The Nissan Leaf will be on sale in Ireland from March (€35k but there’s a €5k government subsidy). Just before Christmas, my colleague Risteárd Ó Coisdealbha and I got a chance to test drive it in Dublin. Our radio report for the RTE Raidio na Gaeltachta series Ar Strae sa tSaotharlann is featured in the programme podcast (RSS) for 18 December 2010. We also tested the REVA.
Before we hit the road, I shot this video on my HTC Desire phone as Nissan’s Brian Purcell gave us the low-down on Leaf.
You may have seen reports warning about phishing scam emails purporting to be from the Irish Revenue Commisioners. This morning I got an message in Irish, and reasonably sophisticated Irish at that, in a text file, attached to an email which claimed to be from Cáin agus Custaim na hÉireann . The subject line is oddly phrased – “Tá sonraí le haghaidh idirbheart: 4507874176″ but the Irish in the attachment would easily pass for somewhat clunky civil-service-ese.
A chara Iarratasoir:
Tar eis an riomh do ghniomhaiocht fioscach do 2010 ta muid cinnte go bhfuil tu i dteideal a fhail meid aisioc canach de EURO 284.00.
D’fhonn an fhoirm a chomhlanu cliceail ar an nasc thios:
OK – so here’s how to spot phishing. The URL above looks OK? The first part – http://www.revenue.ie – that’s the address of the Revenue, isn’t it? Yes – if that ‘.ie‘ were followed immediately by a a ‘/‘. But it’s not. The actual hostname of the URL is http://www.revenue.ie.form2011.com/ which is NOT owned by the Revenue.
The rules apply as always: NEVER click on a link you get in an email like this. If you use online services for tax, banking etc then always access those sites by typing in the URL or using a bookmark you saved previously. And treat unsolicited email with suspicion.
The truly upsetting thing here however is the apparent sophistication of the Irish used. It seems too good to be machine-generated, which seems to imply an appalling conclusion. Is it possible that an Irish speaker would stoop so low as to use the language to bait such a vile hook for his fellow Gaeilgeoir?
It would be interesting to discover how many of these emails have been received by people like myself who are known for being interested in the Irish language?
Our apologies, but due to unforeseen circumstances we’ve had to cancel the Intruders.TV visit to Galway we had planned for tomorrow. Sorry for the inconvenience – we hope to attend at another Galway Open Coffee in the future.
This is very important to me. One of the reasons I strive to promote blogging and podcasting in Irish is that I personally use these media to practice and improve my own Irish. I am not a native speaker.
On the other hand, I am not a teacher either, and this is not a language course. It is a grown-up podcast (or radio show – call it what you like!) about a particular subject which happens to be in Irish.
if you want to learn Irish, you might want to consider Oideas Gael, or perhaps an online course such as Gaeltalk.net.
However, I do believe that An Líonra Sóisialta may be of some value as an authentic source of material to learners, for the following reasons.
We’re going to keep it simple – and short. Each episode of An Líonra Sóisialta will last no more than 12 minutes – and that includes 5 minutes of music. That leaves just 7 minutes of speech, and that 7 minutes will be broken down further into segments ranging from 30 seconds to 5 minutes.
We’re going to repeat ourselves ad nauseam. While we are not trying to teach Irish, we are trying to teach people about online social networking. That’s a big area – and a new idea for many people. We’ll be taking it nice and slowly.
There’s more than one way to find out what’s going on. Listen to the podcast. Read the shownotes. (On Fridays you’ll find a transcript for 5 minutes worth of the show – otherwise: bullet points.) Follow the links to the web sources we reference – most of them will be in English. Listen to the podcast again.
Feedback! Let us know what you find easiest to understand or otherwise. We don’t want to make this hard if we can help it. Help us! (I’ll be posting contact details in the right hand margin later today.)
It’s been a very difficult week in our family as my 6 year old niece was seriously injured in a car accident last weekend. Today she left the Intensive Care Unit to continue her recovery on the Children’s Ward. Get well soon Aoife. All our love and prayers.
So I thought I’d start another blog. I’m not sure how this one will go. An tImeall will continue as before, but this is an experiment. I don’t know if I will develop a relationship with this blog – it feels strange here! After two years it’s easy to write on An tImeall, knowing who will read my posts. Here it’s different. Feels funny (peculiar but also ha-ha).
I’ll post here in Irish and in English. I may put posts here that point back to An tImeall. Bainfead triail as!
After two years it’s easy to write on An tImeall, knowing who will read my posts. Here it’s different. Feels funny (peculiar but also ha-ha).