I didn't have any good ideas about what to blog about tonight, so I asked Travalon, but he had no ideas either. Then I did DuoLingo, and that got me to thinking: once upon a time, Irish Gaelic seemed like such a mysterious language. When we went to Ireland, I bought a bunch of stuff with Irish writing on it because it seemed so cool. Now, after years of studying it, I'm ready to throw it at the wall. What is up with this spelling??? I was always a really good speller in English, like spelling bee level, but in Irish? Forget it! There's sort of a pattern, but half the time I have no idea what these words sound like anyway because I've only ever seen them in print. And then sometimes when a number is specified, then the noun is singular, like I got an exercise wrong because I said "ten fingers" instead of "ten finger"... but then I got another exercise wrong because I said "three brother" instead of "three brothers." What?? Where's the consistency? I'm reminded of the time I showed Rich and Kathbert the future tense of the verb "to get," which is something like "gheobhaidh" - please do not hold me to that spelling - and asked how they thought it was pronounced, which of course is "yoey." Which would be SO MUCH easier to spell!! Kathbert said, "No wonder nobody knows this language - it has a death wish!" I can't figure out if it's DuoLingo, with its smug little green owl and annoying timed trials and tests where I get every answer right and still score 79%, or just the language that I hate. Maybe I should try French on DuoLingo and see if I feel just as murderous. And of course the good folks at DuoLingo show no inclination to create a Basque module, so I could see if that made me just as angry. I'm not sure it would; Basque is a very different language, but it is a very logical one. Irish is just... Irish.
Famous Hat
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