{"id":7549,"date":"2022-05-07T18:56:10","date_gmt":"2022-05-07T08:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/?p=7549"},"modified":"2023-12-04T12:08:42","modified_gmt":"2023-12-04T02:08:42","slug":"language-is-powerful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/language-is-powerful\/","title":{"rendered":"Language is powerful"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been researching Gaeilge and Wadawurrung languages for a project. During invasion and colonisation languages of origin were prohibited. On pain of jail in many cases. We can forget the power of language given our lives are now connected to a global world, mostly. And it’s now that global world that is reconnecting language for some, including me.<\/p>\n

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I’ve always been jealous of my sister <\/span>Siobh\u00e1n<\/span><\/span>. She has an Irish accent on the a in her name. It’s called a s\u00edneadh fada<\/em>, a long accent. She uses it now, but not when she was younger. Mum and Dad were keen to fit into their new country. From a large Irish immigrant family with seven children, Siobh\u00e1n was the only one with grammatical accent. All us kids were born here.<\/span><\/div>\n

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\"five

Four of the sisters and a nibling in Kenmare, Ireland in 2017<\/p><\/div>\n

Lightbulb went off for me today. <\/span>I do have s\u00edneadh fada<\/em>, more commonly now called simply fada<\/span>. My name, Erin, in Gaeilge (Irish) is \u00c9ireann*. Exploring my cultural language has given me a passion for language I’d not known before. For the land I am from and the land I live on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I was telling my sisters today about my discovery and asked if they wanted to study the language with me.<\/div>\n

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My sister Colleen said “I’ve gotten get through Spanish first. Dan (son) says I sound like a 1950s scholar, terribly polite.”<\/div>\n
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That reminded me that when I was in Bali, a million years ago the women laughed when I said ‘Hello’ or ‘Thank you’. I laughed along with them and asked if I was terrible. They said “No, not terrible. Royal!”<\/div>\n

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Siobh\u00e1n rejoined that when she was in Paris her friend told her she had just asked for a quill and scroll.<\/div>\n

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Next sister told a story about Italy where, instead of asking for a francobollo (stamp), she had asked for a pappagallo (parrot). She got neither!<\/div>\n
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So I’ll change my name informally for now. A longed for fada awaits me!<\/div>\n
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*note: it might also be \u00c9irinn but I have to settle somewhere!<\/em><\/p>\n

EDIT: It turns out my sister Siobh\u00e1n is a total rebel. It’s not on her birth certificate, she just decided to start using one. I’m in awe of one so anti-authoritarian. She said “It just felt like it belonged… no point in having a name no-one can pronounce if you cant have some fun!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Language is power<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7550,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23,24],"tags":[203,204],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7549"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7549"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7966,"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7549\/revisions\/7966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}