Ireland
Ireland's Prime Minister Bertie Ahern became the ninth world leader to respond to my request. Prime Minister Ahern also became the second world leader to personally sign the photo (independently authenticated).
Oops, did I say Prime Minister? I meant Taoiseach. Yep, that's what they are called. The only external marking on the envelope were "from the office of the Taoiseach." I sat there scratching my head for a while trying to figure out what that meant. Save for one place (can you find it?) the correspondence is devoid of the term 'Prime Minister' while it seems 'Taoiseach' is sprinkled around all over the place...
posted by Joel at 10:19 PM
5 Comments:
It's pronounced "tay-sak".
Damn Irish think they're better than everyone else. They speak English - why not use "Prime Minister" or "President" or even "General-President-for-Life?"
Ireland has two official languages - English and Irish. Also, Ireland has a president (elected) and a prime minister (appointed by the president). Taoiseach is pronounced "tee-shock".
Ireland's first official language is actually Irish. I'm surprised they don't use it more (well, the majority does speak English). Instead of using "Taoiseach" in Irish and "Prime Minister" in English, the Irish use "Taoiseach" in all contexts. Remember that Taoiseach is inflected based on context in Irish (a Celtic language), while in English it reamins "Taoiseach" in all contexts. So you get signs like:
Oifig an Taoisigh / Office of the Taoiseach
Since Irish is the first official language, it will always be placed first, even on road signs and stuff like that.
Yeah, the damn Irish, the cheek of us to use our own language in our own country. While you are at it, the cheek of the Irish to resist 800 years of tyranny and to come out of it with our pride intact , our passion strong and one of the strongest cultural identities in the world.
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