The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

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Re: The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Mar 16, 2018 5:37 pm

is a curse considered a personal attack? :evilgrin

if not I think I found a new way of coping


54 Irish curses you won't have learned in school

If your store of swear words as Gaeilge is lacking, try some of these old phrases

Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 11:01

Éanna Ó Caollaí


One question I am sometimes asked as a native Irish speaker is why Irish has no swear words or slang associated with it. The answer of course is that it does, but such words and sayings are rarely, if ever, taught in our schools. Rightly or wrongly, the degree to which we are able to curse and swear with any degree fluency will never be measured in an exam.
And perhaps we are the worse for it. I can’t think of many better ways of learning a language than by celebrating its aesthetic characteristics.
Of course in most cases, the swear words, curses and slang many of us encountered in our formative years first reached our ears outside the classroom.
I remember as a child returning to school after our summer holidays in the west of Ireland armed with an arsenal of words such as crabadán, bobarún and búbaire and, to the amusement of the teachers, phrases such as buinneach shíor ort and a dhiabhal de phogaí among others.
Can you imagine the opprobrium if cursing and swearing were to suddenly feature on the curriculum?
Perhaps we are indeed missing out when it comes to the vocabulary we learn in school. After all, what better measure of determining how proficient we are in a language, than by gauging the varied degree to which we can express our emotions in the heat of the moment when we really want to make a point.
Naturally enough, double standards apply when it comes to cursing or swearing in our everyday speech. As with many social conventions, there are ways around the rules allowing us to forgive ourselves the occasional use of the profane.
Irish-speaking peasants
In Ireland, the word “feck” is so commonly used it is generally considered acceptable and even in the most rarefied company, “arse” is another one that you would probably get away with.

Flann O’Brien once joked in a column in The Irish Times that the average English speaker gets along with a mere 400 words while the Irish-speaking peasant uses at least 4,000.
“Your paltry English speaker apprehends sea-going craft through the infantile cognition which merely distinguishes the small from the big,” he wrote.
“If it’s small, it’s a boat, and if it’s large, it’s a ship. In his great book, An tOileánach, however, the uneducated Tomás Ó Criomhthain uses perhaps a dozen words to convey the concept of varying super-marinity – áthrach long, soitheach, bád, naomhóg, bád raice, galbhád, púcán and whatever you're having yourself.”
Flann O’Brien once joked in an Irish Times column that the average English speaker gets along with a mere 400 words while the Irish-speaking peasant uses at least 4,000.

He went on to suggest that in Donegal there were native speakers who knew so many million words that it was a matter of pride with them never to use the same word twice in a life-time.

While he was mostly writing tongue-in-cheek, he did have a point. Language communicates a culture’s most important norms and influences how we see the world. Irish is no different in this regard and boasts a versatile lexicon symptomatic of a rich oral tradition.

As if to illustrate the point, one word I was delighted to be called recently by my three-year-old nephew was “priompallán”. Look it up in focloir.ie.

For those who prefer be more illustrative in their use of Irish, I recommend a visit to dúchas.ie. The National Folklore Collection there includes the Schools’ Collection an archive of folklore and local traditions compiled by pupils from 5,000 primary schools between 1937 and 1939. A short time spent reading the online collection will have you in stitches.

Loscadh is dó ort
That you may be burned and scorched

Droch chrích ort
Bad ending upon you

Imeacht gan teacht ort
That you may leave without returning

Go dtuitfeadh an tigh ort
That your house will fall upon you

Go mbrise an diabhal do chnámha
That the Devil will break your bones

Droch áird chúgat lá gaoithe
That you may be badly positioned on a windy day

Nár chuire Dia ar do leas thú
That God will never grant you peace

Mallacht mo chait ort
My cat’s curse upon you

Mallacht na baintrí ort
A widow’s curse upon you

Mallacht Dé ort
God’s curse upon you

Go mbrise an diabhal do dhá chois
That the Devil may break your legs

Go ndéana an diabhal dréimire do chnámh do dhroma
That the Devil will make a ladder out of your spine

Fán fada ort
Long may you be astray

Léan ort
Sorrow betide you

Go mbrise an diabhal cnámh do dhroma
That the Devil may break your spine

Go dtitfidh an oíche ort
That night will befall you

Briseadh agus brú ort
Strife and stress upon you

Go ndéanfaidh an diabhal cipín dod’ dhá chois
That the Devil makes splinters of your legs

Dó agus bascadh ort
May you burn and be severely injured

An áit thíos atá ceapaithe duit, a dhiabhal.
It is the place below that is meant for you, you devil

Go ndalladh an diabhal thú
That the Devil may blind you

Lagú cléibh ort
Weariness of heart upon you

Breith i bpoll cúng ort
That you may be caught in the grave

Go stolladh an diabhal thú
That the Devil may lacerate you

Go séideadh an diabhal san aer tú
May the Devil blow you into the air

Lomad an Luain ort
Woe betide you

Nár eirigh an lá leat
That you may not be successful on the day

Go dtachtfadh an diabhal thú
May the Devil choke you

29. A chonách san ort
It serves you right!

Go bhfaghaine bás gan an sagart
I hope you die without a priest

Galar an bháis ort
The disease of death upon you

Nára bheire an mhaidin ort
That you may not see the morning

Nár thagair abhaile slán
That you may not come home safe

Imeacht gan do thuairisc ort
That you may never be heard of again

Go marbhaí an diabhal tú
That the Devil may kill you

Náire agus aithir chugat
That you may be shamed and disgraced

Ualach sé chapall de chré na h-úire ort
Six horseloads of graveyard clay upon you

Imeacht go fánach ort féin is ar do chnapán miúlach
Off with you and your lousy lump

Tuirse ort
That you may tire

Go n-ullamhuighe an diabhal teinne dhuit
That the Devil may prepare a fire for you

Nár a cuire Dia aon crích cóir ort
That God does not grant you a proper end

Go n-imi an droch aimsir leat
That the bad weather leaves with you

Dul go h-olc ort
Bad luck to you

Go mbeire an dá dhiabhal deag leo tú
That the twelve devils take you with them

Go n-imi na seacht diabhail deag atá i n-Ifrionn i’d dhiaidh.
May hell’s 17 devils go after you

Nách mór an diabhal thú
Aren’t you the devil

Is ceann de’s na h-óinseacha diabhail thú
You are one of the Devil’s fools

Mullach do chinn fút
That you may fall on your head

Go dtachtar le d’anáil thú
That you may choke on your breath

Buineach dhearg go dtigidh ort
That you may have red diarrhoea

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-sty ... -1.3011527
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

Postby Rory » Sat Mar 17, 2018 1:27 pm

SmartSelectImage_2018-03-17-10-24-22.jpg


https://twitter.com/USArmy/status/97499 ... 63616?s=19

This has to be seen to be believed. Happy St Plazzies Day (unless you're at the end of the depleted shamrock missiles)

SmartSelectImage_2018-03-17-10-26-52.jpg
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Re: The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Mar 18, 2018 9:33 pm

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The Price of Partition

By Yaqoob Khan Bangash | Viewpoint | Published 2 weeks ago


Yaqoob Khan Bangash is a historian of Modern South Asia at IT University, Lahore and author of A Princely Affair: The Accession and Integration of the Princely States of Pakistan, 1947-55.


Partition is a very modern concept. In olden times, empires ruled the day where motley religions, ethnicities and races lived together, even if often precariously. However, the dawn of the ‘modern’ era, as it is called, led to the rise of the ‘nation-state’ in the aftermath of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. But the ‘nation-state’ concept, while compelling, only achieved partial success till the nineteenth century when several nation-states emerged. Then in the twentieth century the First and Second World Wars heralded a great dismantling of empires which led to an exponential increase in the number of nation-states in the world. For example, at its founding in 1945, the United Nations counted 51 members, which grew to 76 a decade later, 117 by 1965, and 185 by 1995. Today the United Nations counts almost all sovereign nations as its members, with the tally standing at 193 members. Rapid decolonisation after the Second World War was the main reason for the membership of the United Nations to grow so rapidly, and the world saw the rise of several new nation-states.

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October 1947: Musim refugees flee to Pakistan while Hindus flee to India. (INP/AFP)
As empires unravelled, so did the tensions between different ethnic and religious groups. Simmering for decades, they now came to the fore. The imperialists had first nurtured and then kept in check several of these fissures, but news of their departure brought them to the tipping point. Hence, Ireland was divided into Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland in 1921, along denominational lines, the British Indian Empire was divided between Hindus and Muslims in 1947, the British Mandate in Palestine was split into the State of Israel and Palestine in 1948, and North and South Korea came into being in the aftermath of the Korean War in 1953. All these ‘partitions’ created wounds and scars which still exist and haunt not only the inhabitants of these nations, but the whole world.

When partitions were affected, all of them were offered as ‘solutions,’ as the ‘last resort’ and as the ‘best option’ to intractable problems. For example, Ireland was divided because the overwhelming population of the island was Catholic and wanted independence from the mainly Anglican and Protestant United Kingdom. However, the six north-eastern counties, which had Protestant majorities, were ‘unionists’ and wanted to remain within the United Kingdom as opposed to the ‘republican’ southerners. Thus, when home rule was debated for Ireland, it was unclear what powers the Catholic Republicans and the Ulster Unionists would have. Hence, the Government of Ireland Act 1920, which created this partition, led to the Irish War of Independence in 1921, culminating in the Anglo-Irish treaty, which created the Irish Free State in the southern part. Eventually the Irish Free State evolved into the Republic of Ireland which by 1948 cut all constitutional ties to the United Kingdom. But, this ‘solution’ did not ‘solve’ the Irish ‘problem,’ and decades of unrest ensued, with both the majority Ulster Unionists determined to keep northern Ireland a part of the United Kingdom and the minority Republicans fighting for a united Ireland separated from Westminster.

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Similarly, the partition of the Mandate of Palestine by the United Nations in 1948 into the State of Israel and Palestine, which was then transferred to Trans-Jordan, did not offer a lasting solution. Some Zionists were unhappy that their ‘Eretz Israel’—the whole land of Israel — had not been realised, while the Palestinians lost considerable land and property. The uneasy peace which dawned on the region for a couple of decades then culminated in two wars, in 1967 and 1973, where Israel captured most of the remaining Palestine and the Gaza strip, the Sinai peninsula from Egypt, and the Golan heights from Syria. Negotiations which followed only led to a return of the Sinai to Egypt and peace was established between Egypt and Israel, and also Jordan and Israel, but the core issue of Palestine remained and still remains. The partition, which was supposed to forever resolve the issue between the Jews and Palestinians by giving them a state of their own, is still incomplete.

And in Pakistan’s case, the partition in 1947 of British India between Pakistan and India (or Bharat), ended up ensuring that lasting peace could not be a achieved between the two new countries. Predicated upon the fact that one community claimed that it could not live with the ‘other,’ this ‘othering’ seeped into the identity of the communities. So for Pakistan, its identity is inextricably tied to being ‘not India,’ as that was, and still remains, its sole point of departure. Since the partition of British India was not done surgically, and it could not have been done that way in any case, this ‘othering’ created a lot of simmering issues. So while Pakistan was created for the ‘Muslims of India,’ a considerable number of Muslims remained in India. Similarly, numerous Hindus and Sikhs who already lived in the area which formed Pakistan, refused to leave the land of their birth and the home of their ancestors, and remained in ‘Muslim’ Pakistan. But since partition was done on the basis of religion, were Muslims living in India Pakistanis, and were Hindus living in Pakistan Indian? This question has always haunted the minorities on both sides of the Radcliffe Line, and the attitudes of both Islamabad and New Delhi have done little to dispel this notion.

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More than 70 years have passed since the partition of British India into Pakistan and India, and yet it seems that it happened only a moment ago. Any visit to the jingoistic flag lowering ceremony at the Wagah border between Lahore and Amritsar would be testament to Pakistan being a ‘Fort of Islam’ and the strong rise of ‘Saffron India.’ The clash of these two identities not only makes relations between the two nuclear-armed countries difficult, but makes the lives of their citizens more dangerous. Thus, the charge of ‘anti-national’ is almost a synonym for a Muslim in India these days, while Hindus rarely even feature in the national discourse of Pakistan. The reinforcement of identities and the ‘othering’ of one community through partition has led to internally incoherent and weak states, rather than the opposite which was hoped for.

Partitions have always created more problems than they have solved, uprooted more people than they have habilitated, led to more violence than they have quelled, and left deep wounds and scars which will take generations to even understand and grapple with. The cost of partition — be it in Ireland, Palestine, South Asia, the Korean peninsula, or anywhere else — will always be more than its benefit, and will continue to haemorrhage the communities it is supposed to serve. Rather than being a positive, partitions are predicated in the negative, even in intolerance, racism, and jingoism, and therefore can never bring lasting peace and prosperity. In fact, they entangle communities in such a vicious cycle that states would starve their own people — like in North Korea — or forego the benefits of trade and development, as between India and Pakistan, or see the dividends of peace and security, as in Israel and Palestine, just to maintain their often imagined identities and positions.

Ultimately the cost of partition throughout the ages has been that of human suffering, in fact, continued human suffering. Partitions offer a Band-Aid to a developing cancer, but never address the deep-seated core issues. Separation, and that too forced separation, never solves a problem; it only postpones its eruption again, and often in a more bloody form. The time has come that we should begin thinking of options beyond binary separation and towards solutions which are for the benefit and mutual co-existence of the human race.
http://newslinemagazine.com/magazine/th ... partition/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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