When Conan interviewed Irish actor Andrew Scott, he reminisced about his appearance on Irish language soap Ros na Rún a few years back.
I’ve seen that clip a few times (you might need subtitles), but what was new to me was this clip from his show Conan O’Brien Must Go. He refers to this scene in the Andrew Scott interview above.
Hilarious guy. Well done, Conan!
He’s not the only celebrity to appear on the show. Stephen Fry appeared on it in 2011!
See more of Ros na Rún here.
Tá seic do chiste ($ 2.5 milliún) curtha i dtaisce againn trí roinn Western Union tar éis ár gcruinnithe deiridh maidir le do chiste. Níl le déanamh agat ach teagmháil a dhéanamh le Stiúrthóir Western Union, an Dr. Ferdinand Umeh trí sheoladh ríomhphoist, tabharfaidh sé treoracha duit maidir le conas do chiste iomlán a fháil.
“WESTERN UNION”
You’d think that after going to all the trouble to hack a mail server the spammers would realise that 99% of people in Ireland speak English and the vast majority don’t speak any Irish at all.
Gmail picked it up as spam anyway. Better luck next time.
Accents, everyone has one but some characters have more than one, and writing them on a Mac can be hard unless you know how.
I really only need one type of accent, the “sine fada” in Irish that goes over the vowels. They look like this: á, é, ó, ú and í.
For a long time I used Option-key using an Irish keyboard map I got off Justin Mason years ago. I haven’t used it for some time now and every now and again I wonder if there’s a better way of doing it using the standard keyboard maps on a Mac.
Turns out there is.
This page explains how to use the accent menu, but you can also use “dead keys” to type accents.
The accent menu is dead simple. Press the key down for a little longer than usual and a menu will appear with the accents required. Press the corresponding number and your accented character appears!
The dead key approach is probably faster however. Use the keyboard viewer to see your keyboard layout. I have a large split Microsoft keyboard and I’m using the British PC layout now so when I hit the Option key the accents are highlighted.
If I want to type “I like to eat cake” in Irish, and not “I like to eat shit”, I must use “Option-e” followed by “a” to get “á” in one word:
“Is maith liom cáca a ithe.”
I’m sure by now you’ve realised just how important accents are in daily life. It’s the difference between delicious chocolate and something that looks similar but tastes quite different. Yeah, you really needed that mental image didn’t you? Sorry. 🙂
You should hear what some people make of my name. There are classes devoted to pronouncing it before I arrive at destinations. 🙂
YOLO, an acronym that I’ve only ever heard on Reddit, stands for “You Only Live Once”. Does anyone actually use it in real life?
If you’re talking to some young hip Irish person try saying NASA to them. That’s YOLO in Irish!
Nil Ach Saol Amhain!
They’ll really know what you’re talking about. Honest. Everyone’s saying it over here.*
* No not really. Thanks BreakfastNT for the translation!
Beidh Stephen Fry ar Ros na Rún anocht ar TG4. Looking forward to watching it! (via)
Well, this is a surprise. One of my .ie email addresses got a very targeted phishing email. It was so specific that it was actually written in Irish! It wasn’t directed at me, but at a list owner address at linux.ie.
I wonder if the spammers know how many Irish people could actually read their email easily? It’d certainly be easier for most people to read in English.
Aire
Tá mé an tUasal Patrick KW Chan an Stiúrthóir Feidhmiúcháin agus Príomh-Oifigeach airgeadais Hang Seng Bank Ltd, Hong Cong.
Tá mé togra gnó brabúsaí leasa choitinn a roinnt le leat;
Baineann sé leis an aistriú suim mhór airgid.
Fuair mé do tagairt i mo cuardach a dhéanamh ar dhuine a oireann mo chaidreamh gnó molta.
Má tá suim agat i obair liom teagmháil a dhéanamh liom mo trí r-phost príobháideach (mrpatkwchan52@yahoo.com.hk) le haghaidh tuilleadh sonraíDearbhófar do fhreagra túisce chun an litir seo a mhór.
An tUasal Patrick Chan
E-mail: mrpatkwchan52@yahoo.com.hk
I suppose it was bound to happen now that Google translates text into Irish. Well done to Gmail for marking it as spam!
You’ll already know about the Irish version of Jump Around by Des Bishop if you’re a regular reader here, but if you have missed previous episodes, please watch the last episode of “In The Name Of The Fada”. It’s on RTE 1 tonight at 10:15pm. Sky+ is set to record it here.
We just watched the 5th episode in New York and Boston and totally enjoyed it. That Korean guy in Times Square had a brilliant grasp of Irish even though he’d never been to Ireland. I’m looking forward to the last episode, even if it does make me feel embarrassed that I’ve forgotten so much of the language…
“Ta sé fucking brilliant!”
External links:
“Léim Thart” le Des Bishop ag canadh ag Oireachtas na Samhna 2007 i gCathair na Mart. It’ll be on RTE 1 tonight on “In the Name of the Fada” at 10:15pm if you want to catch a probably better version. I can barely make out any of the song in any of the Youtube videos of his performances I watched this morning!
Fair dues to him for taking on the Irish language. Takes a foreigner to show the Irish how to make it popular! 🙂
A friend emailed me regarding my post about Dingle signage commenting on Eamonn O Cuiv’s surname and how likely it would be for him to change his name to O Caoimh. His email prompted me to search and I found this interesting titbit.
An Leiriu Shimpli simplified the Irish spelling system by eliminating extraneous letters from a word or surname. Thus, O Seaghdha became O Se and O Laoghaire became O Laoire. However, the only ‘simplification’ in all of the thousands of Gaelic surnames to add a foreign letter (in this case ‘v’ was the adulteration of O Caoimh to O Cuiv, a very recent introduction made within the last three generations.
Irish surnames are the oldest permanent surnames in Europe and O Caoimh is one of the most ancient, becoming permanent by the end of the 10th century.
According to this page the “O Caoimh” surname first appeared in the 11th century and has an interesting history.
O’Keeffe, and Keeffe, are the anglicised versions of the Irish O’Caoimh, from caomh, meaning ‘kind’ or ‘gentle’. The original Caomh from whom the family descend lived in the early eleventh century, and was a descendant of Art, King of Munster from 742 to 762.
PS. Thanks Derek!
