Nationalism. Change from a VSO language to an SVO language and implications.

[roc_abilly]

Anyone looking in.

Yeah, including you Arsefields bunch, Jambo's old 'a team', a for arse.

You know why he can't give a straight answer to the question?

Because white supremacism is a cult. Those in the cult understand "race" in their own, fluid way.

Dogma. Cult.

 

[Electricity]

Fucking moron.

Get a life and a brain.

Edit - I have taken the decision to delete

Articulate your point of view using your own words in an understandable manner.

Total. Gobshite.

I ask you again, what's your definition of race?

 

[Mowl]

Again: when subjected to the simplest questions - Jambo has nothing.

 

[Lumpy Von Talbot]

The funny thing about white supremacists is that just one look at them tends to undercut the notion of a genetic justification for supremacy. Some of them look like a genetic etch-a-sketch. Spartans they aren't. The fellow from the BNP looked like he fell out of the genetic tree and hit every branch on the way down.

It is the same in the US. The white supremacists tend not to lend a lot of confidence in their theory even just looking at them.

 

[roc_abilly]

Perhaps time to get this thread back on topic at this juncture.

In the terms of the recent contributions, we might say that the original intent of the thread was to make the case that the unit that passionate nationalistic feeling is projected onto would be better cast as the Irish language rather than "the white race" or something equally as spurious as that.

Interestingly, we found above that when we investigate the Irish language as a unit for this projection of nationalistic feeling onto it, included or at least very close alongside are certain Arab and African languages, i.e. the rare old VSO languages, strikingly similar to the Irish language.

(In fact, as Dawkins demonstrated on this thread, the genetic evidence corroborates this wider, more inclusive unit, much more so than the racial unit.)

So if we insist of going down this nationalistic road of serving something bigger than ourselves, claiming superiority for it relative to other competing units, would it not be infinitely wiser and more effective to focus on language?

Irish versus English. Or, white versus black. Which choice is more noble? Which choice has greater moral authority? And in fact with respect to any other metric you might think of, would those of nationalistic bent perhaps be better served obsessing about their language, rather than obsessing over "race" or something similar?

 

[Mowl]

The Irish language is all but dead. A tiny percentage of people speak it these days and I often consider the fact that, while Finland and Ireland have many parallels in the last one hundred years, the language factor is totally off kilter. Ireland likes to have the Irish versions of the names of neighbourhoods and streets second to English on her street signs and bus destinations, hardly any Irish people can even pronounce the names, let alone know where they actually are. Language is the primary identifier of most cultures but Ireland has a twisted and broken way of dealing with the loss of her language over the years of British occupation.

I use the Gaelic version of my name, and haven't had a passport with an English version of my name in decades. I wasn't taught any Irish language in the final two years of primary schooling due to John Sullivan not speaking any Irish at all. He also spoke with a slightly British tone due to whatever time he spent over there for whatever reason. In turn, the teachers at secondary school consulted the seven of us who went on to St John's College about the missing years of Gaelic language study and we were summarily punished by being booted out of the class and sent to an empty classroom to study it alone. In time we all complained that our time was being wasted and we wanted to put the 'free periods' of Irish classes to better use seeing as we were all artistically talented and wanted to study art and French. We had no teachers available, so we did it ourselves instead.

This led to my Leaving Cert results containing an N/A after Gaelic: as in, not applicable.

We were being kicked around and made to feel inadequate because of some primary teacher not having the qualifications he ought to have had: English, Irish and Math were obligatory subjects so effectively we all failed the Leaving Cert even though some of us topped the grades of even the best Gaelic speakers. Of that group of seven, another like me had a Father dying in the family unit. His died shortly before mine, but we both suffered in exams due to the weight of a family death as well as the time we had to take off from schooling to tend to his/our father's needs. So in effect, my Leaving Cert results were binned the same day they arrived; my Mam and I opened the envelope, took a look at the results, looked at each other, and I tore the fucker apart and binned it. I started work the following Monday at the National Maritime Museum out in Dun Laoire.

I didn't need any Gaelic there, nor did I need it anywhere else - including the rest of the results they sent me. The piece of paper was a final token of dismissal from the schools I attended for sixteen years. It's hard to have faith in the institutions after a kick in the teeth that, and in many ways it woke me up pretty fast as to how the system deliberately fails so many of its subjects out of hand and without any real reason. So I grew to despise the language until I finally had enough of Ireland and started trying other cities to see which suited me better. Now I speak Finnish - not Irish, as a second language.

This is exactly how Ireland is: doesn't matter how hard you try, how much you sacrifice, how much time you put in to it: you're just meat for the grinder. The exams as such have nothing to do with intelligence, they're about memory capacity. They're used to filter out the non-desirable and excess weight of so many kids' lives. 'There simply isn't room for all of us on the island' was one excuse they offered me. So the examination process isn't about testing your mental abilities, it's process that separates the wheat from the chaff, and it does so coldly and without any emotion.

Nationalism and language in Ireland is at best laughable and at worst disgraceful.

How many of your Irish nationalist telegram/twitter heroes can even introduce themselves in Gaelic? How come you never see or hear any Gaelic slogans at the demonstrations? Why do you have to pay to keep a Gaelic TV channel going when such a small percentage even understand it? Why offer the news in Gaelic when so few tune in for it? Snobbery is one factor. Pig fucking ignorance is another. RTE is on its knees, yet TNaG soldiers on, full of smug bastards patting themselves and each other on the back.

Ireland truly is fucked up nineteen ways from last Tuesday.

There's no winning - only varying degrees of losing.

 

[roc_abilly]

My opinion would be that it should be studied like Latin or Greek, or other dead languages in general.

The point is that spoken or written as it should be, it expresses a particularly Irish mindset, that is different to the Anglo Saxon mindset.

For there is an "otherness" in the language, in its grammar, in the expression of the relation of things. How people and everything in the world relate to each other, and to spirit.

Irish spoken as it should be is melody, in the manner of chord or a melodic line, you have metrics and versification, the old formulaic phrases.

There is a philosophical outlook implicit in the Irish language, an economic and social outlook too.

Language is after all your tool of thought. In Irish, it is the idioms, the grammar, the old phrases, the almost extinct and to our Anglo Saxon minds most difficult Tuiseal Gairmeach, Tuiseal Tabharthach and Tuiseal Ginideach, and all the declensions, that express the complex, subtle, nuances of the Gaelic mind as opposed to the English mind. You see the world through different lenses.

Yes, the Irish language is dead and few speak it. I don't personally think it should be revived, as it is worse just using Irish words within an increasing grammatically English structure, i.e. the recent way the language is becoming anglicised to make it "easier" for people to speak it. Including all these profusion of new words, pre-defining things for people bthrough an always expanding "vocabulary", like wikipedia or Jambo's metapedia - whereas old Irish had a very complex morphology with very few words. It was all about the relations between the few words that were used, expressed through a complex grammar. You had the tools to draw and colour in your own world, as you saw it.

So I think the Irish language is all we have left of Irish culture. So therefore I think anyone concerned to remain "Irish" therefore should put at least some effort into understanding the currents and elements found within the language that made us the people we are.

Think of the implication that there are some people out there who actually think it was our white skin that made us the people we are! What kind of education does someone need to understand that is not the case at all? What is the antidote to such base stupidity? Well the kind of course of study I am suggesting here would be one important element I think.

 

[Lumpy Von Talbot]

Well the reason for the notion of white skin being any kind of evidence of superiority is at root because the people who believe in it simply don't have to do any work to believe in it. They were born white so it suits their ego to assume that's a sign of superiority because they were born white.

It's the cheapest form of snobbery there is and the one that involves the least effort to achieve. Simples. It explains why a fat balding white guy who has never achieved anything in his life feels like reaching for an AR-15 should he encounter a black or asian person with a Phd.

He will want to eliminate the disturbing evidence that rocks his fat white balding underachieving world. That's why racism is so attractive to cheap thugs.

 

[Electricity]

Well the reason for the notion of white skin being any kind of evidence of superiority is at root because the people who believe in it simply don't have to do any work to believe in it. They were born white so it suits their ego to assume that's a sign of superiority because they were born white.

It's the cheapest form of snobbery there is and the one that involves the least effort to achieve. Simples. It explains why a fat balding white guy who has never achieved anything in his life feels like reaching for an AR-15 should he encounter a black or asian person with a Phd.

He will want to eliminate the disturbing evidence that rocks his fat white balding derachieving world. That's why racism is so attractive to cheap thugs.

You're like a fucking wind up doll

 

[Mowl]

You're like a fucking wind up doll

Poor Jambo: he's the single-most anti-white-Irish-people who ever crawled out from under some damp rock in a ditch off the Mullingar bypass.

He absolutely fucking HATES being Irish, by the look of things.

 

[Electricity]

The Irish language is all but dead. A tiny percentage of people speak it these days and I often consider the fact that, while Finland and Ireland have many parallels in the last one hundred years, the language factor is totally off kilter. Ireland likes to have the Irish versions of the names of neighbourhoods and streets second to English on her street signs and bus destinations, hardly any Irish people can even pronounce the names, let alone know where they actually are. Language is the primary identifier of most cultures but Ireland has a twisted and broken way of dealing with the loss of her language over the years of British occupation.

I use the Gaelic version of my name, and haven't had a passport with an English version of my name in decades. I wasn't taught any Irish language in the final two years of primary schooling due to John Sullivan not speaking any Irish at all. He also spoke with a slightly British tone due to whatever time he spent over there for whatever reason. In turn, the teachers at secondary school consulted the seven of us who went on to St John's College about the missing years of Gaelic language study and we were summarily punished by being booted out of the class and sent to an empty classroom to study it alone. In time we all complained that our time was being wasted and we wanted to put the 'free periods' of Irish classes to better use seeing as we were all artistically talented and wanted to study art and French. We had no teachers available, so we did it ourselves instead.

This led to my Leaving Cert results containing an N/A after Gaelic: as in, not applicable.

Did you mean: NG

We were being kicked around and made to feel inadequate because of some primary teacher not having the qualifications he ought to have had: English, Irish and Math were obligatory subjects so effectively we all failed the Leaving Cert even though some of us topped the grades of even the best Gaelic speakers. Of that group of seven, another like me had a Father dying in the family unit. His died shortly before mine, but we both suffered in exams due to the weight of a family death as well as the time we had to take off from schooling to tend to his/our father's needs. So in effect, my Leaving Cert results were binned the same day they arrived; my Mam and I opened the envelope, took a look at the results, looked at each other, and I tore the fucker apart and binned it. I started work the following Monday at the National Maritime Museum out in Dun Laoire.

I didn't need any Gaelic there, nor did I need it anywhere else - including the rest of the results they sent me. The piece of paper was a final token of dismissal from the schools I attended for sixteen years. It's hard to have faith in the institutions after a kick in the teeth that, and in many ways it woke me up pretty fast as to how the system deliberately fails so many of its subjects out of hand and without any real reason. So I grew to despise the language until I finally had enough of Ireland and started trying other cities to see which suited me better. Now I speak Finnish - not Irish, as a second language.

This is exactly how Ireland is: doesn't matter how hard you try, how much you sacrifice, how much time you put in to it: you're just meat for the grinder. The exams as such have nothing to do with intelligence, they're about memory capacity. They're used to filter out the non-desirable and excess weight of so many kids' lives. 'There simply isn't room for all of us on the island' was one excuse they offered me. So the examination process isn't about testing your mental abilities, it's process that separates the wheat from the chaff, and it does so coldly and without any emotion.

Nationalism and language in Ireland is at best laughable and at worst disgraceful.

How many of your Irish nationalist telegram/twitter heroes can even introduce themselves in Gaelic? How come you never see or hear any Gaelic slogans at the demonstrations? Why do you have to pay to keep a Gaelic TV channel going when such a small percentage even understand it? Why offer the news in Gaelic when so few tune in for it? Snobbery is one factor. Pig fucking ignorance is another. RTE is on its knees, yet TNaG soldiers on, full of smug bastards patting themselves and each other on the back.

Ireland truly is fucked up nineteen ways from last Tuesday.

There's no winning - only varying degrees of losing.

 

[Mowl]

No - it was printed N/A - 'non-applicable'.

Which is rather accurate seeing as when the letter containing my Leaving Certificate results arrived, it was opened, glanced at just once, then immediately binned.

It wasn't applicable to me, so I forgot about it and got on with my life.

 

[Electricity]

No - it was printed N/A - 'non-applicable'.

Which is rather accurate seeing as when the letter containing my Leaving Certificate results arrived, it was opened, glanced at just once, then immediately binned.

It wasn't applicable to me, so I forgot about it and got on with my life.

Never heard of it. Sounds like you didn't bother showing up for the exam or something

 

[Mowl]

Never heard of it.

There's a lot going on in this world you're never heard of, Jimmy.

Sounds like you didn't bother showing up for the exam or something

No - that was the math paper: I showed up, signed the paper, then handed in two blank sheets of A4 and walked out the door.

So my final grade for math was NG.

So you were close, but still no cigar.

I had no issues about flunking math - I had a crazy violent bastard of a teacher. John Cotter, he had (funnily enough) two mustaches: one regular wide one with another Hitler-like one sitting on top of the wider one. Whenever he thumped me, I laughed at him and called him Adolf. He hated my guts, which was fine - I was hardly his biggest fan. But for all the thumps he gave me over the years, I gave him one back after he followed me out of the examination hall. He demanded to know what I was doing, so I replied that I'm walking out of the exam: fuck you, fuck math, and fuck you again.

He grabbed my hair after I turned away so I turned around again and smashed him on the bridge of the nose with a right-hander. I stood my ground and he got up saying he was going to call the cops. I said that seemed a good idea. Hitting your pupils was by then finally made illegal. No cops, no tears goodbye, no celebration. Just the feeling of happiness knowing I'll never see the cunt again.

Which turned out to be incorrect: one time I was passing through Inchicore and spotted his baby-blue VW Beetle parked outside a barber shop. So I took a peek in but he wasn't there. Then I spotted a set of door-bells for the flats above the shop: one had his name on it, so a few days later I got an old tin of red oil paint from the garden shed and went back to Inchicore: the car was parked outside, so I took the lid off the paint and used a corn flake box to cover it, then placed it carefully on the roof of the Beetle, slid the cardboard out from under the tin, cleaned up any drips, then left.

So at some point he spotted the tin on his roof, probably lifted it up and then the contents drenched his car.

VNI 566 - that was his registration number, don't ask me how I remember it but I do, and I'm by no means a numbers man: math bores the hoop off me.

But I've never once been called on to use Pythagoras's theorems any more than I've needed long division, multiplication, or equations.

As a professional drummer, I have my own way of counting things. The options are infinite. But what matters most is 'owning' time. The slight variations that tell you that this is a human being playing, not a metronome. Many drummers fail in the studio because the can't summon up the same looseness of time for a recording as they might do for a live performance. These aren't just different ways of doing things, they can also be programmed on digital drum machines like my Roland Human Rhythm Composer, which has a chip/function that few other drum machines have: you can program it to make 'human' errors in timing, dynamics, and volume, among other things. When it's set to random, it sounds just like a real player playing real time sans metronomics.

Of course, not every rhythm is a strict 4/4 measure with half-notes and quarter notes - even down to sixteenth and thirty-second notes.

Some are odd-time signatures: 5/4 (just like a 4/4 except you add another beat) or sevens (definitely my favourite odd-time signature) or like this video: which has two different sections in a loop: the first is a 9/8 (X4) and the second is a 13/8 (X2). The drummer here is Mark Guiliana, a Berkley graduate. On bass is Jasper Hoiby and on piano is Ivo Neame. See if you can count along in time. See if you can nail where the changes from ninth to thirteenth notes are.

 

[Electricity]

Well I'm still a bit baffled by what N/A means as a Leaving Cert grade (and you haven't been much help).

I suppose considering now that you've said that you're aware of NG you can't be mistaking the two.

 

[Mowl]

N/A - non-applicable.

NG - no grade.

It's not hard, Jambo.

 

[Electricity]

N/A - non-applicable.

NG - no grade.

It's not hard, Jambo.

Yes, I know what it stands for (ignoring your usage of both not and non), I don't know what it means. As a leaving cert grade, I could tell you what NG means.

Did you not have to sit the Irish exam, or something, is that what you mean?

 

[Mowl]

Anti-white, like the toothpaste.

 

[Electricity]

I'll tell you a story about my skool dayuzz the Mowl.

So I'll preface it by saying that my mother used to absolutely freak out (irrationally and hysterically) if any bad report came from the school about me (my behaviour). I'll also say that my parents were separated, my mother a single parent, a "deserted wife", so maybe the freak-out was related to discipline, or lack thereof, no father in the home and so on.

But frankly I was a bit of a dosser, naturally.

We had, each class, I can't quite remember what it was called, a teacher who's responsible for it (the class) overall. They were our civics teacher as well and you had a class with them every Friday afternoon I think it was.

To be honest with you, mine, Mr. [name redacted] was kindof cool, laid back, most kids (including me) liked him, but at the same time, it was ultimately him who was the source of the reports being sent home to my mother (which she then had to sign as proof that she had received them) and like I said, any bad behaviour that week would be reported and she would absolutely freak-the-fuck out when that happened, it was a nightmare.

So one day we're in class, I think it was science or science related, in a classroom with no windows (designed that way) and I'm sitting right beside the light switch and during the teacher speaking it gets into my head - I wonder if I could turn off the lights and back on again without anyone really noticing. And it just became an irresistible temptation to me Mowl.. So I did it.

The lights went out pretty quickly (plunging the entire room into darkness) but not so fast coming back on again.. clunk.. clunk.. clunk.. went the fluorescent lights as they came back on. And there's me, with my hand still practically on the switch Bart Simpsoning it saying - I didn't do it.

"Dawson! Get out!!"

So I'm kicked out of class and I'm standing outside and normally of course the corridors, outside of class, would be filled with people, kids milling around going to their next class but now they're empty.

And what happens, a teacher comes whistling along carrying a bunch of books in their arms and who is it? It's my fucking civics teacher, Mr. [name redacted].. of all the bad luck.

Obviously he can't miss me and he comes over and asks me what's the story? And I have to tell him what happened and that I was kicked out of class.. and all I'm thinking of is the fucking report.

Now, I think Mr. [name redacted] did have an inkling of my home situation and that I was a smart kid, a decent kid albeit a bit of a messer and I remember he just said to me - Your shoelace is undone. And I looked down and then CLATTER! He walloped me with the books across the ear. And then he went on his way.

So I knew (after he had assaulted me) that there wasn't going to be a report sent home and it would be forgotten about. And I thought - Sowund

 

[Lumpy Von Talbot]

There's a lot going on in this world you're never heard of, Jimmy.



No - that was the math paper: I showed up, signed the paper, then handed in two blank sheets of A4 and walked out the door.

So my final grade for math was NG.

So you were close, but still no cigar.

I had no issues about flunking math - I had a crazy violent bastard of a teacher. John Cotter, he had (funnily enough) two mustaches: one regular wide one with another Hitler-like one sitting on top of the wider one. Whenever he thumped me, I laughed at him and called him Adolf. He hated my guts, which was fine - I was hardly his biggest fan. But for all the thumps he gave me over the years, I gave him one back after he followed me out of the examination hall. He demanded to know what I was doing, so I replied that I'm walking out of the exam: fuck you, fuck math, and fuck you again.

He grabbed my hair after I turned away so I turned around again and smashed him on the bridge of the nose with a right-hander. I stood my ground and he got up saying he was going to call the cops. I said that seemed a good idea. Hitting your pupils was by then finally made illegal. No cops, no tears goodbye, no celebration. Just the feeling of happiness knowing I'll never see the cunt again.

Which turned out to be incorrect: one time I was passing through Inchicore and spotted his baby-blue VW Beetle parked outside a barber shop. So I took a peek in but he wasn't there. Then I spotted a set of door-bells for the flats above the shop: one had his name on it, so a few days later I got an old tin of red oil paint from the garden shed and went back to Inchicore: the car was parked outside, so I took the lid off the paint and used a corn flake box to cover it, then placed it carefully on the roof of the Beetle, slid the cardboard out from under the tin, cleaned up any drips, then left.

So at some point he spotted the tin on his roof, probably lifted it up and then the contents drenched his car.

VNI 566 - that was his registration number, don't ask me how I remember it but I do, and I'm by no means a numbers man: math bores the hoop off me.

But I've never once been called on to use Pythagoras's theorems any more than I've needed long division, multiplication, or equations.

As a professional drummer, I have my own way of counting things. The options are infinite. But what matters most is 'owning' time. The slight variations that tell you that this is a human being playing, not a metronome. Many drummers fail in the studio because the can't summon up the same looseness of time for a recording as they might do for a live performance. These aren't just different ways of doing things, they can also be programmed on digital drum machines like my Roland Human Rhythm Composer, which has a chip/function that few other drum machines have: you can program it to make 'human' errors in timing, dynamics, and volume, among other things. When it's set to random, it sounds just like a real player playing real time sans metronomics.

Of course, not every rhythm is a strict 4/4 measure with half-notes and quarter notes - even down to sixteenth and thirty-second notes.

Some are odd-time signatures: 5/4 (just like a 4/4 except you add another beat) or sevens (definitely my favourite odd-time signature) or like this video: which has two different sections in a loop: the first is a 9/8 (X4) and the second is a 13/8 (X2). The drummer here is Mark Guiliana, a Berkley graduate. On bass is Jasper Hoiby and on piano is Ivo Neame. See if you can count along in time. See if you can nail where the changes from ninth to thirteenth notes are.

That's just unbelievable, supernatural connection between the players No idea about the technical aspects of it but it is just like a higher language in music.