A galerna is expected for this afternoon, please come soon!
Oh, btw!
Some trivia about galerna- which is a sudden storm brought by a change to W/NW wind: it’s a loanword from French galerne, which is also a loanword from Breton gwalarn, a word for NW wind.
You’re right! More specifically, ar gwalarn is the north-west cardinal direction, and the wind was named after it
Now, with a bit of shame, I have to admit I had never heard of the French wind galerne before, but a quick research shows that’s because its use is localised mostly on western and south-western France (gasconha, vendée, poitou). Gwalarn is still widely used in Brittany and that’s the word my Breton family used, as well as the one I heard when I was living in Brittany
That quick research also showed the typical disdain of French intellectual elites, especially the Académie Française, towards France’s minority languages. Basically, they dispute the etymology of french galerne between a vulgar latin origin and the breton origin
I’m not sure if you or your followers are really interested in my rant and explanations, but I’ll still write them under a read more for those who are, because it’s a good exemple of which lengths France can go to erase its minority languages, which include Basque
This reminded us of word mochoin Spanish that means blunted, cut off, and that according to the Spanish Academy is “of unknown origin, maybe onomatopoeic”.
And then we have Basque verb moztuwhich means to cut, and Basque adjective motz/moch/ that means - get ready for this - blunted, cut off.
Ooookay, Spanish Academy, guess we’ll never solve the mochomystery!
Anyway, thanks A LOT for your response, it was super informative. Trugarez!
Listen I wont be annoying for too long but the fact that France send in a group that sings in Breton is so fucking important to me like.
We are talking about a language that the french higher ups have ALWAYS tried to get rid off !! They banished it from being talked in schools in the late 19th and early 20th century. But also generally as the Bretagne (Brittany) part of France have always been looked down upon and that region was always treated as some kind of experiment base.
The fact that the group is actually a bunch of bretons singing in breton is truly making my heart happy
Fuck you to all the people who tried to demolish this language. It will keep shining.
We have mixed feelings regarding this.
Of course it’s awesome that a song in Breton was at the ESC, and it’s not the first time and hopefully, neither the last. We wish Basque had the same chance just once! Minoritized languages need more representation and Eurovision is a huge platform.
HOWEVER
What’s the point in showing a minoritized language to the world if you’re still putting every obstacle and more for people to use it? To 100% live in it? To recover it? To promote it? In the real world, that is. For actual people? Up until two years ago it wasn’t allowed to put letter Ñ in Breton names because that letter doesn’t belong to the French alphabet, ffs.
Particularly France is an expert in showing Europe its regionallanguages as bonus points for diversity and tolerance and what not. They’re shown as an oddity or as a way to whitewash the crimes French governments commited - and commit - against these languages and their speakers. Minoritized languages like Breton, Euskara, Català, Corsican, etc have survived despiteFrance, not thanks to.
Yay for the minoritized languages. But let’s not forget France’s blatant hypocrisy.
But it’s precisely because our own goverment is still doing all it can to erase our languages and cultures that we were overhyped to see a Breton song at Eurovision
It was the occasion to show the French ruling class & cultural elite that we’re still here, our languages and cultures are still there, living, thriving even. That we have our place on the international cultural scene. That we aren’t a sub-culture, like they still think we are
I honestly don’t know where you get the idea that “France is an expert in showing Europe its regionallanguages as bonus points for diversity and tolerance” ? I guess that’s a mask France officials put up for international relationships, because inside the country there’s no doubts about France’s stance on its minority languages and cultures : their only place is inside their historical regions (good luck trying to learn a regional language outside of it), and out of the tourists’ sorry, public’s eye. They’re not living cultures, just folklore.
Every time a regional language makes it to the international scene, French officials are pissed. This year didn’t make exception: all newspapers reporting the win of Fulenn at the selection asked at least once the question “is a Breton song fit to represent France ?” (a question that is never asked when when we’re sending the Nth Parisian ballad) Many people said regional languages had no legitimacy being in an international event, even adding “and what would be next ? Occitan ? Basque ? Corsican?” (despite having already presented a Corsican song at the Eurovision in 2011) French people watching the French transmission said the commentators were salty that our song wasn’t in French
I can’t vouch for that last one because I watched the Breton transmission of the event. Because, yes, for the first time ever we had the Eurovision covered in Breton. TV coverage of an international event. Not a local one. In Breton And sure, France has been its usual arsehole with trying to keep it inside its region (the Breton transmission was only available on TV in Brittany. Currently living in Burgundy I had to watch it on the Internet) But that’s still a step more for the everyday use of our language, something we got thanks to a Breton group going to the Eurovision, not from a desire from France to show off its regional languages but despite the French elite despising being represented by a minority language
Something we probably won’t have again thanks to the fiasco that was this year. Because I have no doubt the French elite is blaming our second-to-last place to the fact that the song was in Breton
It was our chance to prove to our own state that it is wrong. That our languages are fit for the international scene. That we do not belong only in our regions. That we aren’t a subculture
I’m not sure I’ll forgive the Eurovision jury for taking that away from us
I honestly don’t know where you get the idea that “France is an expert in showing Europe its regionallanguages as bonus points for diversity and tolerance” ?
Because they do with Basque too. The tourist guides are a joke: Basque culture this, Basque language that, blah blah blah, and then reality strikes and there’s drama almost every year with the bac in Basque, for example. Or Basque speakers being beaten just for speaking Basque. Basque culture - and change Basque for Breton, Corsican, whatever - is a tourist grabbing oddity, nothing more.
And we said they’re experts because they’ve sent seeeeeveral songs to the ESC in languages other than French:
Kali (1992) who sang in Haitian creole. Patrick Fiori (1993) who sang in French and Corsican Dan ar Braz & L’héritage des Celtes (1996) who sang in Breton Amaury Vassili (2011) who sang in Corsican This year’s Alvan & Ahez, in Breton
They sell their diversity before Europe. Oh France, how progressive you are!
We don’t know if French officials get pissed, but you get to get them pissed quite ofter if we might say so respectfully. We Basques have never had the chance to send a song in Basque; in fact, Spain has NEVER sent a song in a minoritized language.
And I’m telling you, it’s an act. French officials aren’t proud to flaunt their minority languages to the world. French officials do not want to see our minority languages make it to the international scene. They have to put up with our choice of songs, but if it were up to them no song in a minority language would ever make it to the Eurovision, or in any international event
Yes the state use our languages as a tourist attraction: as I said, it’s somewhat okay with them as long as they never get out of their region, as long as they stay folklore for the tourists rather than flourish as cultures. Because the state knows our languages will die if we keep them that way
I get you’re angry that you’ve never been able to send a song in Basque or any of Spain’s minority language, but believe it or not, French people do not need to be reminded by strangers how much our country hates our cultures and languages. We see it everyday I’ve seen it my whole life
We suspected it was an act! That’s why we said what we said about France’s hipocrisy, because Spain at least refuses to send anything that isn’t in Spanish or English and keeps on being an ass, but France puts up this act.
Listen, we’re not at war with you or any of our Breton, Corsican or Catalan buddies, not at all. We all have faced and face the same sh*t - we’re not strange to that - and you know we respect you. We’re not angry there hasn’t been any song in Basque, whatever, there are bigger issues; but we didn’t mean either to remind you how things are because you know better than we do. We just wanted to tell whoever didn’t know that France sadly isn’t actually promoting and protecting and encouraging its minoritized languages as some may think by seeing songs in regional languages at the ESC. We didn’t want to offend Breton people or diminish how important it was to have a song in Breton for the 2nd time in history.
Sorry if we sounded angry or disrespectful, our goal was just to tell outsiders not to be fooled.
Hope we’re cool.
It’s okay! You’re right to tell everyone that France isn’t a champion of diversity (far from it) and is still actively trying to eradicate its native languages, because that’s still 100% true!
But even when France is trying to exploit its regional cultures on the international scene, it’s a win for us, and a double-edged sword for the state. I’ve seen a lot of people, especially American, asking what was the language in Fulenn, saying they had no idea France had other languages than French, wanting to learn more about it. It brings international attention to our languages, but also to the way France treats them, which is never a good idea when you’re trying to commit cultural genocide
This is why Alvan & Ahez at the Eurovision was 100% a win for Breton & French minority languages and why we were so happy for them to be there
France is an hypocrite country - and if we’re lucky it’ll cause the downfall of its imperialist attitude.
I’ve seen a lot of people, especially American, asking what was the language in Fulenn, saying they had no idea France had other languages than French, wanting to learn more about it.
We couldn’t be happier to know this!! We didn’t want to rain on your parade at all with our comment, let’s see if France governments change their ways once and for all with these little steps.
And it’s also a shame France didn’t rank better. However there’s being more drama now with the points of 6 countries - the EBU seemingly gave their points the way EBU wanted - so if this goes further rankings may change? We’ll see.
Oh, and regarding your tags: yes, there’s always drama with Eurovision .
I usually do not give a fuck about the Eurovision but this year is a bit special for me as it is my language and culture who will represent France, so I have some thoughts about it and need to get them out.
First if you don’t know anything about this, the “French” song that will be at Eurovision is called Fulenn and was made by Alvan & Ahez. Alvan is a Breton electro musician. Ahez is a band of three Breton women who met in Diwan, which are immersion schools teaching the Breton language, and learnt kan ha diskan, Brittany’s traditional way of singing, from Louise Ebrel, an absolute icon of traditional Breton music.
The song is entirely in Breton and inspired by a Breton legend, the legend of Katell Gollet.
By the way Breton is a Celtic language of the Brythonic branch (with Welsh and Cornish, the other branch being the Goidelic one, with Irish, Scottish and Manx). Stats say it’s spoken by about 200K people nowadays, it is considered endangered. It’s spoken in Brittany, a western region of France.
Now I kind of want to point out the irony of it all… Diwan schools, where the members of this band met, are technically illegal in France. They exist, but they are in a very precarious position following the Constitutional Council’s decision of two years ago that officially ruled immersion schools as “against the French constitution”. The 2nd article of the French constition states that The Language of the Republic is French. France has quite the history of being absolutely terrible to the non-French languages spoken on its territory, hell it’s pretty terrible even to any Romance/French language that isn’t the standard (as regularly shown by the rampant glottophobia in our medias).
So France is going to be represented by a song born of something France is constitutionally against. I’m kind of amazed by the audacity.
To be fair, it’s not the first time France sent a Breton song to the eurovision, the other time was in 1996 with trad artist Dan ar Braz (check him out!).
So that’s for the fun political bits.
If you’re curious about the legend of Katell Gollet, here it is: Katell Gollet was a beautiful young woman whose only love was dancing. Her uncle wanted her to marry so she said ok, I will marry any man who can keep up with me and dance with me for 12 hours straight.
Many men tried, they all died of exhaustion.
Katell’s uncle was horrified and locked her up in a tower but she escaped and went to another party to dance again. Her dance partner died of exhaustion too, then the musicians died of exhaustion too, but she still didn’t want to stop, so she invoked musicians from the depths of hell to keep playing for her, and the Devil himself came to dance with her. The Devil and her then went through the gates of hell still dancing.
Of course originally it’s supposed to mean “Be a good girl, settle down for a man and marry, if you like dancing and having fun too much you’ll go to hell” because Brittany was catholic as fuck for a long time (hello Irish cousins). Personally I see a woman who didn’t want to settle down for anyone who couldn’t keep up with her and I dig that energy.
I highly encourage you to go check the song out, there are many videos of it with English translations on youtube. I think it’s a bop, personally, it’s a fun mix of electro and traditional singing. The lyrics are beautiful too!
Fun little language fact: Fulenn is a very versatile word, in the song it means “spark”, as in a spark of fire (which sometimes is written “Fulenn tan”), but in other contexts like “Fulenn erc’h” it means snowflake, and “Fulenn aour” is a gold chunk.
Fulenn is also a collective noun, which means that its default form “Ful” is plural, and you have to add a suffix to it (-enn) to make it singular. Ful= sparks. Fulenn= spark. This is of course because you rarely talk about a single spark, a single snowflake, those usually come in groups. Other collective nouns are usually cattle related, but my favourite one has to be “Krampouezh/enn”. It means crepe, and it’s a collective noun because whomst the fuck would only eat one crepe, am I right?
Anyway, I’m super happy about this song, about the visibility, about the lovely singing of those Breton-speaking women. Nothing would make me happier than this song winning the eurovision, forcing France to organise the eurovision (and as we all know, no country actually wants that) next year.
Here’s the song! It’s a banger and I’ve had t on loop for a few days.
Never thought I’d be voting for France in Eurovision but defence of the Brythonic languages comes before wider national grudges!
Saved posting this… but here are the disaster lesbians themseves: Brelyna Maryon and Myfanwy Caldevwin for @dumpsterhipster’s fic “A Fistful of Stars” over on A03 ♥
Please read the fic btw, I cannot recommend it enough. If you love cozy coming-of-age stories, WINTERHOLD, mages, magic and idiot babies, this is the fic for you <3 <3
After almost eight years the Manwhore of Gorgos finally passes on the torch to his successor.
Aion!Jaris may have been a noble-turned-military man with a chip on his shoulder about the whole Ascension thing, but ESO!Jaris is an extra-af, roguish, peacocking knight who could not be happier getting beat in the face.
Uploaded a ‘Best Of Twitch’ compilation video for the holiday season. Feat. this actual quote.
Since I am away from the holidays I have compiled two videos of the best clips from this year of Twitch! BE SURE TO TURN ON CLOSED CAPTIONS!!Ravnie and I spent HOURS adding commentary, and frankly I think they’re the best part!
Since Tumblr hates outside links it would be great if you could share or reblog this if you enjoyed it. Thank you so much for the support, and have a wonderful New Year!
