Seonaidh wrote:Dear CS,
I would hazard a guess that your mother-tongue is American English, not Gaelic, as you now seem intent on learning it (not something that most people need to do with their mother-tongue).
I am not familiar with "identity poetics": what is it? (or what are they)
There is no language that is "phonetic" - or even phonemic, though some are obviously more so than others. English is not very phonemic when compared with more "regular" languages, such as Gaelic or Spanish, though it may well be more phonemic than French. It is, perhaps, NOT a good idea to come to a language with some pre-conception that it will be "a challenge" - it's almost a recipe for failure.
Incidentally, as Illinois is not particularly famed for being a Gaelic-speaking area, what measures are you thinking of taking to become proficient in Gaelic? Are you able to get Gaelic recordings - coupled with text - for pronunciation practice? Are you thinking of following a specific course? Have you got access to Gaelic text-books? Is Gaelic offered as a subject at your college?
Anyway, there are many here who are willing to lend a hand with bits of Gaelic etc., so welcome! Or, as I'm sure you'll know already, Fàilte!
To get you going -
Tha mi ag ionnsachadh Gàidhlig - I'm learning Gaelic
Now, have you got access to recorded Gaelic where you can work out how that would be pronounced?
Actually, I've been working through Beag air Bheag, Hippocrene's (MacLaren) Beginner's Gaelic, TY Gaelic (which I sadly bought without the audio, thinking I'd figure it out on my own), TY Gaelic Conversation, and just starting to work though akerbeltz and An Litir Bheag.
I'm basically a language tourist - all the same, Gaelic's always seemed to stump me. If I actually stuck with all the languages I've spend some varied amount of time learning, I'd know French, Icelandic, Classic Greek, Irish, and Hindi... Instead, I know Old, Middle, and Modern English and what Latin I can remember. (It's been about four years since Vergil, five since Catullus...) Bottom line's that I trip up on Gaelic's orthography - Latin's a cinch, and Old English's pretty simple. But, I've been hitting the recordings harder, so I'm hoping to be conversant sooner rather than later. (I've gotten back to my theatre/acting days with memorization techniques!)
As for identity poetics, the explosion's really come on due to globalization, but it's been around as a side-effect of nationalization for awhile. The epics actually have strong moments of identity poetics. The Illiad does a great job of identifying the "Greek" way of doing things, plus religious aspects. It's basically just poetry that tells the rest of the world about your culture(s). It serves that "education" half of art (where "entertain" would be the other half). It's a great time for Gaelic resurgence outside of Scotland (and, I suppose, the Gàidhealtachd of Canada).
For my own part, this is why I call Gaelic my mother tongue (or, if you prefer the other "parent," lingua patriae). I grew up in a suburb of Chicago with a lot of Korean, Chinese, Polish, Russian, and Jewish friends - who respectively knew Korean, Mandarin, Polish, Russian, and Hebrew. In high school, a lot of my friends of German ancestry took German - French took French, &c. (I took Latin 'cause my dad's a bit of a classicist, and I love Greco-Roman mythology.) I don't discredit American culture, but I believe strongly that we should remember where we came from. It's the coalescence that makes America a great country - but, as John Locke teaches us, we're the sum of several parts.
foaileag: Thanks!
