Motherfoclóir

Four years ago we started this podcast off with a discussion of the letter V. There’s been much water under the bridge since then and while we always meant to give the other seven “forbidden” letters their own episode, there was always something a bit more urgent to attend to. Like translating smutty novels and so forth. But on today’s episode, Dr McEvoy and Mayor Pete assist Darach in a whistle stop tour of the letters J, K, Q, W, X, Y and Z. Where do they come from and what do they want? Can they ever truly belong? Are they the Casa Amor new arrivals in the Love Island villa that is the Irish language, fighting for inclusion by pushing an incumbent letter out of the way? Does it even matter? What happens if you need to put a séimhiú on karma? Are Darach and Peadar in a musical? All this and more in today’s visit to the wild and wonderful world of Motherfoclóir. --- Get Kirsten Shiel art prints here: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/kirstenshiel/ --- Contact the show: whatsapp - +353894784713 twitter - @motherfocloir and @theirishfor email - motherfocloir@headstuff.org --- Want to record your own podcast? Check out our studios at https://thepodcaststudios.ie Or do it online at https://remotely.fm/?coddle Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When we say that a child is full of divilment, are we saying that they are possessed by Satan? No, we are not. In today's episode, Darach, Gearóidín and Peadar consider the concept of the devil in the Irish language. Why does diabhal scéal (devil a story) mean no story? What's the deal with the devil being buried in Killarney? Were politicians aware of the term Taoiseach An Bháis (Lord of Death) when the term Taoiseach was chosen to mean Irish Prime Minister? And with all these terms, how much weight should we give to "fear dubh", which entered The Discourse this July? We also talk about Protestants and the Zoo, for some reason. --- Get Kirsten Shiel art prints here: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/kirstenshiel/ --- Contact the show: whatsapp - +353894784713 twitter - @motherfocloir and @theirishfor email - motherfocloir@headstuff.org --- Want to record your own podcast? Check out our studios at https://thepodcaststudios.ie Or do it online at https://remotely.fm/?coddle Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Darach chats to Katy and Dominic, the hosts of popular podcast "The Europeans". To hear the full episode and much more visit https://www.patreon.com/darach The Europeans podcast can be found at https://europeanspodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recently, Yiddish became the fortieth language to join Duolingo, an achievement that followed hot on the heels of Harry Potter being translated into Yiddish. And would you believe that a brother and sister were responsible for these separate accomplishments? Well, when we found out about it we were struck by how many of the same kinds of conflicts and considerations that faced Irish came up again in thre context of Yiddish. So we had to find out more. On today’s episode, Darach chats with siblings Meena and Arun Vishwaneth about their family’s relationship with Yiddish. They tell him how the phenomenon of Yiddish loanwords in slang has a downside when promoting the language, about the sense of post-assimilation loss that defines the relationship some American Jews have with the language. Meena (who worked on Duolingo) talks about dialects and the struggle to pick a flag to represent Yiddish on the app. Arun (who translated Harry Potter) tells of the process involved in translating house names, Quidditch itself and picking a dialect for Hagrid - as well as the matter of a major plot point hinging on an acronym. You can find the Yiddish duolingo module on the app now. You can follow Arun on Twitter at @a_a_vishwaneth --- Support Motherfocloir on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/darach Get Kirsten Shiel art prints here: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/kirstenshiel/ --- Contact the show: whatsapp - +353894784713 twitter - @motherfocloir and @theirishfor email - motherfocloir@headstuff.org --- Want to record your own podcast? Check out our studios at https://thepodcaststudios.ie Or do it online at https://remotely.fm/?coddle Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the Wee Donkey. Everyone is hooked on “Line of Duty” at the moment, the latest reinvention of the cop show genre - and, fittingly, a reinvention of the “Irish cop” trope which is even older than television. But why did this format - a legacy from the era of segregation and McCarthyism - survive when westerns, Elvis movies, and musicals either die off or get resurrected beyond recognition? More than any other part of the state, policing is understood in the context of police shows. Its shortcomings are explained in the context of the internal conflicts of relatable protagonists while teachers and politicians continue to be antagonists, doctors and lawyers are allowed save the world from the private sector, and nurse/librarian protagonists in mainstream drama are outnumbered by their porno equivalents. The cop show is not going anywhere, absorbing bits of other formats in its path, and the Irish cop is a part of it. In today’s episode, Darach, Gearóidín and Peadar discuss the evolution of the cop show and the Irish cop trope and consider how Hastings has brought significant chunks of Hiberno-English to a large audience. And as Gearóidín admits to a strange crush, Darach takes a surprising perspective on one of the 20th century’s most notorious criminals. --- Support Motherfocloir on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/darach Get Kirsten Shiel art prints here: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/kirstenshiel/ --- Contact the show: whatsapp - +353894784713 twitter - @motherfocloir and @theirishfor email - motherfocloir@headstuff.org --- Want to record your own podcast? Check out our studios at https://thepodcaststudios.ie Or do it online at https://remotely.fm/?coddle Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s a song in the Mincéir tradition (made famous among settled audiences by Luke Kelly) called the 40 Foot Trailer which ends with the line “There's a bylaw to say you maun be on your way And another to say ye can't wander” The implication is clear: the Traveller Community are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Despite the visibility of the Travelling Community in Irish life, in political pamphlets and bad-faith documentaries, the fact remains that the wider community in Ireland remains unfamiliar with the detail and context behind many Mincéir traditions and the community’s contribution to preserving folklore. In this week’s episode, Darach and Gearóidín are thrilled to be joined by Oein De Bhairduin, a writer and academic who celebrates and shares his Traveller heritage. His book, “Why The Moon Travels”, is a beautiful collection of Mincéir folklore and deserving of a wider audience. Oein tells Darach and Gearóidín about the right way to tell a story, the significance behind funeral traditions, the importance of female financial independence and invites us to consider that the wandering protagonists of Irish mythology might not be settled folk at all. Do yourself a favour and buy a copy of his book: https://skeinpress.com/product/why-the-moon-travels-by-oein-debhairduin-copy/ --- Support Motherfocloir on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/darach Get Kirsten Shiel art prints here: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/kirstenshiel/ --- Contact the show: whatsapp - +353894784713 twitter - @motherfocloir and @theirishfor email - motherfocloir@headstuff.org --- Want to record your own podcast? Check out our studios at https://thepodcaststudios.ie Or do it online at https://remotely.fm/?coddle Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every few weeks, a story goes viral in Ireland: a letter, addressed to someone like "that lady with the yellow baseball cap who owns a cat the size of a dog and a dog the size of a cat" is posted and finds its intended recipient. It's a tribute to the affection and esteem with which Irish people regard their postal service. It hints at one of a number of reasons why Ireland resisted postcodes for so long - because our postal workers had such deep local knowledge that they didn't need them. It's a family affair this week on Motherfoclóir as we welcome Gearóidín's Dad, Colm McEvoy, to the show. Colm tells us about how postal workers interpret ambiguous addresses, deal with defensive dogs and all the other little tricks that are known to the people who get your post to you. There's also chat about Irish language envelopes, bilingual addresses, rural Post offices and much more. And this week's favourite Irish word is a cracker! --- Support Motherfocloir on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/darach Get Kirsten Shiel art prints here: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/kirstenshiel/ --- Contact the show: whatsapp - +353894784713 twitter - @motherfocloir and @theirishfor email - motherfocloir@headstuff.org --- Want to record your own podcast? Check out our studios at https://thepodcaststudios.ie Or do it online at https://remotely.fm/?coddle Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Back in 2015, the Paris Review ran an article on Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken” and concluded that it is - by some distance - the best known and most widely referenced poem of the twentieth century. Nothing else comes close. And yet, it is as misunderstood as it is famous. Many poems, or extracts from poems, are misread outside their original context - like Frost’s other line, “good fences make good neighbours” and Beckett’s “Fail Again, Fail Better”. And what of Irish poetry - are the best known Irish poems well understood? What is the most searched for Irish poem anyway? In this week’s episode, Darach and Peadar consider the pitfalls that face such research but march in regardless. They also reflect on the most popular song lyrics in Irish and what those words say about us. Listener mail this week from Belgium and Tipperary! For more comments see @EnyaComments on twitter. --- Support Motherfocloir on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/darach Get Kirsten Shiel art prints here: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/kirstenshiel/ --- Contact the show: whatsapp - +353894784713 twitter - @motherfocloir and @theirishfor email - motherfocloir@headstuff.org --- Want to record your own podcast? Check out our studios at https://thepodcaststudios.ie Or do it online at https://remotely.fm/?coddle Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices