Americanisms and the Irish language

pinkmonkey045 · 21-09-2014 9:51pm #1

Apologies for the mini rant but I am finding it more and more annoying that Irish people are starting to speak like Americans and erase valid Irish words from the standard Irish shpeel.ðŸ˜¡

The star of my rant, is the word 'movie'. Now this is CLEARLY not a word natural to Irish people, and we have always had the perfectly acceptable word 'film'. I have no idea how 'movie' crept in- yet there are so many seemingly normal people who come out with it permanently. Even the culchiesðŸ˜! 'I guess' and 'awesome' are hot on my list too...ðŸ˜µ! Rant over (for now!!)

Should we be promoting a mass rejection of americanisms???

Any more examples to add to my list?!!ðŸ˜±

Pat Mustard · 21-09-2014 10:19pm

Movie: a moving picture, apparently. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=movie

Many of the management-speak expressions can be irritating. The word 'spend' as a noun instead of a verb. For example, 'what was the spend on that' instead of 'what was the budget' or 'what was spent', or simply using the word 'expenditure'.

Another one is using 'action' as a noun. 'Can you action that?' instead of 'Can you do that?'

Quite annoying.

I get the distinct impression that many of these management expressions come from America.

Manach · 21-09-2014 10:39pm

The joys of Buzz work bingo played with US management speak.

Black Swan · 22-09-2014 2:37am

When you have lived on both sides of the pond you may adapt to and adopt the language spoken and written without thinking, sometimes confusing US American and Irish idioms, as well as different English spellings for the same words.

I would think that the profusion of US American computer hardware and software systems, as well as Internet memes have had their impacts on Irish culture. Does world dominant US American PC operating systems default to US American spellings for English too, as well as their idioms and cultural perspectives? Apps sometimes have language choices, but do the defaults often occur in the US American version of English (not to mention such things that may differ between cultures as syntax, etc., that may remain US American)? Try using Google to translate the US American version of English to the Irish language. Is something lost in translation?

On the flip side, with the heavy migration of Irish to US America over past generations, I wonder what influences have impacted the cultural assimilation melting pot metaphor of US American culture (J. Hector de Crevecoeur, 1782; Frederick Jackson Turner, 1893; Israel Zangwill, 1908; Ralph Waldo Emerson)? Furthermore, how have many of our thoughts and expressions been transformed over there, only to return to us in a reconstituted form? Is turnabout fair play?

Is US America really a melting pot, or salad bowl that still retains some of the qualities of immigrating cultures (LeAna Gloor, 2006)? It's interesting how US Americans seem to be lacking in a unique identity of their own. All too often I hear someone in US America referring to themselves as Irish-American, or some other claimed ancestral linkage, when they were not born themselves in Ireland.

Symbolically Ireland has impacted US America too. How is a matter of debate. But if you have been in Chicago on Paddy's Day when they dye their river green, watched their parade down the Magnificent Mile, or party with them in "Irish" pubs on Rush Street that night, with a bunch of so-called Irish running about with buttons and T-shirts that say "Kiss me I'm Irish," you do realise that we do exist for them in some way, although transformed. Do they also exist for us symbolically too, and how has that impacted on our culture? Does such an exchange across the pond really hurt Ireland, or serve as a source of craic when someone confuses memes, idioms, spellings, syntax, etc.?

FunLover18 · 22-09-2014 3:05am

pinkmonkey045 wrote: »

Apologies for the mini rant but I am finding it more and more annoying that Irish people are starting to speak like Americans and erase valid Irish words from the standard Irish shpeel.ðŸ˜¡

The star of my rant, is the word 'movie'. Now this is CLEARLY not a word natural to Irish people, and we have always had the perfectly acceptable word 'film'. I have no idea how 'movie' crept in- yet there are so many seemingly normal people who come out with it permanently. Even the culchiesðŸ˜! 'I guess' and 'awesome' are hot on my list too...ðŸ˜µ! Rant over (for now!!)

Should we be promoting a mass rejection of americanisms???

Any more examples to add to my list?!!ðŸ˜±

How exactly would you do that?

English isn't technically a language natural to Irish people, and it's not like we haven't bastardised the language in our own way, you used the words 'shpeel' and 'culchie' above.

Language are constantly evolving and changing, and as they spread to other cultures where they will be affected differently. As long as we don't start using American spellings like 'color' or 'humor' I'll be happy. And most people who speak business jargon sound like cnuts anyway so I don't mind which countries jargon they use.

Peregrinus · 22-09-2014 4:10am

pinkmonkey045 wrote: »

Apologies for the mini rant but I am finding it more and more annoying that Irish people are starting to speak like Americans and erase valid Irish words from the standard Irish shpeel.ðŸ˜¡ . . .

Any more examples to add to my list?!!ðŸ˜±

"Shpeel" would be an obvious example!

ArnieSilvia · 22-09-2014 4:19am

The Mustard wrote: »

Movie: a moving picture, apparently. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=movie

Many of the management-speak expressions can be irritating. The word 'spend' as a noun instead of a verb. For example, 'what was the spend on that' instead of 'what was the budget' or 'what was spent', or simply using the word 'expenditure'.

Another one is using 'action' as a noun. 'Can you action that?' instead of 'Can you do that?'

Quite annoying.

I get the distinct impression that many of these management expressions come from America.

"Can you brief me" - would it come into same category?

Peregrinus · 22-09-2014 5:13am

ArnieSilvia wrote: »

"Can you brief me" - would it come into same category?

Nope. "Brief" as a verb is not an Americanism; it's a legalism.

You "brief" a barrister when you instruct him (or when your solicitor instructs him) to take on your case. Briefing a barrister involves giving him the facts of the case, and giving him the authority to represent you in the case. From that sense we have the wider sense of giving somebody information which he needs in order to carry out some task or do some job that has been assigned to him. The word was legal jargon until the mid-nineteenth century, when the wider sense developed.

diveout · 22-09-2014 1:24pm

Black Swan wrote: »

When you have lived on both sides of the pond you may adapt to and adopt the language spoken and written without thinking, sometimes confusing US American and Irish idioms, as well as different English spellings for the same words.

I would think that the profusion of US American computer hardware and software systems, as well as Internet memes have had their impacts on Irish culture. Does world dominant US American PC operating systems default to US American spellings for English too, as well as their idioms and cultural perspectives? Apps sometimes have language choices, but do the defaults often occur in the US American version of English (not to mention such things that may differ between cultures as syntax, etc., that may remain US American)? Try using Google to translate the US American version of English to the Irish language. Is something lost in translation?

On the flip side, with the heavy migration of Irish to US America over past generations, I wonder what influences have impacted the cultural assimilation melting pot metaphor of US American culture (J. Hector de Crevecoeur, 1782; Frederick Jackson Turner, 1893; Israel Zangwill, 1908; Ralph Waldo Emerson)? Furthermore, how have many of our thoughts and expressions been transformed over there, only to return to us in a reconstituted form? Is turnabout fair play?

Is US America really a melting pot, or salad bowl that still retains some of the qualities of immigrating cultures (LeAna Gloor, 2006)? It's interesting how US Americans seem to be lacking in a unique identity of their own. All too often I hear someone in US America referring to themselves as Irish-American, or some other claimed ancestral linkage, when they were not born themselves in Ireland.

Symbolically Ireland has impacted US America too. How is a matter of debate. But if you have been in Chicago on Paddy's Day when they dye their river green, watched their parade down the Magnificent Mile, or party with them in "Irish" pubs on Rush Street that night, with a bunch of so-called Irish running about with buttons and T-shirts that say "Kiss me I'm Irish," you do realise that we do exist for them in some way, although transformed. Do they also exist for us symbolically too, and how has that impacted on our culture? Does such an exchange across the pond really hurt Ireland, or serve as a source of craic when someone confuses memes, idioms, spellings, syntax, etc.?

I've bolded a statement which I have to call you out on.

That is entirely wrong.

America is full of hyphenated beings, but the American part of is is always the default and assumed identity there.

They most certainly do have their own identity, but it is always flexible, changing, and fluid.

GerB40 · 22-09-2014 1:28pm

While we're on the subject, top o' the mornin was apparently invented by Hollywood as something that sounds like Irish people would say. If that's true then technically it's an Americanism...

GoddardNew · 22-09-2014 1:32pm

There's American English ,British English and Hiberno‐English (sometimes referred to as Irish English.

OldNotWIse · 22-09-2014 1:41pm

The Mustard wrote: »

Movie: a moving picture, apparently. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=movie

Many of the management-speak expressions can be irritating. The word 'spend' as a noun instead of a verb. For example, 'what was the spend on that' instead of 'what was the budget' or 'what was spent', or simply using the word 'expenditure'.

Another one is using 'action' as a noun. 'Can you action that?' instead of 'Can you do that?'

Quite annoying.

I get the distinct impression that many of these management expressions come from America.

Let's reach out to someone in another department to get some figures on that.

Peregrinus · 22-09-2014 2:25pm

GerB40 wrote: »

While we're on the subject, top o' the mornin was apparently invented by Hollywood as something that sounds like Irish people would say. If that's true then technically it's an Americanism...

It's actually English in origin, attested in eighteenth and nineteenth century sources, usually as an example of the colouful speech of the honest English yeomanry. It's always lower-class rural types who are said to use it, never urban characters and never middle-class or upper class people. It spread to Ireland and by the late nineteenth century had come to be regarded as typically Irish, having fallen out of use in England. I don't know how widespread it ever was in Ireland, but it featured heavily in English presentations of stage-Irish characters, which is probably part of the reason that in the early twentieth century it had completely disappeared from popular use in Ireland.

GerB40 · 22-09-2014 2:29pm

Peregrinus wrote: »

It's actually English in origin, attested in eighteenth and nineteenth century sources, usually as an example of the colouful speech of the honest English yeomanry. It's always lower-class rural types who are said to use it, never urban characters and never middle-class or upper class people. It spread to Ireland and by the late nineteenth century had come to be regarded as typically Irish, having fallen out of use in England. I don't know how widespread it ever was in Ireland, but it featured heavily in English presentations of stage-Irish characters, which is probably part of the reason that in the early twentieth century it had completely disappeared from popular use in Ireland.

So both "craíc" and "top o' the mornin" actually came from England? Language is an odd thing sometimes..

Pat Mustard · 22-09-2014 10:34pm

OldNotWIse wrote: »

Let's reach out to someone in another department to get some figures on that.

Let's take it offline.

Black Swan · 23-09-2014 1:36am

diveout wrote: »

That is entirely wrong.

America is full of hyphenated beings, but the American part of is is always the default and assumed identity there.

"Entirely wrong," as opposed to being entirely right, is a dichotomy that assumes absolute, mutually exclusive categories, and may suffer from the limitations of such dichotomies (Jacques Derrida, Points, 1995). Rather than being "entirely wrong," perhaps the above comment had been misunderstood in that it represented a different perspective that acknowledged many ("full of") US Americans as exhibiting something incomplete or missing in their cultural identity by their own self-acknowledged "hyphenated beings" claims?

Does this mean that you favour more the melting pot metaphor ("the default") rather than the salad bowl metaphor when defining US American culture and identity, or something that mixes the salad with the melting pot (e.g., the stew pot metaphor; Philip Glass), or what? There has been an ongoing interdisciplinary debate in USA about these different perspectives that has historically and recently shifted somewhat, along with those that would combine both almost as if in Hegelian synthesis.

What adds to the confounding of this American title is that if you travel the Americas, you will find there are millions of other Americans besides those residing in USA that also claim the title. This was a topic that had been discussed at the IFTDO (International Federation of Training and Development Organisations) 30th World Conference (2001) held in Porto Alegre, Brasil, SA.

Unfortunately my emic experience is limited to being anecdotal, having lived recently in USA attending university. But during this time when I identify my Irish nationality, US Americans frequently identify themselves as Irish-American, often with emotional pride (or some other ancestral hyphenated US American title) in reply, as if their USA birthplace identity would have something missing without cultural reference to the fatherland or motherland. Ireland is not "full of hyphenated beings" pridefully proclaiming their identity as English-Irish, French-Irish, etc., by those born Irish. Ancestry may come up in conversation, census, genealogy, or whatever, but I do not recall our land "full of hyphenated beings" claims by Irish born (and let's avoid the confounding issues associated with NI in saying this).

But this raises an earlier point made and left unanswered. The OP stated "I am finding it more and more annoying that Irish people are starting to speak like [US] Americans." Due to the historical and heavy Irish immigration to USA, "how have many of our [Irish] thoughts and expressions been transformed over there, only to return to us in a reconstituted form? Is turnabout fair play," does it really matter to Ireland, or does this across-the-pond exchange exhibit similar interactions that have occurred throughout Éire history with other cultures about the world, especially those nearby?

Peregrinus · 23-09-2014 2:37am

GerB40 wrote: »

So both "craíc" and "top o' the mornin" actually came from England? Language is an odd thing sometimes..

Yes. And furthermore there's a theory that the American casual farewell, "so long", comes from Irish; it's supposed to be a corruption of slán.

diveout · 23-09-2014 6:45am

Black Swan wrote: »

"Entirely wrong," as opposed to being entirely right, is a dichotomy that assumes absolute, mutually exclusive categories, and may suffer from the limitations of such dichotomies (Jacques Derrida, Points, 1995). Rather than being "entirely wrong," perhaps the above comment had been misunderstood in that it represented a different perspective that acknowledged many ("full of") US Americans as exhibiting something incomplete or missing in their cultural identity by their own self-acknowledged "hyphenated beings" claims?

Does this mean that you favour more the melting pot metaphor ("the default") rather than the salad bowl metaphor when defining US American culture and identity, or something that mixes the salad with the melting pot (e.g., the stew pot metaphor; Philip Glass), or what? There has been an ongoing interdisciplinary debate in USA about these different perspectives that has historically and recently shifted somewhat, along with those that would combine both almost as if in Hegelian synthesis.

What adds to the confounding of this American title is that if you travel the Americas, you will find there are millions of other Americans besides those residing in USA that also claim the title. This was a topic that had been discussed at the IFTDO (International Federation of Training and Development Organisations) 30th World Conference (2001) held in Porto Alegre, Brasil, SA.

Unfortunately my emic experience is limited to being anecdotal, having lived recently in USA attending university. But during this time when I identify my Irish nationality, US Americans frequently identify themselves as Irish-American, often with emotional pride (or some other ancestral hyphenated US American title) in reply, as if their USA birthplace identity would have something missing without cultural reference to the fatherland or motherland. Ireland is not "full of hyphenated beings" pridefully proclaiming their identity as English-Irish, French-Irish, etc., by those born Irish. Ancestry may come up in conversation, census, genealogy, or whatever, but I do not recall our land "full of hyphenated beings" claims by Irish born (and let's avoid the confounding issues associated with NI in saying this).

But this raises an earlier point made and left unanswered. The OP stated "I am finding it more and more annoying that Irish people are starting to speak like [US] Americans." Due to the historical and heavy Irish immigration to USA, "how have many of our [Irish] thoughts and expressions been transformed over there, only to return to us in a reconstituted form? Is turnabout fair play," does it really matter to Ireland, or does this across-the-pond exchange exhibit similar interactions that have occurred throughout Éire history with other cultures about the world, especially those nearby?

I don't particularly favor either metaphor of the melting pot or the tossed salad. It's both/and.

When you immigrate to another country, you can either live in exile by preserving your own culture in that country or you can go through the pains of transformation.

American expressions are here because of tv and the internet. That's why.

pinkmonkey045 · 23-09-2014 9:08pm

I agree that the internet and tv may contribute to a somewhat porous cultural identity, but probably the weakening of the core of Irish young people plays a role aswell (uni-culture). I may sound 'auld' but I'm in my 20s!

Very few Irish people give a sh** about Irish music, Irish artists, Irish language, Irish history.... If we are not interested in our Irish identity on more than surface level, our future 'true culture' is probably to be a distant memory in 50 years! Fun/surfacey Irishness- Drinking craic, and acceptable jovial cursing, Familiar tv shows, inside jokes, gift of the gab and mutual pride in famous exports. Not a bad thing at all to enjoy these things (I certainly do!).

But when we are all speaking like jedward and the older gem generation die out (those people who remember the Ireland which charms the hearts and minds of the world but doesn't overly exist) - it's over folks! Ok that's going beyond the Hiberno-English and 'movies'!

On my actual POINT in retaining irishness with 'language', I just see accepting American words like 'movie' for 'film', 'candy' for 'sweets', sweatshirt' for 'jumper' etc into our day to day Irish tongue is just another weakening of 'irishness' and edging us towards this uni-culture which is already overwhelmingly in place.

Emigration and taking words with you is great, impacting local sayings etc (that is, where you emigrate to), but I don't see how that impacts those in Ireland /who haven't emigrated!

Just to note, I really do like Americans!

Eeden · 26-09-2014 12:36am

pinkmonkey045 wrote: »

Emigration and taking words with you is great, impacting local sayings etc (that is, where you emigrate to), but I don't see how that impacts those in Ireland /who haven't emigrated!

In your OP you say "Irish people are starting to speak like Americans and erase valid Irish words from the standard Irish shpeel." (Spiel is from German, not Irish, I think -- but I could be wrong).

It works both ways. People travel all over the world at the drop of a hat nowadays. Not to mention internet, TV, movies (-- relax, I was brought up in the USA by Irish parents who subsequently brought all their "Yank" children back to Ireland! Maybe it's all my fault, as my Irish children have picked up expressions from me!)

English (or Globish) is now regarded as a standard international business language, so it will more than likely have influences from all over the world.

We often laugh at the French with their Academie Francaise, who try so hard to keep Anglicisms out of their language ("le weekend", etc) - fighting a losing battle, we say. But we get annoyed that English borrows from... other English speaking countries?!

Black Swan · 26-09-2014 2:58am

Eeden wrote: »

We often laugh at the French with their Academie Francaise, who try so hard to keep Anglicisms out of their language ("le weekend", etc) - fighting a losing battle, we say. But we get annoyed that English borrows from... other English speaking countries?!

Cannot forget the humour that occurs with sometimes confounded word attributions, as when the GW Bush's Republicans were mad at the French for not lending support for their 2nd Persian Gulf War (Iraq II), and renamed French fries in Washington DC to "Freedom Fries" in an attempt to insult the French (which insulted the Belgians too who claimed origin). Doubt it caused a food fight between the USA Republican party, French, and Belgians, but it was good craic.

Peregrinus · 26-09-2014 3:08am

Eeden wrote: »

In your OP you say "Irish people are starting to speak like Americans and erase valid Irish words from the standard Irish shpeel." (Spiel is from German, not Irish, I think -- but I could be wrong).

Spiel comes to us from US English; in Ireland (and Britain) it's very definitely an Americanism. It comes into US English from Yiddish. Yiddish is a dialect of German. The word has no Gaelic connections at all.

Black Swan · 27-09-2014 3:34am

pinkmonkey045 wrote: »

Should we be promoting a mass rejection of americanisms???

Any more examples to add to my list?!!ðŸ˜±

We Irish seem to be slowly losing our arse; i.e., it is being replaced by ass as propagated by different forms of USA media, tourism, and immigration. Although arse is still quite common in Ireland, England, and Australia, the word's etymology suggests cognates old Saxon, old High German, and old Norse ars, Greek orros, and Hittite arrash.

Pat Mustard · 27-09-2014 4:02am

That link was interesting:

4. If you get really American, then Goddamn replaces your favourite Irish expletives. ‘Freaking’ also comes in instead of the “F word”. I don’t think I’m at that point yet.

This use of expletives is common in Ireland. The English can be a bit surprised at the casual use of expletives by Irish people.

I don't think the Americans approve of the casual use of expletives. I'm not certain if American culture was always as it is now, but the use of expletives seems to be quite regulated on television in the USA. Maybe this is incorrect, but I sometimes wonder if much of this somewhat puritanical-seeming attitude comes from the types of people who comprised the first English settlers of America.

I am unsure about other nationalities, although it doesn't seem to me that casual use of expletives (by Irish people) bothers the Germans very much.

Something tells me that this habit will die hard in Ireland.

Black Swan · 27-09-2014 9:05pm

The Mustard wrote: »

This use of expletives is common in Ireland. The English can be a bit surprised at the casual use of expletives by Irish people.

I don't think the Americans approve of the casual use of expletives. I'm not certain if American culture was always as it is now, but the use of expletives seems to be quite regulated on television in the USA. Maybe this is incorrect, but I sometimes wonder if much of this somewhat puritanical-seeming attitude comes from the types of people who comprised the first English settlers of America.

There has been a gradual shift in freedom of speech from the highly restrictive 1960's Lenny Bruce era in USA (a stand-up comedian who used to take pride in being arrested for using expletives when doing a show before public audiences), in contrast to the 1990's era Howard Stern's Shock Radio (where the "shock jock" exhibited profuse profanity before adoring fans). Of course films and telly programming has the "L" rating, but I would think that such measures were intended as parental guidelines; i.e., filters for children. Not sure how this USA relaxation of expletives regulation in public entertainment media would impact Irish language use.

nuac · 17-05-2016 2:24pm

pinkmonkey045 wrote: »

I agree that the internet and tv may contribute to a somewhat porous cultural identity, but probably the weakening of the core of Irish young people plays a role aswell (uni-culture). I may sound 'auld' but I'm in my 20s!

Very few Irish people give a sh** about Irish music, Irish artists, Irish language, Irish history.... If we are not interested in our Irish identity on more than surface level, our future 'true culture' is probably to be a distant memory in 50 years! Fun/surfacey Irishness- Drinking craic, and acceptable jovial cursing, Familiar tv shows, inside jokes, gift of the gab and mutual pride in famous exports. Not a bad thing at all to enjoy these things (I certainly do!).

But when we are all speaking like jedward and the older gem generation die out (those people who remember the Ireland which charms the hearts and minds of the world but doesn't overly exist) - it's over folks! Ok that's going beyond the Hiberno-English and 'movies'!

On my actual POINT in retaining irishness with 'language', I just see accepting American words like 'movie' for 'film', 'candy' for 'sweets', sweatshirt' for 'jumper' etc into our day to day Irish tongue is just another weakening of 'irishness' and edging us towards this uni-culture which is already overwhelmingly in place.

Emigration and taking words with you is great, impacting local sayings etc (that is, where you emigrate to), but I don't see how that impacts those in Ireland /who haven't emigrated!

Just to note, I really do like Americans!

Over my 70+ years I have noticed an increasing interest by Irish people in Irish culture, including music, theatre, dancing,literature, art, and langauge ( outside education )

boardise · 21-05-2016 12:33am

That could very well be the case as in ,say, an increase from 0.3% to 0.4%.

tac foley · 31-05-2016 9:06pm

I guess I've missed the point of this thread somehow, as I see no evidence whatsoever that Americanisms have crept into the Irish language. It's true to say that they HAVE crept into the form of English that is spoken in Ireland, but as far as Irish per se is concerned, what evidence is there of any kind?

tac

J_E · 30-06-2016 7:09pm

There has never really been an active push to retain Irish culture. The Irish language is completely broken in education and no real acknowledgement seems to be made to restructure it properly in schools, and I feel that is the beginning of why we let other language quirks assimilate our own. People default to British and American media all of the time over Irish media because it's generally better and pushed on us. Popular publications like The Journal (in particular, their Daily Edge content) constantly employ this Americanised use of English that seems to be most prevalent amongst those living in Dublin CC. It's hard to retain a sense of cultural identity when nobody wants to use our original language and the English-speaking alternatives in the media are just so much stronger and more influentlial than what we have. Often, Irish people don't really care and have little pride in who they are, and are happy to absorb and rattle off the most stupid of American phrases, spellings, etc.

There has been some good revival in Irish culture and interest, but until some heavyweight funding in the Arts is finally granted, it's never going to have a larger impact in the long term.

Speedwell · 30-06-2016 7:13pm

Black Swan wrote: »

"Entirely wrong," as opposed to being entirely right, is a dichotomy that assumes absolute, mutually exclusive categories, and may suffer from the limitations of such dichotomies (Jacques Derrida, Points, 1995).

This sounded better in the original French.

ezra_pound · 30-06-2016 7:17pm

Pat Mustard wrote: »

Movie: a moving picture, apparently. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=movie

Many of the management-speak expressions can be irritating. The word 'spend' as a noun instead of a verb. For example, 'what was the spend on that' instead of 'what was the budget' or 'what was spent', or simply using the word 'expenditure'.

Another one is using 'action' as a noun. 'Can you action that?' instead of 'Can you do that?'

Quite annoying.

I get the distinct impression that many of these management expressions come from America.

Surely you mean action as a verb?

Americanisms and the Irish language

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