Language of histories

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Declan
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Language of histories

Post by Declan »

I've just heard a fascinating talk on Irish and the different information available in English media and in Irish media (the programme from the 16th of Glór Anoir). One thing that has always infuriated me, that he also mentions, is that it's almost impossible to find a history of Irish people and the enormous social change that at the turn of the 19th century the vast majority of the country spoke Irish, and only 100 years, the vast majority suddenly spoke English, my mother's family included (as is extremely obvious from the surname, one that definitely comes from the Aran Islands or Conemara, normally the former). The only reference I ever got in school, was as part of Stair na Gaeilge in the old Irish course for Leaving Cert., that mentioned how English was the language of the Church and politics and in any country that Irish people emigrated to, so Irish was considered necessary for the economic advancement of children. That part of the Irish course was constantly pilloried as being "rote learning". Ironically, it was also the only bit of linguistics I ever encountered at school except for "Phonetics" in Senior Infants to help us spell, as we had a topic called, "Gaeilge mar teanga cheilteach" and something on Indo-European languages and Irish, and Irish borrowings from Latin, Norse and English. I found it fascinating, but then again, it's all gone now. He also talks about the GAA and the comprehensive histories and biographies written in Irish, not one of which is referenced in "The GAA: A People's History", a leather-bound copy of which was given to the Queen.

So, I was wondering, does this sort of thing happen with other minority languages, or is it unusual for Irish as a minority language to have such literature? Another interesting phenomenon he mentions is the switch from "Anglo-Irish literature" to refer to Yeats, Swift and the like, to simply "Irish literature". In fact, I have a poster of "Irish writers" on my own wall, and I'm fairly sure that Peig Sayers or Tomás Ó Criomhthain or anyone else are nowhere to be found! It's not that these people aren't known, Peig is infamous for her tale of woe, the name is probably better known than Colm Tóibín or Anne Enright, but yet she's forgotten.

In conclusion, I just came across an article (Are chuala tú riamh trácht ar Dennis Ritchie) that amuses me for two reasons, firstly because I most certainly heard of Dennis Ritchie and secondly because I didn't hear about his death in the English media, despite the fact I use either the language he co-wrote or a program written in it every single day of my life for years! It's nice to find articles about interesting topics, as Irish language media is often exclusively focused on Gaeltacht issues (extreme example from the talk: at some critical time in WWII that I forget, an Irish paper had the headline "Lack of donkeys in Ros Muc!"), and it could possibly be a further example of something that I would miss out on if I hadn't enjoyed Irish at school!
[quote]Great wit and madness near abide, and fine a line their bounds divide.[/quote]

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linguoboy
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Re: Language of histories

Post by linguoboy »

It's not the same, but other countries have "orphan literatures" as well. One case I know rather well is Korea, which also experienced a rather rapid linguistic shift during the 19th century, only in this case it was in the language of the elite (who were traditionally educated in Literary Chinese) rather than the populace (who always spoke Korean).

Modern Korean literature courses focus heavily on the early surviving compositions in Korean and largely ignore contemporaneous Chinese-language works. More scholars abroad who learn Literary Chinese do so in order to study Chinese classical literature and thus have no interest in reading anything from Korea (or Japan or Vietnam, for that matter). The situation is a bit better in history, since it is literally impossible to do any pre-modern historiography without having to deal with Chinese-language sources. (Of course, this probably means a lot of historians of Korean end up getting steered away from earlier periods in order not to have to do that.)

The Latin-language literature of the Europe isn't in quite the same boat, since the history of vernacular literature in the West is richer and goes back further. Still, there's the same sort of narrow national focus that considers only texts in the vernacular as expressing the true genius of the people. Something like three-quarters of European publishing during the 15th century was in Latin, but you'll look in vain for most of the works in the syllabi of national literature survey courses.

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