Fair play on Ashling for trying….still needs to work on her grammar though.
My own Irish is currently abysmal and Bata Neart is part of my own plan to improve that. So for now, most of my best shot to write in Gaelige can be explained away by the fact that Áine is having a hard time with Modern Irish, and Ashling isn’t any good at it.
This also brings to an end the Bata Neart of 2014, and it’s 10th anniversary year. It’s been a big one in many ways, both in my personal life, but for Bata Neart itself. This summer saw an extract of comic published with NEO Magazine, which was Bata Neart’s first ever printed version which in turn was read my many 1000s of Manga/Anime fans around the world. I will remember this year fondly.
This scene continues on Friday 09 January 2015, where we’ll continue to run down to the end of Chapter 5, and of Bata Neart’s first complete Book.
Until then, I hope you have an excellent Holiday and New Year.
OO! OOO! PS:
A few weeks ago Bata Neart got it’s first ever piece of fan-art thanks to Kessy Athena!!
Thank you Kessy, and be sure to check out the awesomeness of Kessy’s DA page and webcomic!! Yay!!!
http://kessy-athena.deviantart.com/
Good show, Ashling. Extend that olive branch.
Congratulations on ten years, Rawr. And a very happy Holiday season to you and yours. 😀
It’ll pay off. You know that Aine really is a nice girl beneath the Clothes-stealing Kidnapper that she has shown herself to be so far 🙂
Thank you too 🙂 It’s been a good year to round off 10 years of production on this comic. I’m hoping for a good 2024 as well 🙂 I hope you also have a very nice holiday and New Year.
I don’t think the olive branch is going to need much extending. Aine’s pretty clearly badly traumatized from realizing that everything and everyone she’s ever known or cared about has been dead and gone for the gods alone (well, and Rawr) know how long. Anyone in that situation would be in desperate need of something to hang on to. I don’t have a good read on her personality yet, but if she’s the right kind of character I wouldn’t be surprised if she wound up clinging to Ashling and crying in the next few pages. Which I imagine would embarrass Ashling and provoke some jealous teasing from Aoife.
Thanks for the shout out, Rawr, I’m honored. Happy holidays!
Well, if nothing else, Ashling’s grammar should convince Aine that things may have changed politically as well as physically.
I’m also waiting to see how three girls get back to civilization with only enough clothing for two. Somebody is going to wind up….underdressed….and that could create problems.
@Kessy: You’ve read the situation very well Kessy, and you do seem to get Áine very well. A hug would certainly make Aoife jealous, but afraid you’ll have to wait until after New Years to find out. Sorry about that 🙁
My pleasure on the shout-out, it was truly an honor that you made fan-art of Bata Neart, which beyond some artist exchanges with my Back Office comics, is the very first piece of fan-art I’ve ever recieved. It really does mean a lot.
@Delta: Ah Delta, you’re close to the point of the next page 😀 Truth is most Irish teenagers are bad at the Irish language despite it being a mandatory subject. Ashling and Aoife are typical of this and are limited (although that is likely to improve given the large amount of practice they are about to get).
As for the clothing….well….their ‘solution’ won’t be very practical I’m afraid….
Ooo! Ooo! Everyone, be sure to check out Delta’s awesome review of Bata Neart! Is awesome!!!
So it’s a bit like in anime when a character has to try to communicate with a foreigner in English, then? Well, at least Ashling has more to work with than, “This is a pen.” 😉
I’d imagine that the version of Irish that’s taught in schools today is significantly different from what was actually spoken, what? 2,000 years ago? They’d probably have trouble communicating even if Ashling and Aoife were star students.
As for clothing, all they really have to do is get Aine back to someone’s house (I’m guessing Ashling’s?) without getting arrested or causing a riot. And just hope they don’t run into anyone they know.
It’ll be interesting to see how exactly they explain Aine to other people.
Pretty much. It’s tricky though, because the girls have poorly learned Modern Irish, which is an artificially created soup of provincial dialects that uses a lot of English loan-words. Áine is likely speaking Middle Irish, or even Early Irish / late Munster Celtic dialect, which is nothing like Modern Irish. However, I’m not going to try and be *that* accuate with Bata Neart especially since Classical Irish Studies is an entire college degree course (!). So my own poor grasp of Modern Irish will have to do for now 😀
I wouldn’t worry about riots. The area is quiet, and it’ll soon be dark out. The tricky part will be getting on the bus back to town.
As for explaining Áine to other people…we’re going to have a lot of creative lying / helpful magic for that 😀
LOL, yeah, Modern Irish is more than exotic enough for most people. I just can’t resist peeking under the lampshade. 😉 I remember reading some advice on creative writing at some point that said you should never try to invent a fictional language unless you’re an actual professor of languages. The same probably goes for real but ancient languages too. Tolkien just set too high a bar.
BTW, something just occurred to me: Ashling, Aoife, and Aine… It’s the A-Team! LOL Now I’ve got the TV theme stuck in my head…
Thanks for calling it exotic 🙂 For many Irish people the language is the polar opposite to exotic; so-much-so that I’m guessing it’s so mundane that people don’t get too engaged into learning it after finishing school. In Ireland, you actually see Gaelige most of the time since it’s the country’s first official language. All signage needs to be lingual as a result; very much like Canada with French.
Tolkien was absolutely awesome at languages. He developed many of the languages of Middle Earth from Welsh (a cousin of the Irish language), and then created the world around those languages later. I’m not where near that level, so I have to use an existing language 😀
Ah ha! You stopped my ‘Tripple A’ in the lead characters 😀 I was wondering if anyone would. There’s no real reason beyond the fact that many Irish girl’s names begin with an ‘A’. But yes, the A-Team. I do love it when a plan comes together (lights cigar) 😀
LOL Well, exotic is in the eye of the beholder, and outside of Ireland Gaelic is pretty exotic. For example, there aren’t many universities in the US that offer courses in it. Even in the Irish diaspora it’s pretty much unknown. My great grandmother was born in Donegal and no one in my family speaks anything other than English. I was under the impression that the language was more or less dead until the Republic of Ireland started trying to revive it.
You’re pretty much spot on. Irish was on the brink of becoming an extinct language by the end of the 19th century due to a combination of devastating famines, mass emigration and indifference toward the language by the-then British administration. Coming into the early 20th Century, the original independence movements and rebel armies began to adopt Irish as an operational language. Once independence was won from the UK after the Anglo-Irish War, the new Dublin government enshrined the Irish language into the state itself. This combined with patriotic feelings at the time brought Irish back, and it has been a mandatory school subject ever since.
From the ages of 5 right up to 18, Irish is taught. However it is unfortunately not taught very well as a functional language, meaning that many Irish default to English once outside school. I lament my own loss of Irish over the years, and so Bata Neart is part of my own attempt to claw back my lost language while at the same time try to draw interest into Gaelige in a fun way.
As you say, there aren’t many US universities that offer Gaelige as an option. It’s such a minor language that it’s not too surprising. However surprisingly there are schools dotted around the world that train in the language. I know for example that there is a school in Tokyo which has produced several local students who are fluent in Gaelige (and thus better than me). Also, to further add surprise, some anime/manga even have Irish in the title. Code Geass, and Clannad come to mind straight away as examples, and they’re not the only ones.
But I degress, I still think it’s fun that you feel that Gaelige is exotic, and also somewhat rewarding as this is what I was hoping would happen.