Friday, October 11, 2013

Madison Irish Language Speakers Help Set Record



MADISON LINGUISTS HELP SET WORLD RECORD FOR LONGEST CONVERSATION IN IRISH
Madison, WI.
October 9th, 2013
Madison Irish language speakers participated Saturday in an international attempt to break the world record for the longest Irish conversation in history. This was an international endeavor, made possible by the multi-user capabilities of Google Hangouts, which Irish language speakers all over the globe used to keep a conversation going from 1pm on Sunday 29th September to 1pm on Sunday 6th October. As well as several score groups from around Ireland (including two groups of legislators in the regional and national parliaments of Belfast and Dublin), Irish speakers from Beijing to San Francisco exchanged freewheeling conversation with chat headquarters in Dublin and other groups around the world.
The Madison group found themselves being introduced at 4pm on Saturday to a pint-drinking group of Irish speakers in a pub in County Down, Ireland, before continuing the conversation for two hours themselves. At 6pm they made the handoff to another raucous group of language activists at the Irish Gaelic Club in Dublin City and the overnight service of Raidió na Life, Dublin's Irish language radio station.
The group's participation came as part of an October Irish language weekend organised by Madison's Celtic Cultural Center. The weekend has been held with the assistance of the UW Extension program for the last fifteen years. The language-learning weekend, with classes at four separate levels, attracts students of the Irish language from Wisconsin and all around the Midwest. Language teachers came from Ireland, New York, Notre Dame University, and UW Milwaukee.
Volunteers from several of the weekend's classes signed up for ten-minute slots throughout the two hour conversation, and chatted with the record attempt's curator Professor Brian Ó Broin of William Paterson University, NJ, who had flown in to teach at the weekend. Also participating in the conversation was Dineen Grow, the language weekend's local organizer and a librarian at UW Madison.
Even two hours of conversation can be exhausting, however, particularly when the world is watching, and particularly after a day of intensive language instruction! Both Grow and Ó Broin were agreed that the next time, they'd only sign up for an hour!
Contact:               Brian Ó Broin                      obroinb@wpunj.edu                     973 337 5182
                                Dineen Grow                     dgrow@library.wisc.edu               608 262 3193

Pictures Attached: Karen Reshkin and Michael O'Regan, from Palatine, Illinois, with Professor Brian Ó Broin, William Paterson University, New Jersey (picture: Dineen Grow, UW Library/Madison)


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