☯ ☪ ❀
☯ : what do you love about your language?
Oh boy, where do I begin. From an academic standpoint, initial mutation is fascinating; it’s such a stable system in the language, despite, for the most part, reflecting sandhi motivated by a phonological environment which hasn’t actually existed for the better part of two thousand years.
I also really enjoy the way that rhyme works in Irish, as well as its tendency to create meaning not through seperate lexical items, but combinations of a fairly limited set of verbs and prepositions. I also enjoy the subtle distinctions of meaning that Irish is able to convey regarding the existential status of something.
☪ : what do you hate about your language?
The political and emotional baggage which it has acquired over the last century, if not earlier. The fact that seemingly everyone feels compelled, without invitation, to tell you how you’re wasting your time by speaking this language. The knowledge that friends my age almost certainly represent the last generation of traditional native speakers.
❀ : which language(s) would you like to speak fluently?
German, because I find myself struggling through academic prose in German more often than I’d like; also Hebrew, Arabic, and Basque.
