Between reading all sorts of Vindications of the Antiquities of Ireland (John Keogh, 1748), Dissertations on the Ancient History of Ireland (O'Connor, 1753), and essays on the Antiquity of the Irish Language (Vallancey, 1772 -- and others) -- I did what I have been told I'm a "pro" at and engaged in some more social networking by having lunch with one of the most senior professors at the School of Law (going on 30 + years here at QUB after securing degrees from Oxford). Seems the professor went on Easter Pilgrimmage in the early seventies where he met up with a chap from Cambridge (Brian Lambkin) and hit it off - becoming life-long friends and Godfather to Lambkins only son. Mr. Lambkin was - no less - one of the first to have a go at opening up Irish Medium Education schools in Northern Ireland as was Headmaster of one of the first Irish Medium secondary schools here. Needless to say, I am bound and determined to get to this Brian Lambkin fellow through this professor so that I can get firsthand accounts of what it was like at the begining - a sort of historical context of the beginnings of Irish Medium education! So to put a first time down payment on the selling of my soul (of sorts) for this plan I concocted, I invited the professor out to lunch.
Dr. John Stannard is quite a lovely fellow with lots of stories to tell about his family and his students. He's also very British - proper at every turn - peppering in assorted English colloquialisms such as "pigeon hole" (i.e. mail slots) - which is where we were to rendezvous for our lunch - and huggy buggy (a term he used to explain a close spot in the restaurant between two tables). We had an in depth discussion on the difference between American and British English such as use of the term "check" for "bill" (I was treating him to lunch and said I'd get the check) - bill (as in dollar) and "note" (as in pound), check (as in book) and "checque" (the proper was of spelling it). It went on for a good five minutes - leaving me to think of Irish playight George Bernard Shaw and his concern for what he termed was the 'vagaries of English spelling' -- ah, the Shavian alphabet - gotta love it. Not only did we marvel over the divergent choice of vocabulary (where some words mean different things), but also the pronunciation and spelling of words. All in all, it was very enlightening conversation on how the American English is considered by many, afterall, to be properly understood as a dialect of the English language. Needless to say, I refrained from engaging in the topic of British colonization of American and historical linguistics -- afterall, we were only there for a two hour lunch. We would have had to make it a dinner date!
As to the raging discourse on the origins of the Irish language - it was generally thought by some that the Irish language is a compound of the Celtic, and old Spanish, or Basque. There is a similarity with Iberno-Celtic and Hebrew, Persian, and other oriental dialiects where portions come from the Phoenecian, Carthaginian or Punic, the Aeolian, Doric and Etruscan, and from those, were formed the Latin language (i.e. Irish is a very old language). Even more remarkable - something I've never come across - is that there are many of the same words of old Iberno-Celtic and the American Indian dialects spoken in North America, specifically the Algonquin language. Some critics say it is the other way around -- that Irish came from those languages - however, it cannot be disputed that the Irish language was not known, nor was it recorded to have been used anywhere else in the world besides Ireland, the Highlands of Scotland, and the Isle of Man -- and must therefore be considered an original language. I'm more inclined to believe the latter supposition. But, of course, I may be a bit biased.
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