Letero por Caoimhín

...de la Irish Voice:

While the Northern Ireland High Court’s ruling in the case of Caoimhín Mac Giolla Catháin, upholding what may be considered the last Penal Law, the Administration of Justice (Language) Act of 1737, stipulating that “all proceedings in courts of justice within this kingdom shall be in the English language” is disappointing, it is heartening to hear that Caoimhín’s attorney will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

While Caoimhín himself is second to none in speaking, using and promoting the Irish language, the strongest argument against his appeal will likely be the lack of Irish use among the population as a whole.

Indeed, while this noxious law was imposed by Britain over 270 years ago, it is upheld only by Irishmen.

At present, there is no one who hates the Irish language who isn't Irish himself, from either the north or the south. The judge in this case is named Séamus Treacy.

Northern Ireland’s new cynically appointed and culturally-challenged culture minister is surnamed McAusland (Mac Auslainn). Anti-Gaeilge laws only serve the ideologies of a few on the island and are no longer of any concern to anyone in Britain.

One recalls that the only obstacle to the Irish language’s official status in the EU was Ireland itself. After all the hair-pulling and hand-wringing in Dublin, it passed painlessly through Brussels with a pen stroke.

A recent documentary on Irish network TG4, Gaeilgeoirí -- Naimhde an Stáit, exposed and confirmed that in the 1970s the Dublin government was actively hostile to the language.

Things have changed considerably in this regard. The present Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen and the Deputy Consul General Breandán Ó Caollaí here in New York are shining examples of this new positive direction.

The closing of the two last Irish language newspapers, Lá Nua and Foinse, within a year’s time is disastrous.

Two years ago, Ireland’s national airline, Aer Lingus, extended the 1737 Act to its employees, forbidding Irish-language announcements on flights in and out of Belfast. This is nothing short of scandalous.

Other businesses, on the other hand, most notably Bus Éireann, a private concern, have long engaged in business practices implementing the first official language and are to be commended.

Some organizations, other than those specifically formed for promoting the language, have a pro-Gaeilge constitutional ethos. The GAA and Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann are examples, although some branches have done better in this regard than others.

This past year, the New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee unveiled its new sponsorship seal.

Sadly, this instrument is entirely in English without a scribble in Irish.

Here, New York’s guardians of Irishness and fervent devotees of the Apostle to Ireland chose to use a language that did not exist even in England at the time of Patrick, and ignored the language in which the Irish first heard the Gospel as a result of his ministry.

This squandered opportunity only confirms to me that committee is out of touch and that their annual spectacle, save for a handful of participating organizations, is little more that an opportunity for suburbanites to parade their residual genetic material up Fifth Avenue. (Although the archdiocese seems to hold it as the Eighth Sacrament!)

Other organizations here have done much better, namely the Irish American Unity Conference, the American Conference for Irish Studies and the New York Irish Center.

The Brehon Law Society was able to closely support Caoimhín’s effort. The rest of us can best support him by using Irish whenever possible and calling upon Irish social and cultural organizations, particularly those in which we are associated, to publicly use Irish.

While redesigning signage and letterhead might be costly, the use of Irish on web pages such as those previously mentioned is much easier and more thrifty.

This Internet visibility may encourage others to follow and would weaken the argument that no one uses Irish anymore.

If Irish fails to survive the 21st century, it will because the Irish themselves have exterminated it.

Moyle

...de la Balymoney Times:

Eleven bilingual street nameplates are to be erected in Moyle District Council area.

Addressing the news during a recent Building Control Services meeting, members heard that five signs would be in Irish language and six would be in Ulster Scots translations.

The five names in Irish will be Broombeg View, Cushendall Road, Kilns Road, Mill Street and Ossian Avenue.

The six names in Ulster Scots will be Causeway Road, Castlenagree Road, Clogher Road, Feigh Road, Isle Road and Runkerry Road.

Kornvalalingva Reviviĝo

…de la Chicago Tribune:

For a member of a supposedly extinct species, Craig Wetherill does a pretty good impression of the living. He responds to premature reports of his demise by launching into a local fairy tale.

"Y'n termyn eus passys, 'th era tregas yn Selevan den ha benyn yn tyller cries Chi an Hordh. . . .

"The story he's recounting is "John of the Ram's House." The language he's speaking is Cornish. And the battle he's waging -- to keep alive a Celtic tongue thousands of years old -- is in full swing here at the westernmost tip of England, in the scenic county of Cornwall.

It's not an easy fight when your enemies include the United Nations, which has officially declared Cornish to be dead, and the ignorance of a world more apt to associate Cornish with the words "game hen" than "language."

Or when plenty of your fellow Brits don't realize that Cornish was flourishing on this rainy island ages before Anglo-Saxon interlopers arrived and changed the course of linguistic history...

Kunveno en Nov-Jorko por Lingvaj Rajtoj!

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

Kate McCabe of the Irish American Unity Conference confirms to me that Glucksman House of New York University has agreed to host her [Saturday] October [10] meeting in regard to the denial of Irish language rights in the north of Ireland.

Civil liberties lawyer Michael Flanigan is expected to attend from Belfast and the Brehon Law Society should provide strong support through Domhnall O'Cathain (and others) who observed the recent disgraceful knockback of the court case seeking to overturn the 1737 prohibition on An Ghaeilge in the North's courts.

The language seminar will allow a wider audience to learn about the scandalous denial of civil rights in the North, 11 years after the Good Friday Agreement promised "robust action" for Irish....

Irlanda Kurso ĉe Housatonic Community College

...de la Bridgeport News:

A course in Elementary Irish is among the new courses being offered this fall at Housatonic Community College.

The course will cover the phonetic system of the language, basic vocabulary and fundamental grammatical principles. All linguistic skill areas will be taught — listening comprehension, reading, speaking and writing.

Orientation to the geography, history and culture of Ireland and Irish-Americans also will be part of the course.

The instructor will be John Feeney, who has taught Irish for the last 12 years.

“For the past 150 years, many people have said the language would be dead in a short time, yet it survives,” Feeney said. “What better way to learn the customs and culture of a people than to learn the language and how they express their ideas and views of the world and life.”...

Kornvalaj Kuzoj

...de The Union:

Two walking reservoirs of Cornish knowledge are reminded of their heritage by the sights and history of western Nevada County during this week's 15th Gathering of Cornish Cousins.

Professor Philip Payton is one of world's leading experts on the people of Cornwall and teaches Cornish studies at the University of Exeter, which has a campus in the county on the southwestern peninsula of England.

Vanessa Beeman is an anthropologist and Cornish language expert who is keeping the tongue alive.

Both noted western Nevada County's contribution to Cornish culture Wednesday.

“The whole reason we're here is because of the great adventure of Cornish immigrants of the 19th century,” Payton said. “It was principally hardrock miners” looking for work in places including Grass Valley, Canada, South America, Australia, Africa and India.

“Their skills were much in demand,” Payton said. “If you wanted a mine to work, you hired the Cornish.”

While many Gold Rush mining towns boomed and then died, Grass Valley and Nevada City may have survived because of the Cornish, Payton said.

“They built communities that lasted” wherever they went, he said.“

The miners took their way of life to places,” Beeman said. “There's a saying in Cornwall: Wherever in the world there's a hole in the ground, there will be a Cousin Jack at the bottom of it.”

Beeman's father was Cornish, and she learned to speak the language with him while studying Cornish culture.

“Cornish has been recognized as a minority language, and many of the children want to learn it to retain their heritage,” Beeman said.

“It's a very poetic language. We gather in pubs and talk it.”Beeman became a bard — a promoter of Cornish culture — after studying the Cornish language. She recently was elected Grand Bard of the Cornish Gorsedd, a bard committee.

She lives in Cornwall, which is somewhat independent from the rest of Britain.

“It's not part of England,” Beeman said. “England thinks it is, but Cornwall doesn't. It's never been officially brought into England. It's been a gradual absorption.”

An Bórd Snip Nua: Morto de la Irlandalingvo?

…de la Kerryman:

The proposed abolition of the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs could wipe out the Irish language, according to the manager of Comharcumann Forbhartha Chorca Dhuibhne (CFCD) Gearóid Ó Brosnacháin.

"One proposal in the McCarthy Report is phasing out of the Irish Learners Scheme over the next two years. This scheme supports households in the Gaeltachts who keep Irish students during the summer. The impact of that will be to put an end to all the Irish summer colleges as we know them with all the associated impacts. The Irish colleges alone generate €6 million to this local economy annually and if you take into account that CFCD handles about ten per cent of the market nationally you could say that these colleges are worth €60 million a year to all the Gaeltacht areas," he told The Kerryman this week.

...de la University of Ulster:

Sweeping spending cuts being considered in the Republic pose a threat to the Irish language in Northern Ireland and the Donegal Gaeltacht, according to a University of Ulster academic who is the new head of Comhaltas Uladh, one of Northern Ireland's best-known Irish language groups.

Niall Comer, a lecturer in Irish and member of Ulster’s UK top-rating Research Institute for Irish and Celtic Studies, says Comhaltas Uladh works closely with all levels of the education sector and is responsible for the allocation of funding to five major summer colleges in the Gaeltacht areas of Donegal.

But as the Republic digests the so-called ‘An Bord Snip’ report, which proposes massive public spending reductions to save Euro 5.3 billion annually and axing more than 17,000 public sector jobs, Mr Comer argues the Irish language is in the firing line

….de Kevin Myers en la Irish Independent:

[T]he Irish language itself became a Government Protected Zone (GPZ). The Gaeltacht naturally became an extended GPZ. The islands became a GPZ. History became a GPZ. Even turf-burning became a GPZ. Moreover, this insanity became a perverse template for all sorts of other state projects. Mail and phone services were already GPZ. In the 1940s, all public transport became a GPZ. Air travel then became a GPZ. Arts became a GPZ -- indeed, the arts were hardly seen to be arts at all unless the State gave them a subsidy…

Even economic development was graded around a GPZ hierarchy.

The plain people of Ireland got the IDA. The semi-pure in the west got the Shannon Development. But the purest of the pure got Udaras, the job-creator for people who spoke Irish in a GPZ, a local shop for local people. In more recent times, Udaras has operated within the very ministerial embodiment of the GPZ, the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, which has a budget of €40m, with some 240 civil servants: almost one for every native Irish native speaker left….

…. The Irish language is effectively dead in its GPZ. The preposterous and Haugheyite confection, Aosdana, has achieved nothing whatever in its GPZ. CIE is a mouldering corpse in its GPZ. Every town now has its own empty GPZ, namely an arts centre, with its deserted craft shop offering (but not selling) environmentally sound raffia condoms, seaweed dental floss, and hand-crafted soaps made from pigfat. Government bribes have resulted in two multi-million pound GPZ stadiums in Dublin -- both of which will be empty, most of the time. And the fortune spent on the GPZ that is Olympian sports has produced just one bronze medal -- in bee-keeping.

The great dream is over. It's finally time for Ireland to be a normal country, one in which governments simply govern. Let the Great McCarthyite era begin.

Leslégot

…de Le Télégramme:

En juillet, la commune a accueilli deux séjours «nature, découverte de l'environnementet des chants», sur le terrain de Leslégot. La particularité de ces camps de vacances était l'immersion totale dans la langue bretonne. En effet, avec la signature de la charte «Ya d'ar brezhoneg», Plescop a pu bénéficier d'un partenariat avec l'Ubapar (Union bretonne pour l'animation dans les pays ruraux).

Du 5 au 11juillet, ce sont les plus jeunes, âgés de 6 à 8 ans, qui ont ouvert la session. Ils ont été remplacés la semaine dernière par seize pré-ados de 8 à 11ans. Confiés à des animateurs bilingues, Fanny, Valérian et Amélie, les enfants ont baigné dans la culture bretonne une semaine entière.

Patagonio

…de News Wales:

The Welsh Assembly Government has further signalled its commitment to the Welsh language by announcing that the Welsh language project in Patagonia is to continue for a further three years.

Announcing that the project will continue until 2012 whilst meeting a group of Welsh Language students from Patagonia over breakfast, the Heritage Minister Alun Ffred Jones said:

"I’m pleased to announce that we have been able not only to continue funding this unique and worthwhile project to maintain the Welsh language in Argentina, but we have also been able to provide a small increase in funding."

The Welsh language project in Patagonia is an initiative funded by the Welsh Assembly Government to boost and sustain the Welsh language in the Chubut Province of Patagonia in Argentina...

Cripil Inis Meáin

…de la Irish Times:

Small and big worlds collide in Martin McDonagh’s Cripil Inis Meáin, and no more so than in the Irish language translation of the play, performed during the Galway Arts Festival’s first week by An Taibhdhearc.

The venue was Amharclann Chois Fharraige in Seanscoil Sailearna, Indreabhán, within clear view of the Aran Islands framed by a setting sun.

The national Irish language theatre has been borrowing locations since a fire at its premises in November, 2007, and set designer Dara McGee made the most of the Sailearna school stage where a week of performances were sold out every night. Translator Micheál Ó Conghaíle recalls, in his programme notes, how he once worked in a shop similar to that run in the play by the Osbourne sisters (Bridie Ní Churraoin and Bríd Ní Neachtain) selling plugs of tobacco, bags of tea and eggs, and collecting story after story from customers in return....

éirigí sur la Kazo de Mac Giolla Catháin

...de éirigí:

...Arsa urlabhraí éirígí Seán Mac Brádaigh: “Arís eile, feiceann muid institiúidí na Breataine in Éirinn ag diúltú d’Éireannaigh a bhféiniúlacht agus a dteanga, an uair seo ag úsáid iarsma 200 bliain d’aois de na Péindlithe le lucht labhartha na Gaeilge a chur faoi chois.

Cuireann cinneadh na hArd-Chúirte teachtaireacht shoiléir nach bhfuil aon seanphíosa leatromach reachtaíochta thar teorainn, agus gur féidir conarthaí agus coimitmintí idirnáisiúnta a chaitheamh amach nauir atá géarleanúint na nGaeilgeoirí i gceist. Déanann sé arís ceap magaidh de bhéalghrá rialtas na Breataine do choincheapa na cothroime agus na héagsúlachta.”

Lean Seán ar aghaidh: “Ní raibh Caoimhín ar an chéad Ghaeilgeoir a thug dúshlán do leatrom leanúnach stát na Breataine ar phobal na Gaeilge, ní bheidh sé ar an duine deiridh.

“Chuir an pobal seo teachtaireacht láidir amach le blianta beaga anuas nach nglacfaidh siad le himeallú cultúrtha acu siúd a bhrúnn a rún coilíneach ar an tír, teachtaireacht shoiléir nach luífidh na craipithe fúthú choíche.”

"Politika Armilo"?

…de la Times:

David Mitchell, the comic who has recently discovered a previously unknown Scottish ancestry, has condemned as “absurd” the amount of public money being spent on projects to promote the Gaelic language.

The star of the cult sitcom Peep Show and That Mitchell and Webb Look, who was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, learned of his Celtic lineage after taking part in the BBC’s genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?

With the help of researchers, he traced his paternal roots to Sutherland where his family were sheep farmers.

Now Mitchell has used his personal blog to claim that the language which his ancestors may have spoken is being used as a “political weapon” by politicians to whip up nationalist sentiment. He said he believed money being lavished on Gaelic would be better spent teaching other languages.

In a regular feature of his blog called Soapbox, he said: “I am uneasy about spending too much public money or time on a language which is not now far above the level of a private code...

Amnesty kaj la Kimralingvo

…de la Western Mail:

Welsh language campaigners have been angered by a blog posting from Amnesty International staff which suggests their concerns are insignificant in comparison the situation in western China.

The posting, which Cathy Owens, the programme director of Amnesty International Wales, confirmed she had a hand in writing, appeared both on Amnesty Blogs and the Welsh language web forum maes-e.

It reads: “I wonder if those who are constantly bickering and cackling about the Welsh Language LCO and who should legislate on the Welsh language should not consider taking a step back for a moment and for once look beyond the borders of little Wales.

“The ‘Welsh Not’ is already ancient history for us Welsh speakers but that could not be said about life in Xinjiang today...

Letero al Elfyn Llwyd, MP