Jan. 13th, 2003 02:48 pm
Irish lessons
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muckefuckSomehow, I managed to forget not only how gifted Owlet is with languages, but how interested she is in them. Her strongest foreign language is Russian and I tend to think of Russophiles as culture vultures, not language geeks. But at the Bakery on Saturday night, after a spirited discussion of usage (where I did my best to advance the descriptivist case--but what chance did I have trying to convince an editor?), she happened to ask me how hard it would be to learn Irish.
I considered this a moment and said, "Maybe for you it wouldn't be that difficult." I then launched into a rather technical explanation of a surprising parallel between Irish and Russian. (In short, they both share a basic contrast between unpalatalised and palatalised consonants. In Russian, they're called "hard" (tvjordyj) and "soft" (mjagkij), respectively; in Irish, "broad" (leathan) and "slender" (caol).) Having mastered this distinction in Russian, she has a leg up on most English speakers when it comes to learning one of the most difficult aspects of Irish pronunciation.
Still, I warned her that I've known at least a half-dozen people (including myself) who have talked about learning Irish, but only one who's actually done it. (Oddly enough, he's a Mumbai native.) I mentioned some of its funkier features (forgetting entirely to talk about one of my favourites, the conjugated prepositions!) Far from being detered, she assiduously memorised all the Irish phrases I could remember to teach her. (Inevitably, I got one of these wrong: it's mo mhuirnín, not *mhuirín. Gabhaim pardún agat!)
In fact, she did this not only for Irish, but also German and Welsh. Every hour or so on Sunday, she would turn to me, say carefully "Schreckgespenst, Rhiannon, Arianrhod, Llew Llaw Gyffes, fy anghariad, fy annwyl", and wait for my corrections. By the time we said goodbye, there weren't any. Who wouldn't love to have a student like that? Now you see why I felt like I had hardly begun to say what I wanted to her!
(BTW, I promised her the URL for Focal na Lae, a damn handy site for Irish I just stumbled across recently. You less-academic types might want to check it out for the Curse Engine. Note, a chuisle mo chroí, that mo "my" can be substituted for a in the list of terms of endearment. They both happen to take the same initial mutation.)
I considered this a moment and said, "Maybe for you it wouldn't be that difficult." I then launched into a rather technical explanation of a surprising parallel between Irish and Russian. (In short, they both share a basic contrast between unpalatalised and palatalised consonants. In Russian, they're called "hard" (tvjordyj) and "soft" (mjagkij), respectively; in Irish, "broad" (leathan) and "slender" (caol).) Having mastered this distinction in Russian, she has a leg up on most English speakers when it comes to learning one of the most difficult aspects of Irish pronunciation.
Still, I warned her that I've known at least a half-dozen people (including myself) who have talked about learning Irish, but only one who's actually done it. (Oddly enough, he's a Mumbai native.) I mentioned some of its funkier features (forgetting entirely to talk about one of my favourites, the conjugated prepositions!) Far from being detered, she assiduously memorised all the Irish phrases I could remember to teach her. (Inevitably, I got one of these wrong: it's mo mhuirnín, not *mhuirín. Gabhaim pardún agat!)
In fact, she did this not only for Irish, but also German and Welsh. Every hour or so on Sunday, she would turn to me, say carefully "Schreckgespenst, Rhiannon, Arianrhod, Llew Llaw Gyffes, fy anghariad, fy annwyl", and wait for my corrections. By the time we said goodbye, there weren't any. Who wouldn't love to have a student like that? Now you see why I felt like I had hardly begun to say what I wanted to her!
(BTW, I promised her the URL for Focal na Lae, a damn handy site for Irish I just stumbled across recently. You less-academic types might want to check it out for the Curse Engine. Note, a chuisle mo chroí, that mo "my" can be substituted for a in the list of terms of endearment. They both happen to take the same initial mutation.)