Translating the thumped.com forums interface to Irish (1 Viewer)

[pete]

Was staggered with how much Welsh I heard spoken when I was in Angelsea this year
Just people walking about

Mad jealous of them

We were in Caernarfon last year for a night waiting to get the ferry back to Dublin the next morning. Was really taken with how much of a living language it was there. We were in a pub for dinner and drinks and the staff would deal with us and then when talking to each other just switch back into Welsh, thought it was very cool.

Compared to being in the Donegal gaelteacht this summer and I asked someone there who was giving us a tour but who was also a teacher how widely spoken it was by locals and was told "not very." Got chatting to a few other younger people who told us that they used to speak it to their grandparents but have lost it a bit since they passed away.

There has been a huge Welsh language music scene for decades.
Punk, indie, rap, plus many modern genres using their language that is thriving.
They have great fun with it and had had to fight hard to save Welsh before that.
A real success story.

Compare that to us -
"An wil cead agaim dul go dti an letris??" (sic).
The state's terrible guardianship of the Irish language ruined it for many.
Apart from trad genres there is fairly little music with Irish vocals.

Happy to blame the state to a point
But we have to accept some of this ourselves

We don't learn Irish, and we don't learn European languages to a level you might expect given our longstanding EU membership
There's a laziness factor here at some level.

The people who continued to speak irish largely were in traditionally poorer areas so youths would have been more likely to leave the gaeltacht in the routine reccessions / famine events.


Conversly

I was in a room full of people recently, all dubs born and bred and they all had great Irish.

Irish in (non-gaelscoil) schools is basically taught as a dead language, like Latin - it's all rote-learning pre-prepared translations. We feel obliged to preserve it as part of our cultural heritage, but really there's no practical value to actually speaking it, so this is compromise we've settled on

Ceapaim go mbeidh sé ceart go leor ar an nós, an geailge. Tà a làn teanga 's cultur 's rudaí mar sin insteach, í do chroí, í do ceann.

Not very good Irish, but it's there.

I’ve read a few theories that language revivals tended to be more successful in countries where a wider section of society (ie not just the poorest/most isolated) still spoke the language (ie wales, Catalonia) and where it was a clear badge of difference in the context of a multinational/multicultural kingdom/state etc.
the popular enthusiasm for Irish dwindled after independence in the free state/republic, while Irish continued to grow in the north in 50s-90s etc.

Also my own gut sense is our inability to speak other languages well comes from the Anglosphere effect, plus the focus on teaching Irish (badly) to the exclusion of other languages at primary level for the past 100 years

I'm in the process of automatically translating the entire UI here to Irish right now. 270 of 10,600+ phrases done so far. I am absolutely shit at irish so won't know if any mistakes have been made and will happily accept any fixes.

Click the language chooser link down at the bottom of the page to switch from English to Irish.

 

[pete]

Sonraí Cuntais​

This is going to be so worth the money.

 

[pete]

About 10% done so far.

 

[seanc]

Oh here we go

 

[pete]

25% done so you should be seeing quite a few changes by now...

 

[pete]

For those wondering, the translation is being done by your friend and mine, GPT4, so this could end very, very badly.

 

[seanc]

lean ar aghaidgh pete.

Táimid sástamach.

I'm sure that's a word.

 

[pete]

lean ar aghaidgh pete.

Táimid sástamach.

I'm sure that's a word.

all dutch to me

 

[pete]

33% done. Have to stop now but I'll try to get the rest done tomorrow.

 

[seanc]

Don't get me started on the Dutch.

 

[seanc]

btw, this is brilliant pete.

 

[pete]

It's something I have absolutely no use for myself, but since it should only end up costing under 30 quid to get 10,000 words & phrases done... why not?

 

[Deadmanposting]

A NATION ONCE AGAIN, A NATION ONCE AGAIN......

 

[pete]

Should be mostly done now.

 

[ernesto]

Iontach

 

[seanc]

Tá mé ag fanacht.

 

[Deadmanposting]

Should be mostly done now.

Baill o Dhia ar an obair, @Peadar

 

[pete]

i have no idea what any of that means so i'm going to assume each one roughly translates as "I'm renewing my subscription right now!"

 

[ann post]

I'm paying in punts

 

[Deadmanposting]

Ceapaim go bhfuil dha subscriptions agam


Anyways, I love how Chrome keeps asking me to translate the forum back into English

Just another tool of the Imperialist colonisers!