Collegiate science classes, Gaelic pronunciation and Welsh marriage tradition

[aliasheist]

All right. My Google-ninja skills fail me in this, mostly because I have no idea what search parameters I'm working with and everything I've punched in has brought me things that I either can't comprehend or already know. In any case, explain in simplest possible terms, for I am a mighty failure in all of these following subjects.

a.) There are two

Comments

[loganberrybunny]

As far as b) goes, Wikipedia's Differences between Scottish Gaelic and Irish article states that "most dialects are not mutually comprehensible." Unfortunately the article does not expand on that, but my guess is that it would be possible to make oneself understood with very careful choice of words and phrases, but probably only with some degree of trial and error; you wouldn't get an Irish speaker and a Scottish Gaelic speaker meeting in the street and immediately striking up a conversation. I don't speak either language, so can't really help beyond that.

[into_the_sun]

Actually, the language and some of the history classes at my university have "lab" components, usually run by a grad student who reinforces the concepts gone over in class.

[coreolai]

As an Irish speaker, although my skills are rusty, I am able to understand simple sentences of Scots Gaelic if spoken slowly. I don't think it would take too much exposure to be able to converse.
As to what it sounds like...it sounds like I should be able to understand it but can't quite. Like it's too fast or too quiet or the person is muttering. The accent really depends on individual speakers, much as I'd find with Irish itself. To me, an older speaker from a rural area is going to be difficult to understand in any language.

[dorianegray]

To me, a rather bad Irish-speaker, listening to Scots Gaelic is like listening to Dutch; it sounds like I ought to understand it, but I can't seem to "tune my ear in". (Dutch has this effect on me because I speak German - rather better than I speak Irish.) It's exceedingly frustrating.

[aliasheist]

Ahhhhh... I can understand that kind of comparison. I also speak German, and I'm friends with a number of the Dutch students on campus, so I can understand the comparison rather better now.

I wasn't expecting that they'd be just different accents on the same language, that would be foolish (I mean, historical and geographical gaps frequently translate into the grammatical); I just needed a frame of reference and you've come through beautifully. Thanks!

[dandelion]

There's a bit of a stigma against obvious Americans in the UK in general. It's mainly due to politics.

[surexit]

Agreeing with this a little. It's not a massive stigma, but the prevailing attitude is fairly likely to be, "Oh, Christ, an American," although most people will get over that reasonably quickly.

WRT the two Gaelics, afaik they are not quite mutually comprehensible. I don't speak either myself, but I have heard them likened, as the poster says above, to the relationship between Dutch and German.

And Welsh accents mangle everything. EVERYTHING. *grins*

[dandelion]

Yeah- how bad it is basically depends on how in-your-face the person is and how much reason people otherwise have to dislike them. If you need the people to dislike the character, they can seize on the "bad" American bits and run with them (say, being very vocal about religion, voting Republican, etc). If it happens to be "oh ugh, a bible thumper/Bush fan/pro-war person/etc" and they don't like the woman for taking away their brother/ex-boyfriend/former crush or being a golddigger then it'll last a lot longer. Bonus points if she somehow manages to either insult Wales, the Welsh or their language. If she's coming in via Cardiff's main railway station, the announcements are all read in Welsh as well as English, and some people would get quite offended if she's disdainful about that or mocks it.

[aliasheist]

Yeah... about that...

It's not like she's one of those, that even has a lot of Americans cringing, she's just a certain flavor of eccentric that might not go off well in more traditional areas.

As for the Welsh, she doesn't understand a word of it. At all. (Which is a bit exasperating for our dear protagonist, but not so much for anyone else.) She's not derogatory toward Wales in any capacity, she just doesn't know anything about the culture at all. I didn't think it would be a specific problem, but I just wanted to check. Thanks for the input!