Translation: Feicfidh tú, a dhuine uasail, go chaitheamh cultúir áirithe ar lena stór focal agus an fhuinnimh acquisitive chomhréir agus ostentations go hiomlán ann ina saol ábhartha.
Gaelic and English are undoubtedly very different languages. The difference in the way words sound and are spelled varies greatly between the two. Yet, when translated, they have the same surface meaning. They do not, though, have the same history and importance. This is the theme of Brian Friel’s play, Translations. When the British army enters Ireland and attempts to anglicise it, first by changing something as seemingly insignificant as street names, it has a great effect on Irish people and culture.
In reality, 1833, the time period for this…show more content… There had previously been some minor famines, but they were just a decade away from The Great Potato Famine. The British were controlling the Irish, who were fighting for ownership of their own land. When these things are listed in a textbook next to statistics of Irish deaths and migrations, they are upsetting, but when we understand these issues by seeing the lives of a group of young Irish people directly affected, it is devastating. In Translations, Hugh tells Yolland about the complexity of the language and the reason why it is so important. He explains that their culture’s beauty and what they deserve to show off is the language because it holds their culture. Hugh describes it as a, “syntax opulent with tomorrows,” meaning that it holds the hope of the Irish people (Friel 51). For this reason, changing the language does not just change simple surface meanings, but it changes a…show more content… Cummings. I read it with my English class in ninth grade, and since then, it has influenced the way I write and think about poetry. In this poem, E.E. Cummings speaks about a great love amidst a dreary, emotionless, and repetitive town. It was the first poem I read that played with language to such a great extent. Looking back at my annotations from ninth grade, I covered every blank space on the page in writing. Cummins plays with form extensively in this poem. It is written in nine quatrains, but the quatrain is the only component of form that stays consistent. The lines don’t have any particular syllable count, but most of them are around 8-9 syllables, except for three lines. Those three lines are, “sun moon stars rain...stars rain sun moon…sun moon stars rain.” Variations of that line, along with three variations of the line, “spring summer autumn winter,” are scattered throughout the poem to signify the passing of time and the way the world around the two main characters doesn’t seem to change. One phrase is repeated twice, “with up so floating many bells down,” also used to signify the passing of time and occurrence of no change, because the bells represent how bells were rung for any birth in town and any death in town. For the first four stanzas, he rhymes the first two lines of the stanza. Cummings breaks this pattern after the fourth stanza (through
