A slice of what's left of Aberystwyth castle. One of my classmates informed me that William I (I think?) was responsible for building this. It was one of many strongholds around Wales, and intended for the English to try to get a strong foothold in Wales and force the Welsh to be less... well, Welsh. Needless to say that didn't work out so well.
The view of my end of the prom from the other end, by Old College. I'm in the housing there on the water.
Ishbel adventures!! Here, she poses in front of the beautiful Old College of Aberystwyth, where my department is housed. There's not much down there; most of the campus is up the hill. There is apparently pushing and talks to move all classes out of the old college and up to main campus, but needless to say there is some rebellion against this. Obviously, some is from our department, which doesn't want to move. Additionally, the law department would have to move somewhere else for Welsh to move to main campus, and they want nothing to do with it. And since they're lawyers/aspiring lawyers... Hopefully it doesn't have to move; Old College is lovely. Except for the ridiculously inconsistent heating.
Walking around what's left of the old castle. Ishbel just poses so well.
Another view of Old College, from the castle this time. I like the fancy window.
In my Old Irish class, there came up a discussion about medieval ciphers used by scribes copying manuscripts. Various groups/individuals would use certain shorthand phrases as code for other words: My favourite example given us was: .v.v. for Dáibhí, which is an Irish name (Anglicized equivalent being Dave, Davey, something like that. Those of you who study Irish will get a giggle out of why, the rest of you will likely be bewildered. .v.v. has 2 V's, yes? And in Irish, that would be dhá 'v', which phonetically is pretty close to Dáibhí. Another example would be B8 as short for bocht (poor); 8 is ocht, so ... yeah. Like in English, using B4 instead of before. It reminds me of the Dallas Conradh na Gaeilge talking about modern Irish text-speak including things like an8 for anocht (tonight). Everything old is new again. Sometimes it just takes a few centuries to get it back around. Now, why can't we have medieval and renaissance attire make a comeback, instead of another round of the 1980s? The bling rappers wear isn't too far off of old chains of office...
See 21st Century? You just thought you were being unique and creative with shorthand text speak. But the joke's on you - medieval scribes beat you to it.
Ishbel laughs at the notion that anything is truly new, especially in language.
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