussing the word and the company's claims of its definition.

They say the word is most often translated to mean "corner" or "nook," but has sometimes been used for "hazel," as in the nut....