I love studying languages and think Irish is fascinating, but it has easily fewer than 100,000 people who actually use it and even fewer who use it every day. It's just about as necessary to learn for communication as Navajo or Sioux.
Political correctness is the pettiest form of casuistry.
ἡ δὲ κἀκ τριῶν τρυπημάτων ἐργαζομένη ἐνεκάλει τῇ φύσει, δυσφορουμένη, ὅτι δὴ μὴ καὶ τοὺς τιτθοὺς αὐτῇ εὐρύτερον ἢ νῦν εἰσι τρυπώη, ὅπως καὶ ἄλλην ἐνταῦθα μίξιν ἐπιτεχνᾶσθαι δυνατὴ εἴη. – Procopius
Ummaka qinnassa nīk!
*MySmiley*
ἡ δὲ κἀκ τριῶν τρυπημάτων ἐργαζομένη ἐνεκάλει τῇ φύσει, δυσφορουμένη, ὅτι δὴ μὴ καὶ τοὺς τιτθοὺς αὐτῇ εὐρύτερον ἢ νῦν εἰσι τρυπώη, ὅπως καὶ ἄλλην ἐνταῦθα μίξιν ἐπιτεχνᾶσθαι δυνατὴ εἴη. – Procopius
Ummaka qinnassa nīk!
*MySmiley*
So the Irish government has basically imploded.
- 23/01/2011 04:47:10 PM
1764 Views
I am now confused
- 23/01/2011 05:34:31 PM
1128 Views
You do realize Britain is pretty much the envy of the Western world at the moment?
- 23/01/2011 06:27:05 PM
1156 Views
Re: You do realize Britain is pretty much the envy of the Western world at the moment?
- 23/01/2011 06:34:47 PM
1093 Views
I did. There was more violence than in ours, that's true (ours have none so far, knock on wood).
- 23/01/2011 06:41:34 PM
1057 Views
Re: I did. There was more violence than in ours, that's true (ours have none so far, knock on wood).
- 23/01/2011 06:43:41 PM
1009 Views
Those protests were only violent by British standards.
- 23/01/2011 11:54:15 PM
1186 Views
What protests?
- 24/01/2011 07:26:49 PM
1133 Views
Re: What protests?
- 24/01/2011 07:28:40 PM
987 Views
Re: What protests?
- 25/01/2011 09:23:17 AM
1125 Views
There's a new objection
- 25/01/2011 11:38:25 AM
1039 Views
I didn't object...
- 25/01/2011 11:47:11 AM
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And Britain had to live with the Conservative Wilderness for 15 years before it could get there *NM*
- 24/01/2011 02:43:16 AM
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Should I start chiming in on Norwegian politics now that I'm here...? 
- 24/01/2011 12:42:03 AM
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- 24/01/2011 12:42:03 AM
1021 Views
Why not?
- 24/01/2011 08:49:07 AM
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'Cos I doubt you'll like what I have to say, for one thing.
- 26/01/2011 01:55:13 AM
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That's been a while coming, hasn't it? Cowen seems to be losing it.
- 23/01/2011 05:48:30 PM
1062 Views
Certainly. he's been on dodgy ground for a couple months.
- 23/01/2011 06:27:27 PM
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Re: Certainly. he's been on dodgy ground for a couple months.
- 23/01/2011 06:33:26 PM
1067 Views
Re: Certainly. he's been on dodgy ground for a couple months.
- 23/01/2011 07:19:03 PM
1173 Views
Re: Certainly. he's been on dodgy ground for a couple months.
- 23/01/2011 07:57:05 PM
1017 Views
Re: Certainly. he's been on dodgy ground for a couple months.
- 23/01/2011 09:29:03 PM
1135 Views
Re: Certainly. he's been on dodgy ground for a couple months.
- 23/01/2011 09:46:20 PM
1092 Views
I think Adams is an Irish citizen, and not a British one.
- 23/01/2011 11:45:34 PM
1052 Views
I found out something else today which makes it even better.
- 24/01/2011 10:37:45 PM
1235 Views
I was reading your post and going "what about the Chiltern Hundreds"?
- 24/01/2011 10:44:32 PM
1034 Views
Oh, alternatively we could elevate him to the House of Lords.
- 26/01/2011 11:08:44 PM
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Awesome idea. Something like "Baron Adams of Londonderry", I'm thinking. *NM*
- 27/01/2011 07:54:26 PM
513 Views
We made his arch-rival a Lord, after all, so it would only be fair.
- 28/01/2011 08:26:15 AM
1007 Views
Here you go
- 25/01/2011 12:55:33 PM
1155 Views
well, the only interesting thing in swedish politics is a wikileaks document and the reactions...
- 23/01/2011 06:21:00 PM
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What is inappropriate about trying to keep out barbaric unskilled people?
- 23/01/2011 10:59:53 PM
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- 26/01/2011 07:46:19 PM
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The inappropriateness is the generalisation in the claim
- 23/01/2011 11:16:52 PM
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Generalizations are inappropriate when they are disproven by statistics, and appropriate when proven
- 24/01/2011 07:33:14 PM
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I've looked into the statistics a bit more.
- 24/01/2011 09:11:52 PM
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I take it you're talking about the Middle East in its most narrow sense here.
- 24/01/2011 09:56:22 PM
1062 Views
... the fact that they are asylum seekers, and their skill certainly shouldn't matter in that case.
- 24/01/2011 07:08:14 PM
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- 26/01/2011 07:46:19 PM
1056 Views
Hopefully they'll stop using Irish officially as a way to cut down on unnecessary costs.
- 23/01/2011 10:57:08 PM
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I'd support that
- 23/01/2011 11:26:20 PM
1079 Views
Ironically, if you de-officialised Irish you could get EU money to help preserve it.
- 23/01/2011 11:48:14 PM
978 Views
But why, why?
- 24/01/2011 08:35:43 PM
964 Views
Because it's the only thing justifying their insistence they're not British?
- 24/01/2011 10:03:54 PM
1021 Views
- 24/01/2011 10:03:54 PM
1021 Views
But all language learning should be purely voluntary (after what parents teach their children).
- 25/01/2011 03:05:28 AM
997 Views
What, so you don't think students in high school should be taught foreign languages?
- 25/01/2011 06:34:21 PM
1030 Views
Irish is the mother tongue of about 7,000-15,000 people at most.
- 26/01/2011 05:04:00 AM
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Wikipedia says it's more like 40k-80k.
- 26/01/2011 06:41:41 PM
1422 Views
And Elaine, Stephen, or any other Irish people here: do feel free to comment. *NM*
- 26/01/2011 06:42:36 PM
512 Views
*NM*
- 26/01/2011 06:42:36 PM
512 Views
More to the point, are YOU interested in learning Irish?
- 26/01/2011 05:15:18 AM
969 Views
Calling Ireland the new Sodom and Gomorrah, are you?
- 26/01/2011 06:02:05 PM
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- 26/01/2011 06:02:05 PM
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I don't think it's as fun as Sodom and Gomorrah, at least not post-crisis. 
- 26/01/2011 09:48:54 PM
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- 26/01/2011 09:48:54 PM
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Re: I don't think it's as fun as Sodom and Gomorrah, at least not post-crisis.
- 27/01/2011 08:42:21 PM
952 Views
- 27/01/2011 08:42:21 PM
952 Views
Presumably because they agree with J.R.R. Tolkien and Tómas Sæmundsson about language's importance.
- 24/01/2011 10:16:05 PM
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So Australians and New Zealanders are really English then? Austrians are just Germans?
- 25/01/2011 03:01:14 AM
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I never said I agreed 
.
- 25/01/2011 08:19:11 AM
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.
- 25/01/2011 08:19:11 AM
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I would suggest that a distinct dialect does the job just as well
- 25/01/2011 02:23:59 PM
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The thing is, people who feel really strongly about that usually insist it's a separate language.
- 28/01/2011 04:20:57 PM
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It's really more about having a unique silly costume to wear at Miss Universe pageants.
- 26/01/2011 05:09:10 AM
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You're confusing what we sell to gullible American tourists with what we actually value . *NM*
- 28/01/2011 04:15:01 PM
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. *NM*
- 28/01/2011 04:15:01 PM
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What the hell happened to the Celtic Tiger Country? *NM*
- 24/01/2011 05:47:12 AM
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The Celtic Tiger is dead, Ireland had a GDP contraction of 14% in the last two years.
- 24/01/2011 01:47:06 PM
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It's still there, but it aimed a bit too high and got a bit scorched.
- 24/01/2011 10:07:36 PM
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