Dawn

Dawn

Tuesday, July 01, 2014

English football; Conspiracies; Clocks against colonists; & Celtic Galicia


Events in Brazil continue to endorse my conviction that the English football team won't ever win anything because everyone involved in the English game - the players, the trainers, the commentators, the TV pundits, the Football Association, UEFA and, of course, FIFA - are as thick as the proverbial. And also - in the case of the last mentioned - corrupt

Talking of football . . . El País today ran an article in which the author accused the English authorities of arranging 1966 World Cup refereeing duties so as to allow dubious decisions in favour of England and Germany against South American teams, most notably Argentina. Even if it's true - and I rather doubt it - why on earth rake over these old coals now? To fuel conspiracy theories around the banning of Suarez for his cannibalistic tendencies?

As for refereeing - I wonder how long it will be before FIFA moves to having TVs check match-deciding decisions such as the penalty given in favour of Dutchman Robben last night. We waited at least 20 years for the use of goal-line technology - or even an extra goal-side referee - but I fear this wait could be even longer.

And talking of South American countries - I did a double take at the news that Bolivia - to demonstrate antipathy to its colonial exploiters (who could that be?) - is shortly to reverse the way its clocks work. So clockwise will become anticlockwise. And vice versa. Or not, from their point of view. All to do with the way water goes down a sink below the equator, I believe. Madness.

Finally . . . There are those here in Galicia who would love the region('nation') to be seen as not merely Celtic but uniquely Celtic in Spain. Indeed, these folk go so far as to claim that Galicia should be one of the League of Celtic Nations. There are a number of problems with all this but the biggest is that the Galician language (Gallego) shows little, if any, Celtic influence. This, though, doesn't stop people trying and here's a good example of this from a local newspaper. It's a Google translation that I haven't had time (or much inclination) to tart up. It'll give you some idea of just how much trouble Google's computer has with Spanish pronouns and word order. By the way, I once went up to the cited town of Mondoñedo to look for evidence of the British 6th century settlement, Bretoña. Sad to say, there ain't none.

A Gael is 'A person of Celtic origin from Ireland or the North West of Scotland.'

Gaelic Galicia

Historians, ethnographers and linguists Galician open new avenues of research into links between Galicia and the Celtic countries - Salvador Rodriguez

In the United States, Ireland and Scotland, it is not the first time that specialists who are dedicated to the study of the history of the Celts laugh occurrences that depart from Galicia: if Breogán, if Brath, if literature Arthurian, if the summer solstice ... We want to provide scientific content to our findings, that all of them are supported by the rigour, discarding, except to provide some reliable data, the literary sources, which were at that yes, with good will, the galleguistas pioneers resorted to explain Celtic Galicia connections. "Who thus expressed is the translator Martín Fernández Maceiras, manage Gaelaico Project, an initiative undertaken by historians, linguists and ethnographers Galician working with the advice of Scottish researchers, Irish and Americans, and also have the patronage of James J. Durant (Seamas Ó Direáin), Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Stanford, an American of Irish descent considered the highest authority on the subject today.

Gaelaico members have focused their research project in one of the greatest Celtic peoples, gaels, and depart from their language, Gaelic, surviving, barely, in Ireland and Scotland, to perform comparative studies of the language with Galicia, in the words of the common language and place names that identify the sites.

Gaels and Britons are Celts considered the major towns, although explains Maceiras Fernández, "whether to seek a Celtic people par excellence, that is the gaels" whose historical record attests called Declaration of Arbroath, dated 6 April 1320. a kind of declaration of independence signed by 51 Scottish nobles, written as a letter to Pope John XXII is. "But for us, says Maceiras, what matters is not the policy of the document, which is still preserved, but what is said, because it is said there is that gaels, people of Indo-European origin, settled for centuries, well as in the British Isles, in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, ie the territory which the Romans called Gallaecia. "If the Xeración Nós had been aware of the existence of this document-follows-Maceiras had possessed a much more valuable material vertirirían all speculation based on the literature of the subject of British or Irish legends books" .

Matches on languages

After more than eighteen months of research in the field of linguistics, researchers Gaelaico Project, which also had the help of the University of Vigo, forward, "We've even discovered much more than we expected, and we made without prejudice, because we is not we want to be gaels or Celts, we are what we are, Galicians, but it is very clear that in the Galician language, and also in Portugal and even in Castilian, a Gaelic roots are detected that if the story had been as officially counted, they would not exist. But there, lo and hence the truth, and do so through words that are not only phonetically similar but also its meaning. "An example? They have already found numerous, but it could be the name of the language: the Irish refer to their language, the language of the gaels as Gaeilige; refer to the Scottish Gaelic language spoken in Scotland as Gàiddhlig; the inhabitants of the Isle of Man call their ancestral language Gaelg; Galician and refer to our language as Galego romance. The anglicized version of the name of the three Goidelic languages ​​is Gaelic. "Galician-holds-Fernández Maceiras stands Galego, like Gaelic Gàidhlig is synonymous of Gaeilge and Gaelg". This is a demonstration of the method used in this new line of research: Comparative Linguistics.

A novel contribution of Gaelaico project is to open the door to the possibility that the arrival of the Celtic tribes Galicia not only produced "thousands of years before" the Romans, but also hundreds of years later. This latest arrival would be led by the Britons, the other great Celtic people, and "would have coincided - read on the web Pagna PG - approximately the time of Breton settlement in Brittany, fleeing the Anglo-Saxon armies. Every indication that Briton town was settled in a very specific small area of ​​Galicia and Asturias, on both banks of the river Eo ".

As part of the investigations conducted so far include the San Gonzalo, who lived between the late eleventh and early twelfth century. Bishop of Mondoñedo from 1070-1108, is still remembered with a pilgrimage. Buried in the church of San Martino, his sarcophagus was opened first time in 1648, discovered that inside was a ring unequivocal ornamentation inspired by Celtic motifs, with the inscription, in Latin, the phrase "I will not be given nor sold ". This is the same slogan contained in the ring Elatha Delbaith mc, the king of the Fomoire, gave Delbaeth's daughter, of the Tuatha De Danan, according to the chronicle of the Battle of Mag Tuired fought between two major Irish clans. "That was in Latin is explained by the power of the Catholic Church," Maceiras judgment.

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