It's that time of the week again y'all. And it's been a week.
I was productive, though I wasn't as productive (in some regards) as the past few. I did no explicit grammar study, but I did read quite a bit (probably around 100 pages) in
Les Gaulois. My total progress can be seen in the progress bar below. It's interesting, and I'm finally into the part where it talks about the non-material culture aspect of the Gauls. I'm not sure how much of this is valid, to be quite honest, as I was under the impression from English language sources that a lot of this is of dubious quality, but it's really interesting to see how the French side approaches it. It's also really good for French practice. I shift through intensive reading and extensive reading depending on my mood and/or how much I can understand. I was doing a period of intensive reading, and it was quite fun -- learning words for sickle, pitchfork, hazelnut, etc. during the part on agriculture, for instance. In general, I've been doing more extensive as long as I can understand it. I'm over halfway, so getting excited to finish it and move on to something else in French. I also finished chapter 12 of 'French for Reading'
Les Gaulois: I watched the first few episodes of Lupin this week as well, as well as two episodes of a sitcom from the sitcom YouTube channel. I've found Lupin easier to understand, but that's solely because of the subtitles. I'll likely finish the series of Lupin this coming week and start of series two. I might go back to the sitcoms after to help train my ear without subtitles.
No active practice, as expected.
With Irish I didn't do a whole lot. Transcribing some more stories, and I think I'm going to work on updating these stories to the modern orthography and maybe publish a new edition. They're a treasure trove of knowledge and a good cultural look into the area they were collected and it's a shame it's so difficult to find a copy of the book. A new edition would be nice. I did get Irish speaking practice, and it was much better this time, getting complemented on my accent by a native speaker from Munster (I'm sure he was just being nice, but it's better off than last week!) Still trying to work on my accent though, especially the vowels.
I'm also currently working on writing a paper about Irish prepositional usage in old sayings (seanfhocail/seanrá, as they're called). It's quite annoying as it involves a lot of combing through books. Thank goodness for pdf copies and pdfgrep to go through it and save the lines for me. This makes it much easier to search, though I need to get a physical copy of the book from the library when it reopens tomorrow. Seems on a rough look that the preposition
ar (often glossed as English 'on', but with many more meanings) is the most common one. It'll be interesting research, nonetheless. Starting specifically with Munster Irish, even though it's not the dialect I speak, due to the fact that I had an OCR'd pdf of the book handy. Connacht will be next, then Ulster.
With regards to Brest, I emailed them on Monday and heard back. In the process of working on my application and getting everything I need ready. However, there's a hitch. I honestly can't believe I didn't think of this before, but I'm not sure how my student loans from the US will actually work. I don't need to
take out any, but I do need the deferral. I'd assumed that, since I'd be enrolled full-time at a university the deferral would be easy to get. However, it seems the exact opposite. UBO, where I'd be, isn't one of their 'eligible' schools for loans -- and it looks like that includes deferral as well as actually getting loans. This could put me in quite the predicament if I go. I'm looking around and asking around various places to see if there's any way I could get them deferred, but if not I might be up the creek on this plan, unfortunately. Or somehow have to find a part-time job that pays enough.
That means (assuming this doesn't work out), if I wish to pursue Celtic Studies seriously there's a few paths. I could return to teaching do that for the 9 years I would need to to pay of my student loans then go back and get another masters in Ireland/France/wherever followed by, hopefully a PhD. I could just go ahead and apply for a position in Harvard's PhD program; I've a few friends who've done it and they say a background in a Celtic language would help as opposed to coming in without knowing one, more if I could pick up Welsh or Breton for them as well. Applications have already closed for this year, but the application deadline is early- to mid-December for the 2023 year so I could really work on it; this is part of why I'm doing said research above, to get an academic paper in a related discipline for a writing sample. I could try to find a job in Ireland and work here until I get citizenship then go back on a part-time basis and do a masters in Nua-Ghaeilge or something more related to Celtic Studies as a whole. There's also a Gaelic Literature online masters through UCC I might try to do, especially if I decide to apply to Harvard; it could give me a nice background if I score well on it. Overall, it's all up in the air. I'll keep up with my French even if I don't get to go to Brest just because there's been lots of interesting books I've seen posted on the forum (the ones on the Celts posted here, the one about mythology that I intend to read next if I can find a copy), and there's still a lot of research on Breton in the language. Though Harvard recently dropped French as a possible third language (One Celtic language, Latin, then either another Celtic language or German/French), now requiring only German. So if I go that route, I guess I'll be starting 'German for Reading' or the Nature Method books for German. It's all just very frustrating, as I thought I had things planned out ready to go and now there's a huge wrench in my plans.
Edit: Happy Edit! Seems that I can still apply for an Income-Based Repayment even if I'm not working. This would reset my payment to $0. I'd also likely have a $0 repayment on loans if I stayed working in Ireland as any pay I get would likely be below the exemption limit for paying tax on foreign-earned income. So this opens up a lot of new wonderful options, between going to Brest or staying and working in Ireland. Well fun, but also not good for someone as indecisive about stuff as me.