Supposedly some sort of Celtic Studies blog

Potential ideas for books I'd like to write include German (and possibly French) specifically for people wanting to read academic Celtic studies texts in it. Like the "German for Musicians" book I have but "German for Celticists" I suppose. And also maybe an Old Irish-Modern Irish dictionary if no-one else has done it by the time that I'd feel confident enough with my Irish (of numerous time periods) to do that.

Going to be starting Scottish Gaelic in 2028 👍🏻

Thinking about either starting Manx or coming back to Breton before I start Scottish Gaelic though.... perhaps I'll revive my Breton again so i can have some sort of competency in all the Brythonic languages, although I do really really want to do Manx too.

The only Gaulish word I know is "curmi" which means ale/beer and I suppose some people would say that's the only word you need to know.

SO TIRED of seeing posts like "don't hate immigrants and non-white people because they have good food / they're our doctors / they're our essential workers / etc."

Okay but they are also our friends and neighbours and our family and you should love other people even when they aren't providing a service to YOU.

My family and other immigrants/descendents of immigrants are allowed to be here because they are HUMAN not because of the labour they offer.

I realise that people are saying those things to be anti-racist/anti-xenophobic and that they have good intentions but it's still annoying.

"Welsh has no word for yes or no" always seems a bit strange to me. Because yes there's no one single Welsh word that is used for "yes" or "no" that directly translates to all the English uses of "yes"/"no". But the Welsh words we use instead still mean "yes" or "no". They would still translate to "yes" or "no" in English.

Like, "ydw" as an answer literally means "I am" but that means "yes" essentially, yes? Like you'd still translate it to "yes" if you were translating a Welsh text to English.

• "Wyt ti'n mynd?" "Ydw, dwi'n mynd" -> original Welsh
• "Are you going?" "I am, I'm going" -> more literal translation 
• "Are you going?" "Yes, I'm going" -> translation that keeps the tone/feel the same between the two languages

The "I am" in the English translation sounds more emphatic like "yes, I definitely am going!" whereas it doesn't sound emphatic in the Welsh. Like it just translates to "yes" in this context.

The "everyone in Wales speaks English anyway" argument is stupid for many reasons (children who haven't learned English yet, recently arrived immigrants from a non-English-speaking country, etc.) but even with bilingual Welsh-speakers there are definitely those whose preferred language is Welsh. There are people who find it easier to use Welsh and are much more comfortable in Welsh than English. Because it's their first language. I know several people like this. Those people still deserve to have everything available to them in Welsh, even if they are also technically fluent in English too. Bilingual/multilingual people can still have languages that they find easier to use.

So excited thinking about doing a semester in Ireland, but the process of studying abroad and all the paperwork and stuff feels really daunting. I'm autistic, I can't fill in a form to save my life. I am eligible for Irish citizenship but if I applied now I wouldn't get it in time for next semester, so I'll go as just a UK citizen, which is fine and I know someone who's done it so I'll ask her. But I can't help feeling like this would all be easier if I'd sorted my Irish citizenship out years ago like I originally intended to. Oh well.

One of the classes I think I can do is medieval philosophy which sounds so cool.... Mainly I want to do the Old Irish and Middle Welsh ones. I don't think i can do palaeography but I'd like to.

I've been thinking about cross-Celtic studies spaces online and how it feels wrong that the majority of them use English as the main language. And I understand that it's because English is the most-spoken language in five out of six of the Celtic nations, and because there's no other common language shared between the Celtic nations, and because the Celtic languages are not really mutually intelligible (especially between Gaelic and Brythonic languages).

As Celtic studies students, it feels wrong that we, as the new generation in the field, are discussing and making decisions on the future of our field in English. But I don't really know what the alternative is. English is a global lingua franca and I suspect that a lot of online/international spaces and communities use English.

Maybe we need our own non-English lingua franca. I briefly thought that a Celtic-based con-lang could work (maybe something combining the most common elements of Brythonic languages with the most common elements of Gaelic languages to make it as easy to learn/understand for speakers of both branches), but I doubt you could get the whole Celtic studies community to learn a brand-new con-lang. And besides, someone would have to make it first.

At my university, we can (and mostly do) talk about our field through Welsh, since it's in Wales. Or Irish when I'm around the smaller amount of people who speak Irish here. So it's possible to de-anglicise our field of study on a smaller, more local scale, but as a pan-Celtic-nation thing I'm not sure how it could work. My immediate reaction is that I don't really like having English as the pan-Celtic lingua franca.

And sure, maybe we don't need to shove all of our nations and cultures and histories under one homogenous "pan-Celtic" umbrella or to invent new spurious pan-Celtic connections such as a con-lang, but I do feel like we should be doing more in Celtic languages. Clearly we need to revive Proto-Celtic and all learn to speak that(!)

And maybe I'm a hypocrite for writing this in English, but I think another issue is that our voices and research won't be heard or seen by others if it's all in minoritised languages. A paper written in English is likely readable to most of the Celtic studies field, whereas, in comparison, a lot less people would be able to read it if it were in Scottish Gaelic, for example. I do think all Celtic studies papers should have a translation into a Celtic language, and maybe then all papers written in a Celtic language should have an English/French translation, in order to make it accessible to as many people in the Celtic nations as possible.

I do think multilingualism/multiculturalism should be embraced in the Celtic studies field, but everything always seems to have to be English when it comes to communicating across Celtic languages/nations, and I wish it didn't. And I don't know what to do about that.