Medieval scribes writing things like “fuck the abbot” (their boss) and “I am so hung over I feel dead” and “that goddamn cat got in here and pissed on the manuscript” and drawing penis monsters and purposefully unflattering portraits of public figures and animals in the marginalia is funny, yes. But more than that it is so deeply quintessentially human. It reminds you that they were largely just frustrated young adults who did an extremely repetitive and tedious job 6 days a week during daylight hours in poor conditions and felt the same malaise young adults feel now.
wow millennials are glued to their i-phones and laptops so much they cant even be bothered robbing in person anymore!!! maybe these trust fund babies should stop phishing credit cards while sitting on their butts and go out there and put some elbow grease into their thievery!
I know exactly what happened. Because it happened to me.
I trained for years to be a con artist. I told my friends and family that I wanted to be a magician, but that was just a cover for why I was constantly practicing sleight of hand.
In junior high and high school, I would shop lift a bunch of candy on my way to school, sell it to kids at the morning break, and use that money to run a crooked poker game at lunch.
Finally, when I was 19 or 20, I felt I was ready, and I picked my first pocket. I was on the bus, bumped a guy as I passed down the aisle, got his wallet, super clean.
In the wallet was several hundred dollars. A huge first score, I had been hoping for a couple twenties. I sat there looking at the, like, 400 bucks, thinking.
That was my rent at the time. We were both on the bus. It was likely his rent too. Lord knows the only reason to carry that much cash on the bus is you’re on your way to pay a bill. We were both on the bus, you know? That’s not someone I was comfortable stealing from.
I tapped him on the shoulder and told him “hey i think you dropped this” and gave it back to him with all the money still in it. It was the first and last time I ever picked a pocket.
Picking a rich person’s pocket is a loosing game. They probably have credit cards and not cash, those credit cards probably have the best anti-theft measures their bank can provide, and you probably can’t get close enough to those people to pick their pockets unless you’re already rich yourself.
The people who’s pockets you can reliably pick are the people around you. The people who are also on the bus, who are in this same shitty situation with you.
As wealth inequality becomes more drastic picking pockets has very clearly become “stealing from other poor people” and it’s not satisfying. I want to steal from Google and Apple and Fox and Facebook and General Mills and Hershey and Tesla. Not the person next to me.
Wow. This post went from funny to a life lesson in a way I wasn’t expecting, amd I’m not sorey at all.
See, unlike the capitalist elite, common criminals have a sense of morality and empathy.
Oh so the plural of surgeon general is surgeons general, huh? Well what about bunnies rabbit. Puppies dog. KITTIES CAT. Did you ever think of that, you sillies goose?
Last year, the lead singer of The 1975, Matt Healy, managed to offend a whole lot of Gaelgoirí (Irish speakers) when he appeared to mock a fan’s name – Dervla – at a meet-and-greet.
Healy isn’t alone, though, when it comes to anglophone bafflement at Irish names. A recent study based on an analysis of Google searches revealed the words that British people have the most difficulty pronouncing. The names Aoife, Saoirse, Niamh and Siobhán occupy places in the top 10.
And it’s not exclusively a British problem: I always cringe watching US talkshows where the host quizzes their Irish guest (usually Saoirse Ronan) on the pronunciation of their and other Irish names.
I’ve heard every possible variation of my own name from non-Irish people. It’s not uncommon in Ireland; in secondary school, there were four Niamhs in my class. But I rarely come across an English person who is familiar with it, despite the proximity of our two countries.
In case you don’t know, it’s pronounced “Neev” or “Nee-av”, either is perfectly acceptable. The prefix Ní means “daughter of”. My surname is trickier, and has even tripped up a few Irish people; it can be translated as Herbert, and is pronounced “her-a-vard”.
When I was living in London, I quickly learned that saying Niamh at the counter in a coffee shop or over the phone to make a booking simply wouldn’t fly. This led to the invention of what I call my “Starbucks name”. Anything easily pronounceable with a simple spelling would do. Mia, Sophie and Rose were among my common aliases.
Speaking to others reveals a litany of similar experiences. Aoibhe Ní Shúilleabháin, a designer and teacher, spent two years at college in England having her name mispronounced and disrespected. (Her first name is pronounced “Ay-vah”.) More than one lecturer resorted to calling her “blondie”.
She tells me: “I was asked to say, ‘Three hundred and thirty three trees’” – a tongue-twister that does the rounds on TikTok – “more often than I was asked to repeat my name.” She recalls the lack of interest when she attempted to explain that Irish and English are different languages with different pronunciation rules.
Clearly, the sensitivities at play here are rooted in history: Ireland was colonised by the English and our national language was all but wiped out. A language revival began in earnest in the 19th century, but it’s never quite recovered. Ireland’s most recent census shows that about 40% of Ireland’s population can speak Irish. The English destroyed our language once before, so every little throwaway comment and scoff at our names hurts a little bit more – and ultimately becomes just tiresome. A handful of people even remark, “Oh! I didn’t know Ireland had its own language,” when I tell them about my name.
Writer Darach Ó Séaghdha is all too familiar with these difficulties. (The “rach” in Darach is pronounced like “Bach”, he says.)He hosted a podcast called Motherfoclóir, a podcast about the Irish language and culture, and whenever there were guests on with Irish names, “inevitably the episode would turn into group therapy”. There was one bad experience, he recalls, when he was told that his surname “looked like a wifi password”. But he decided to give his children Irish names, too. It’s a common trend, he says, “because parents with Irish names have been battle-hardened”.
Like the others I spoke to for this piece, writer and director Rioghnach (think “Ree-nock”)Ní Ghrioghair believes that a sense of superiority among English speakers is to blame for the constant mistreatment of Irish names. But she’s defiant. “We are going to scrutinise the British for any transgression regarding the pronunciation of our names,” and other things, she tells me, like British media claiming Irish actors as their own during awards seasons.
There is no easy crash-course I can give to you on the pronunciation of Irish names, but you can always try out “how to pronounce”-style websites (which themselves can be contested). But the simplest and most reliable solution is perhaps just to politely ask an Irish person – and listen attentively to what they say. I may have accepted that English people are very rarely going to get my name right on the first go, but I appreciate a well-intentioned effort. Just don’t laugh at it, please.
Posted by thedelightfulnessofme
