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Old Posted Oct 21, 2014, 4:58 PM
wg_flamip wg_flamip is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2014
Location: Toronto
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker View Post
One I'm always curious about... if you wander around old cemeteries here where the dead were buried in the mid-to-late 1800s (yes, this is a thing I do), the dominance of the name Mercedes for women really stands out. I assume it's a German name? Why would it be so popular here at that time?
Names like "Mercedes" and "Dolores" are of Spanish origin. They entered English at a time when Spanish names were fashionable, and given their association with the Virgin Mary, I'd imagine you'd be more likely to find these names in places with large Catholic populations.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack View Post
Wouldn't Gaelic be like a language group? So saying someone speaks Gaelic would be like saying someone speaks Germanic instead of saying German or Dutch, or Romance instead of French or Italian.
Linguists lump Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic into the Goidelic or Q-Celtic group - a branch of the Celtic language family (itself a branch of the larger Indo-European family). Gaelic, when used on its own, almost always means Scottish Gaelic. The language of Ireland is called Irish in law and in common use. Even though the Irish word for their own language is "Gaeilge" calling it "Gaelic" in English would almost always be considered wrong.

As far as signage in languages other than English, it seems people only get worked up about it when the languages used don't employ the Latin alphabet. There are plenty of businesses in my neighbourhood with signage in Portuguese (and only Portuguese) that no one really seems to care about.
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