I'd LOVE to spend a couple of years in the Cork and/or Kerry Gaeltacht, as that's where "most-ish" of my (Irish) people are from, 'though the Fermoy area "seems" to have been the "seat" of most of my post-Norman/Belgian invasion folk.John wrote:... For what it's worth, here's what the CIA World Factbook says:
> English (official, the language generally used), Irish (Gaelic or
> Gaeilge) (official, spoken by approximately 39.8% of the
> population as of 2016; mainly spoken in areas along Ireland's
> western coast known as gaeltachtai, which are officially
> recognized regions where Irish is the predominant language)
> https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... os/ei.html
For a good taste of how really "alien" the Gaeilge sounds, check this "soap opera" from TG4 Ireland:
Ros na Rún
Ireland, like any other "celtic" place, has never EVER been truly unified.Why isn't reunification the right word? Wasn't Ireland unified underFishbellykanakaDude wrote: > The Loyalists in The North will never relinquish their UK
> affiliation, so the only possibility for real "reunification" (as
> that's NOT the right word, but we'll leave that off for now) is
> for the Loyalists to emigrate "back" to the UK (likely only under
> some variety of duress).
English rule prior to 1922?
It's always been a land of shifting tribal affiliation, backstabbing, cross-border raiding as "political and popular entertainment", and "enemy of my enemy is my friend" alliance and maneuver. <chuckle!>
Those folks can be forced together into "a country" by external powers, but it's not their natural state of being.
But if ANYONE is a good example of how a "country" is a rather "highly viscous fluid" entity, where peoples flow in and shuffle up and flow out and keep right on going, it would be the Old Emerald Isle.
Now, there 'ya got me!That seems pretty certain, doesn't it.FishbellykanakaDude wrote: > There WILL be border "controls" between the Republic and Northern
> Ireland, and there WILL therefore be violence at those
> points.
Now here we have a problem, because generations don't work thatFishbellykanakaDude wrote: ...
> A "fully Irish" Ireland will have to wait
> for at least 2 generations (44ish years) or more likely 4 or 5
> more generations (88 to 110 years), until the "cultural DNA" has
> attenuated sufficiently.
way. In fact, generations work in the opposite way.
If two ordinary people have a bitter feud in their 20s, then forty
years later, when they're in the 60s, the memories of the feud would
have faded, and the two people will have reconciled. But it works the
opposite way with generations.
If two groups have a generational crisis war during the XX20s, then
forty years later, in the XX60s, the memory of the war may have faded
in the minds of the survivors, but for the generations growing up
after the war, the feud does not fade, but is renewed.
That is what happens, and why, and is what will happen as regards Ireland,.. but the "heat" of the "ethnic divide" in Ireland has been reduced to nearly lower than room temperature.I believe that a significant part of the mechanism is as follows:
The survivors of the war are completely traumatized, and spend the rest of
their lives trying to make sure it never happens again.
However, as their children are growing up, there are inevitably stories about the
war, particularly bitter stories about the atrocities committed during
the war. And, not surprisingly, the children in each group never hear
about the atrocities committed by their parents, but only about the
atrocities committed by the parents of the children on the other side.
After the war, during the Recovery and Awakening eras, one side will
inevitably be economically better off than the other, and that adds to
the renewal of the "feud." In the following decades, the traumatized
survivors try to prevent anything serious from happening, but they're
only marginally successful, and once they're gone, a new full-scale
war breaks out.
There simply isn't the energy there, any more (thank Goodnie), to fuel a proper "civil race war" on the island.
Ireland has a weird capacity for dealing with "invaders" by not overly slowly, but not quickly, converting them into being "more native than the natives". The people of the receding ice, the "Fomorians", absorbed the "Partholonians", the first of the "far easterners", who "died off" (meaning, "were coalesced with") and absorbed the "Nemedians", the second of the "far easterners" (Caspian Sea area, apparently), who are followed by the "Bag Men", namely the "Fir Bolg" who were returning Nemedians who had "emigrated" to the east, who eventually absorbed the invading Tuatha De (Danann), yet more "easterners" but this time from not THAT far away (say "Iberia"), who thence in turn absorb the Milesians who then adsorb the Gaels.
..then the Nords, then the Normans, then the Scots, regionally, then the "English", then the "English" again, then again the English.. etc etc etc..
And this particular mish-mash we call "The Irish".
The chaotic impulse that is endemic in the Irish will always define them, whatever they look like, and their odd way of talking will increase and decrease, but will always be that "outside-ness" that links them together. (Gaeilge shows heavy signs of a non-indoeuropean language substrate.)
Éirinn go Brách!
Witness to dehumanization will do that.... One thing I've noticed repeatedly is that people tell me that their
grandparents fought in WW II but they refuse to talk about it.
I believe that it's because they're ashamed of their own actions,
including such things as rape or torture, which are pretty common on
all sides in a generational crisis war.
After all, if you're a soldier and you see a lone girl, and you know that her brother or
father or uncle has just killed all your friends, why shouldn't you
rape her? What have you got to lose? (Ironically, her brother
killing all your friends is just an ordinary act of war, but you
raping her is a war crime. Go figure.) But of course those become
acts of shame when the war ends, but subjects of discussion when they
were committed by the other side.