Tidbits

These are things that I've learned in the past few days, listed in no particular order.

To say that an apostrophe is Irish is technically not true. It's English, actually. Here's what my Ethnic Conflict & Territory professor, Niall O Dochartaigh, had to say about it. (Note the space in his last name.)

In Irish there is no apostrophe because the Ó is simply the Irish word for ‘from’ (meaning descended from). The accent on the O can be omitted – a linguistic rule introduced when typewriters came into use and it was impossible to put an accent on an upper-case letter. When Irish names were translated into English the apostrophe was inserted. In Irish this component of a name changes according to gender and marital status.

The wife of a man with the surname Ó Máille would have the surname Uí Mháille and his daughter would be Ní Mháille (Ní being a contraction of the Irish for daughter: iníon). In English they would all be O’Malleys.

There aren't very many dashing, young blind guys using canes in Ireland. At least, that's what the friendly lady outside Dunnes Stores (the supermarket) told me today. She asked if I needed help crossing the road, I thanked her but told her that I would be okay on my own, but she insisted on telling me every time the light turned green (there were 3 crossings for one street). "I work with the visually-impaired," she said. "It's so nice to see a young gentleman using a long cane. There are few people in Ireland that use long canes." I stopped to ask her about why that was, but she raced off back across the street. To be continued, I suppose?

Sudafed is different here. It comes in liquid or tablet form, but they're not throat lozenges. The pills are used as we would use Advil Cold & Sinus: as decongestants. The pharmacist warned me, though, that the pills are very potent and have a tendency to over-dry the nasal cavity. I must admit that I've never had that happen, and am curious to know what it's like. Then again, I'm not sure I want to have to deal with it!

Freshmen are called first-years or "freshers."

There was a "freshers fair" today. I happened to walk through it on my way back from class, and I decided to stick around. Apparently the bags that the Students Union gives to freshmen are a hot commodity, even among the upper-classmen. They were out when I was there today, but I plan to return tomorrow. I did admit to one person that I was a visiting, international, third-year ... to which he said, "We can never have enough of those! Welcome to the Fair." And he gave me the Students Union handbook, listing everything from how to contact a department to how to do laundry to how to not go broke at college!

NUI, Galway has an FM and online radio station called Flirt-FM. At the Fair, I signed up to be on the staff today, so I'll let you know when my show will air. We'll likely go on the air in the first or second week of October.

This was a much easier and more fun blog entry to write. Maybe there will be more like this.