Track your comments!
[x]


When you register, comments on your articles and replies to your comments appear here. Register Now!

Sign in to your account
[x]

Not a Scientific Blogging member yet?

Register Now for a Free Scientificblogging.com Account

  • Customize your profile with pictures, banner, a blogroll and more.
  • Leave comments on articles, add other members to your friend lists, chat with people on the site.
  • Write blog posts that can be seen by hundreds of thousands of readers.

It's free and it only takes a minute!

Already a Scientific Blogging member?

Sign In Now

Banner
By Becky Jungbauer | March 17th 2009 10:51 AM | 11 comments | Print | E-mail | Track Comments
.

More A Truth Universally Acknowledged articles

All

About Becky Jungbauer

A scientist and journalist by training, I enjoy all things science, especially science-related humor. My column title is a throwback to Jane Austen's famous first line in Pride and Prejudice


... Full Bio

Need a few Irish Gaelic words for the pub? Want a few trivial tidbits to impress your fellow revelers? Plan to discuss science (eolaíocht) over pints? Read on!

Take a PDF cheat sheet with you to your local tavern and impress the lasses with your ability to order another pint, ask friends if they're drunk, and even wrangle a few kisses because you're Irish.

After downing a few pints of Guinness, it's time to get down to business. Do you study éiceolaíocht (ecology)? Or do you prefer eolaíochtaí saoil (life sciences)? Perhaps you could discuss the latest forás na heolaíochta agus na teicníochta sa mhíochaine agus sa bhitheolaíocht (scientific and technical developments in medicine and biology). Find more fun scientific references here.

Tidbits from fair and balanced Fox News: According to legend, on the day of Judgement, while Christ judges all other nations, St Patrick will be the judge of the Irish. Also, since 1962, tons of green dye are tipped on St Patrick’s Day into the Chicago river, although the quantity has reduced, for environmental reasons, from 100 to 40. ABC News contributes with 10 facts about Ireland, including the little known revelation that Belfast has a world-leading hospital for kneecap reconstruction.

Famous Irish scientists include Robert Boyle (Boyle's Law), Francis Beaufort (the Beaufort Scale, used at sea), George Boole (Boolean algebra), William Thomsom (Kelvin scale), John Tyndall (atmospheric science), J.D. Bernal and Kathleen Lonsdale (x-ray crystallography), Ernest Walton (Ireland's only Nobel Laureate, built first successful particle accelerator with John Cockroft), Denis Burkitt (Burkitt's lymphoma), John Bell (Bell's Inequalities in quantum physics), Jocelyn Bell Burnell (discovered pulsars), and many more.

Comments

logicman's picture
fair and balanced Fox News

The terms 'tongue' and 'cheek' spring readily to mind.

Happy St. Patrick's day. I don't know how to say it in Irish Gaelic, but:

may all of your tomorrows be filled with wonderful yesterdays.

rholley's picture
Alas, says he, although coming from Belfast, when it comes to pronouncing Gaelic (Irish or Scots) I am completely flummoxed.  How does one construe the spelling?

Welsh is much more straightforward, and I when opportunity arises I check my pronunciation against that of Bryn Terfel or Katherine Jenkins, and to me at least it sounds reasonably accurate.

Mind you, even German can be a problem.  Recently, when trying to pronounce DESY (short for Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron), I was told "we are not a DAISY".

Hank's picture
At least you try.  I went into a Starbucks this morning and said "top o the mornin to ya" to the earringed young man (my prediction; Masters in Fine Arts, 2006) behind the counter and he looked panicked and told me he didn't speak Irish.

Becky Jungbauer's picture
Ouch. Perhaps shareholders should discuss hiring criteria when they hold their annual meeting today. Did you reply, "That's ok because I don't speak stupid?"

Hank's picture
No, but I said 'feckin jaysus', which is Irish for "That's ok because I don't speak stupid".

It probably didn't help that I was doing my Brad Pitt/pikey impression from "Snatch"; it may be the only good role the guy has ever done.   But the accent can be tough on people who speak english.

logicman's picture
I said 'feckin jaysus', which is Irish for "That's ok because I don't speak stupid".

Do you like living dangerously?

If memory serves, which may be problematic at my age, the Pat Boone film 'Never Put it in Writing' has a scene in which an Englishman enters a bar in Ireland and tries to be 'chummy' by putting on an accent.  He receives the periorbital hematoma award for linguistic endeavours.

Hank's picture
I am not worried about what some 140 lb. guy at Starbucks thinks of my accent.    Know what his pierced eyebrow says to me?  "Pacifism."   Because no one who ever wants to be in a fight would wear something like that.   :)

logicman's picture
I've never liked the idea of body-piercing ever since I first heard of Vlad Tepes, Prince of Wallachia.

Becky Jungbauer's picture
Ever read The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova? I loved it; it viewed the Vlad story from a more personal and less caricature-ish way.

Becky Jungbauer's picture
I love that movie. The odd thing was, the only one I could understand was Brad Pitt's character - the other actors' dialects were completely indecipherable for me (the first time I watched it).

jtwitten's picture
I learned to understand, but not speak, "pikey" from the panhandlers in Bath.  They are my favorite bums in the world.  And, they all had mongrel "degs".

Add a comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <sup> <sub> <a> <em> <strong> <center> <cite> <code> <TH><ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <img> <br> <p> <blockquote> <strike> <object> <param> <embed> <del> <pre> <b> <i> <table> <tbody> <div> <tr> <td> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr> <iframe>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA
If you register, you will never be bothered to prove you are human again. And you get a real editor toolbar to use instead of this HTML thing that wards off spam bots.