It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and for my latest article for The Week I’ve taken a look at a word you may see in the vicinity of an Irish pub:
Have yourself a cracking St. Patrick’s Day
And while we’re on St. Paddy’s, I’ve made some videos over the years on how to say some Irish things:
Sesquiotica 
I recall teaching Translations to unenthusiastic students back nearly thirty years now. They didn’t share my delight in the glorious literal-mindedness of the central metaphor; the lads, Doalty among them if I remember rightly, resisted the English efforts to survey and re-name in English the local please – by moving, literally translating, their survey poles to make nonsense of the careful quantifying and codifying and ultimately appropriation. The students really didn’t like the play, and I never again assumed they might be alert to prefixes or much interested in verbal wit.
Sent from my iPad
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That’s a pity Janet, but I think you probably have to know cultural clashes in your own life to get Translations. It’s apparently very successful in countries that don’t speak English….because they are still living with the tensions between English and their native language….