twitch of twitch.cymru

many people hate the term "british isles" for a variety of reasons. but what else to call it? as a celtic studies student i see "the atlantic archipelago" used in academia, but that feels a bit awkward to use in every day speech, to me at least. it does sound a bit formal and academic. "britain and ireland" is ok but i feel that excludes all the islands that aren't the big two. "britain and ireland and the surrounding islands" is something i've found myself saying a few times, but it's a bit long i feel. "the lands around the irish sea" is something my irish granny says. i'm not really sure what we should call this archipelago, but anything feels better than "the british isles".

atlantic isles maybe?? feels slightly less long-winded than atlantic archipelago, and maybe like something people are more likely to use in speech?? maybe a bit problematic though since there are obviously other islands in the atlantic.

i think a lot about when i went to a disabled students' meet in my first year at university. the lift to the room was broken and i was the only person there with mobility aids. everyone stared at my crutches when i walked in. they looked awkward or confused mostly.

idk anything about yinglets or the whole thing about how they speak/type but my main takeaway is that stuff like this is the reason physically abled people don't feel comfortable/safe in disabled spaces/communities bc of how neurodivergent people complain about how hard it is for them to remember to include us and make accommodations for us. like you do realise a lot of us physically disabled people are neurodivergent too right.

i don't really want to be involved in the conversations surrounding it really bc my god some people are vile. but it is very upsetting that things like this seem to be a common trend. and maybe it is hard to learn to remember to tag something, but just bc something's difficult doesn't mean it's not worthwhile. it is worth taking effort to take the time to give other people our basic needs.

that's the thing that irks me the most i think. why is other people's fun and comfort always prioritised above physically disabled people's actual basic fucking needs and accessibility.

... It's because of deep thinking like this that it irritates me when I see medieval Ireland being portrayed in simplistic terms, as though everyone was sitting around a fire telling stories about gods and heroes; as though the stories which emerged from medieval Ireland are folk tales without authors. These writers thought so carefully about words, and wrote with a consciousness of having meaning layered upon meaning, that to reduce it all to 'mythology' feels like an insult. The tendency to romanticize it seems disrespectful to writers who valued precise engagement with words and what they signify.
The sophisticated grammatical terminology attested in Old Irish shows how writers subjected their own language to the same rigorous analysis as Latin.

Elizabeth Boyle, 'Fierce Appetites'