Day five, post two
I really like the expression "beyond the pale" now that I've been to Ireland. It all has to do with Irish history and geography.
The Irish Pale was the region around Dublin, long an English stronghold within gaelic Ireland. To go "beyond the Pale" meant, for an Englishman, descending into the wilds, possibly falling victim to the mercies of unsympathetic Gaelic lords and the hoards of their warriors. The English language was once confined to only a very small area of the world, if you recall. Even in Shakespeare's time, English wasn't even used in more than a relatively small corner of the British isles.
This post was prompted by the preponderance of bilingual, gaelic-English signs all over trainstations and, indeed, everywhere. They're more numerous than French signs in Canada, and we actually have a significant proportion of native speakers of the language.
The Irish Pale was the region around Dublin, long an English stronghold within gaelic Ireland. To go "beyond the Pale" meant, for an Englishman, descending into the wilds, possibly falling victim to the mercies of unsympathetic Gaelic lords and the hoards of their warriors. The English language was once confined to only a very small area of the world, if you recall. Even in Shakespeare's time, English wasn't even used in more than a relatively small corner of the British isles.
This post was prompted by the preponderance of bilingual, gaelic-English signs all over trainstations and, indeed, everywhere. They're more numerous than French signs in Canada, and we actually have a significant proportion of native speakers of the language.