I bet you didnt know that

quickbeam

server down wrote: »

What if we wiped out all the robins and people kept dying, though? Wouldn’t we feel stupid.

Surely a risk worth taking though??

New Home

It's the bread. Srameen called it.

mr chips

Right, it's time I started polluting yeer minds again ...

I mentioned before that bualadh craicinn is sexy times, and bualadh feola is solo sexy times.  Well, súnás is the Irish word for orgasm. If you're desperately trying to postpone the inevitable, just remember that it sounds like Souness, as in Graham. That should do the trick.

Feis is a word a lot of Irish people are familiar with. I'm sure many of ye attended or even participated in the local feis. Generally, it's taken to mean festival. However ... it's also the word for f*ck. So just remember that, next time you're told it's not the winning but the taking part. "Feisigh leat" is "f*ck you", or more accurately "go f*ck yourself".

Most of you probably know that the word "bean" (pronounced "ban") means woman. A lot of you may also know that the word "bainis" means wedding. Bainis is derived from "bean fheis". So a wedding, in Irish at least, is both a "woman festival", and, eh, the f*cking of a woman. Sorry. Seems our forebears were rather blunt and literal-minded when they wanted to be. :O

On to something more palatable then. "Fia" is the word for deer, but giorria - a hare - is derived from giorr fhia - a short deer. Deer and hare used to be part of our staple diet here. So were shellfish, or "sliogáin". So many shells were found in part of the north-west of the country, even up hills & mountains where they could never have ended up naturally, that the place was named for them - Sligeach, or Co. Sligo. Unless it was because there were an awful lot of bits of broken pottery about the place - a shard is a "slige".

Maybe that pottery ended up in shards due to inebriation. This is quite possibly because there is no word in Irish for "sober" - or at least there wasn't until some feckin eejit decided to crowbar the abomination "sobráilte" into the language (which of course doesn't count). The nearest equivalent woud be to say e.g. that someone was "tagtha as meisce" - had come out of drunkenness. There are some other terms like that, but they all imply that being drunk is the natural state. There are countless words and terms to do with the drink, on the other hand, and many of them are very succinct. One of my favourites is "ag dradarnacht", which translates very specifically as "loitering outside a public house in a state of intoxication".

Esel

Fuic leat.

david75

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Yeah but if you're five years old when you're told then you get mighty nervous when a robin approaches the back door.

I lived in ballymun when I was five. There was way scarier stuff just walking up the stairs

Are Am Eye

Of course 'sober' in it's original usage had a much broader meaning and didn't just refer to intoxication. You still occasionally hear of a 'sober judgement or decision, meaning a clear state of mind. So up to a point English had no word for sober either.

Capt'n Midnight

mr chips wrote: »

Maybe that pottery ended up in shards due to inebriation.

The recent series on RTE had some archaeologists digging up one of the old Dublin distilleries. And they found very little debris , everywhere of that vintage they'd have expected broken clay pipes and stuff all over the place.

retalivity

The river danube flows through or borders 10 countries, 4 capital cities, and its drainage basin includes another 9 countries (10 if kosovo is included), more than any other river in the world.

Are Am Eye

retalivity wrote: »

The river danube flows through or borders 10 countries, 4 capital cities, and its drainage basin includes another 9 countries (10 if kosovo is included), more than any other river in the world.

There's a nice video tracking its journey.

Realt Dearg Sec

retalivity wrote: »

The river danube flows through or borders 10 countries, 4 capital cities, and its drainage basin includes another 9 countries (10 if kosovo is included), more than any other river in the world.

It's such an amazing river, I lived in Hungary a long time ago and used to cross the bridges in Budapest often, it's an incredible thing. Great to drink beside too!

Ipso

Off topic, but a lovely piece of music.

Duckworth_Luas

On the subject of bridges, amazingly not a single one spans the Amazon.

It's not that the river is too wide to do so, it's just that that there's no economic need.

For almost all of its length, it is surrounded by impenetrable rainforest. Anywhere there is human activity, demand can be easily met by ferries.

In fact, it seems that the first bridge in the entire Amazon river system was not built until 2011, over its major tributary the Rio Negro.

Also, up until 11 million years ago, the Amazon used to flow into the Pacific, not the Atlantic.

wakka12

Yeh I dont understand the maths and architecture misconception. I was in pass maths and was afraid of doing architecture..but then I flew through architecture in college..though I barely scraped my way through the mandatory physics modules but am doing great in my architecture career. Its really not important, and barely features in the work of architects

Maths is completely left up to the structural engineers.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

One thing that amazes me about the Amazon system is that there are pink river dolphins living so far inland. In the eastern plains of Colombia, you can see those dolphins swimming around, despite being thousands of miles from where the river reaches the sea. They are in tribuataries of tribuataries of tributaries and still these rivers are big enough to support such large creatures.

filbert the fox

The Claddagh Ring is not , I repeat not Irish.

Rings of a similar vein originate from Roman times.

Fourier

Okay another physics one.

Despite what you hear in the media, the Higgs Boson isn't really responsible for the mass of particles.

Instead the world used to have different physical laws. Different forces, not the three we experience today, e.g. Weak Nuclear, Strong Nuclear and Electromagnetic. Rather there was the strong nuclear force we have today, another different strong nuclear force and a force similar to electromagnetism. When the universe cooled the physical laws changed.

The important thing is that quantum field theory says this type of change can't occur without a particle like the Higgs boson appearing. That's why it's important, it's evidence of this change in physical laws in the early universe.

Ineedaname

Bananas, cucumbers, peppers, grapes, tomatoes, watermelons, pumpkins and kiwis are all considered types of berries.

Raspberries, strawberries, blackberries and mulberries on the other hand are not actually berries at all.

sunny2004

filbert the fox wrote: »

The Claddagh Ring is not , I repeat not Irish.

Rings of a similar vein originate from Roman times.

After a quick search I can't find anything to back this up. Do you have a link ?

Professor Moriarty

sunny2004 wrote: »

After a quick search I can't find anything to back this up. Do you have a link ?

Look up fede rings. The Claddagh ring's design is unique but there were similar precursors.

Greybottle

filbert the fox wrote: »

The Claddagh Ring is not , I repeat not Irish.

Rings of a similar vein originate from Roman times.

Sorry, I beg to differ, but the Claddagh ring IS Irish.

Yes, it belongs to a wider set of rings called Fede rings, but the Claddagh design is unique to Ireland.

It's a bit like saying that Camembert cheese is not French, because it's cheese and cheese cannot be only French. Cheese is international, Camambert is a French variety.

Fede rings are international, the Claddagh ring is an Irish variety.

david75

I live in stoneybatter.
It’s sposed to be the oldest road in Ireland. Bothair na cloiche. The stone road. The original Viking settlement was here and they’re still here. Oxmantown road was originally ostman meaning east man. Ivar street. Thor place. Sword street. Tomar court. Brodir row. Viking road. Sitric road. Olaf place..

On and on.

Imagine al the many stories from these place names still with us. So deadly.

Rodin

david75 wrote: »

I live in stoneybatter.
It’s sposed to be the oldest road in Ireland. Bothair na cloiche. The stone road. The original Viking settlement was here and they’re still here. Oxmantown road was originally ostman meaning east man. Ivar street. Thor place. Sword street. Tomar court. Brodir row. Viking road. Sitric road. Olaf place..

On and on.

Imagine al the many stories from these place names still with us. So deadly.

Any road claiming to only go back to Viking times is unlikely to be the oldest in the country. How were the stones at 5000yr old grange transported?

david75

Rodin wrote: »

Any road claiming to only go back to Viking times is unlikely to be the oldest in the country. How were the stones at 5000yr old grange transported?

The road in stoneybatter predates the vikings

There’s a golden torc dated 3000BC was found near Kilkenny. I do wonder If it’s makers were native or was it a trader item. We were trading far afield as had been posted earlier.

My point was what an amazing living history we still have and just that that road is the oldest road we know of that is still a road in Ireland. Perhaps before we know of. I dunno. I’m sure someone will clarify shortly

Duckworth_Luas

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

There was a programme on RTE many moons ago saying that the blue man term comes from North West Africa which earlier Irish would have had trade links to. The folk the Irish traded with were heavily tattooed in blue ink and were called Fir Gorm and it became a generic term for all Africans.

I don't know if that is still accepted explanation.

That was Atlantean, by documentary maker Bob Quinn.

I saw it as a boy and I can remember the exact piece you mention. I tracked it down a few years ago on Dailymotion.

If I recall correctly, Quinn's hypothesis was that the first inhabitants of Ireland did not arrive over a land bridge from Britain, just as I was taught in Primary School. Instead they were Atlantean, part of a network of people from Ireland, down the west of France, Northern Spain, Portugal and North Africa. These people arrived by boat after the ice sheets retreated and continued to trade and interact across the Atlantic for millennia after.

His ideas were rejected by academics at the time. Not sure where they stand today with recent DNA discoveries.

Greybottle

david75 wrote: »

I live in stoneybatter.
It’s sposed to be the oldest road in Ireland. Bothair na cloiche. The stone road. The original Viking settlement was here and they’re still here.

The Corlea Trackway in Co Longford has been dated back to 147 BC, so at 2164 years of age it comfortably beats the Vikings by a thousand years or so.

What's more fascinating is how they managed to date it as precisely as that. They used dendrochronology which is one of the most fascinating sciences there is.

DEFTLEFTHAND

David Gray's White Ladder album is the greatest selling album of all time in Ireland.

roosterman71

Greybottle wrote: »

The Corlea Trackway in Co Longford has been dated back to 147 BC, so at 2164 years of age it comfortably beats the Vikings by a thousand years or so.

What's more fascinating is how they managed to date it as precisely as that. They used dendrochronology which is one of the most fascinating sciences there is.

I initially read that as "The Corlea Takeaway" and was thinking they're a long time selling chips! :eek:

Kat1170

Rodin wrote: »

. How were the stones at 5000yr old grange transported?

filbert the fox

sunny2004 wrote: »

After a quick search I can't find anything to back this up. Do you have a link ?

https://www.independent.ie/life/home-garden/a-roman-tradition-we-made-our-own-36367869.html

david75

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

David Gray's White Ladder album is the greatest selling album of all time in Ireland.

Really??
He was huuuuuge here for a good time. He made me have my first pint of Guinness ever at the Warwick hotel in Galway. Think I was only 17. The pint was rank. Then he said ‘now have another one. It’ll make sense’. And true enough the next pint was amazing.

Brilliant album though in fairness.