Bird Brain Behavior

Anyway last night i dreamt about Thrawn (unusual, i typically only dream about real people) who, for whatever reason, had started joining troops on extraction missions. And every time they captured a target, they would take them into a room (that looked weirdly like lecture hall with more beige and folding chairs) and do some kind of ritual where Thrawn took his tunic off (weird ik). Anyway eventually i (who, in this instance, was Eli Vanto) was sitting in the crowd (towards the aisle, 2ish rows back) and instead of approaching the prisoner, Thrawn approached me and then hugged me. It was one of those weird dreams where i can feel everything but also not enough. I felt the pressure of his chest on mine and the feeling of my hands at his back, and maybe a little warmth. For the first time in probably a week, I woke up feeling comforted rather than disturbed.

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In the UK, the languages Gaelige, Gaelic, Cymraeg and Kernewek (that’s Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Cornish respectively) didn’t just “die out.” There was a concerted effort by the English to kill them off. 

For example, in Wales, if a child was heard speaking Welsh in a classroom, they’d be given a “Welsh Not”, a wooden plaque engraved with “WN” to hang around their neck. They’d pass it onto the next child heard speaking Welsh, and whoever had the Welsh Not at the end of the day was punished - usually with a beating. 

Kernewek was revived after a long hard struggle by the Cornish folk, and is now being taught again, but a lot about it has been lost because everyone who grew up speaking it has died.

And languages are never revived “just because.” The language of a place can offer so much insight into its history, so if you’re content to let a language die then you’re content to let history die.

People talk about “dead” languages as if they dwindle away gradually, naturally coming to an end and evolving into something else, but that’s rarely the case. Languages like Cymraeg and Gaelige and especially Kernewek didn’t have the chance to die with dignity, they were literally beaten out of my parents and grandparents. 

Is it any wonder every other country hate the English? We invade their country, steal their history, claim pieces of their history as ours or flat out re-write it, and kill every part of their culture that we can. 

🎸✨