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!
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)
Labels: 2013, Bliain na Gaeilge, Brian Ó Broin, Celtic Cultural Center, Comhrá 24/7, Conradh na Gaeilge, Dineen Grow, gaeilge, Gaelic, irish, Madison, University of Wisconsin, UW Extension, UW Madison
posted by sacsanua @ 10:32 AM
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