Via John Baez.

Poul Anderson's classic Uncleftish Beholding is on the web!

Irish Class, March 17, 2008

The first event was an exercise in sentence structure. We were given several Irish sentences and were asked to pick out key grammatical elements without actually translating them. We were looking for verbs, subjects, objects, prepositional phrases, dependent clauses, and genitives.

admhaigh	admit
admhaím	I admit
rómhaith	very good
dream	group (of people)
measa	worse. Comp. of olc-- bad, evil
casadh	twist, turn, reproach
riamh	ever, never
taobh	side, flank
dúchas	heritage, patrimony, native place
faoi láthair	at present
grinn	perceptive, accurate
arb	was (past of copula before a vowel
páirteach	participating, sharing, sympathetic
sraith	swath, course, layer, series, row, rate
ráchairt	run f2
saighdiúir	soldier
cogadh domhanda	world war
troid	fight, quarrel f3
arm	army. Also weapon, arm
sraidbhaile	village
bocht	poor person m1
lár	middle, center. Also floor, ground

Next came question and answer. Nick asked various general knowledge questions in Irish and we answered. This to see how well we could follow spoken Irish.

( Vocabulary )

Cardinal directions

	North	South	East	West
	tuaisceart	deisceart	oirthear	iarthar
root	tuai-/duai-	deis-/deas-	-oir-	-iar-
static	thuaidh	theas	thoir pron. "HAIR"	thiar pron. "HERE"
motion to	ó thuaidh	ó dheas	sair	siar
motion from	aduaidh	aneas pron. "UH-NASS"	anoir pron. "AHN-AIR"	aniar

Notes

• ó in ó thuaidh, ó dheas means "to", even though the preposition ó is usually "from"

• The root of south, deis-/deas- is the same as deis "right". deasach/deisealach "right-handed". cle "left", but ciotach , "left-handed", as in Col Ciotach, also means "clumsy"!

We then read more from scene three of Gaeileoirí.

See today's Onion

John Baez has posted a list of recommended free math and physics books available on the web. This is very helpful: There are a lot of free texts out there, but taken as a whole they only demonstrate Sturgeon's revelation. You need some educated guidance to find the good stuff in a finite time.

Mikhail Gorbachev admits he is a Christian

Mikhail Gorbachev is a Christian say Franciscan friars

Via The Angels are in the Details, which asks some good questions and comments:

This going to be a major shock for the old “Gorby is the Antichrist” crowd. Or maybe not. After all, it seems that Gorbachev has embraced an ancient, liturgical form of the faith.