Re: Hello to you all!

From: Frank George Valoczy [mailto:valoczy@VCN.BC.CA]

> On Mon, 4 Mar 2002, Keith Gaughan wrote:
>
> > Here in Ireland, people are shocked when a foreigner can
> actually string
> > two words of Irish together. The sad thing is, the foreigners are
> > usually better and more proud of the language than the natives, in
> > which I sadly number :-(
>
> A mate of mine here was stationed in Belfast when he was in
> the army, and
> a couple of years back a friend of his from Antrim came out to visit
> us. Now me being completely ignorant of what's what there, when her
> birthday came around (while she was here) I went through
> great difficulty
> to find out how to write "Happy birthday" in Irish, and I got the cake
> with that written on it...and then she told me she didn't
> actually know
> any Irish....
Sad, innit, when people don't even know what "Lá Breithe sona duit" means.

<comment type="political" action="ignore">
Having said that, they were probably from the 'other side', i.e. the
Unionist community. Whereas on the Republican side, you've some chance
of meeting people who can speak the language (even if the Ulster dialect
sounds odd, and remember - I'm from Sligo so I should be used to it),
but in the Unionist community, the language is avoided like the plague.
Stupid bloody politics.
</comment>

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