Deadly book!!

Snickers Man

I've been reading a book I got for Christmas called "How the Irish invented slang: the secret language of the crossroads"

Its author, who goes by the name of Cassidy, is an American scholar whose thesis is that Irish speaking immigrants had a huge effect on the development of American English through their influence on the emerging slang of the working class. Excluded from the centres of the Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite such as the universities, professions and financial institutions the Irish busied themselves in construction, music, street politics and some of the more unsavoury pursuits such as gambling and crime. So their influence on the language grew from the street up.

Having only a rudimentary knowledge of Irish, I still get fascinated seeing how words that I recognise have passed into English slang.

After all if someone were to tell me that the word jalopy comes the Swahili word jalopa meaning jalopy, well I would just have to take their word for it, not knowing the first thing about Swahili.

But when I read that the term "on the lam" comes from Leim, which I know to mean "jump" I think, you know what that makes sense.

Some of the etymologies described here I had heard before like "To dig" coming from Tuig, to understand. Or the adjective "smashing" from "is maith sin" (that's good).

There are dozens of other examples that I was not aware of. To put the kybosh on something comes from "an caidhp bhais" the death cap. "Gee Whiz" comes from "Dia Uas", Great God. Jiffy, as in "in a jiffy" is claimed to be from the word deifir meaning haste.

There are of course many claiming to be from Irish words that I don't recognise. I wonder whether they are perhaps a little contrived.

Humdinger, for example, is alleged to come from iomar-dian-mhaith meaning very very good.

Knack meaning aptitude is said to come from Gna(fada)ch meaning custom, manner, usage or experience.

And Razzamatazz is alleged to come from Roiseadh Mo(fada)rtas meaning "a blast of high spirits and exultation"

What do some of you more accomplished gaelgeoirs think?

arse..biscuits

I heard this guy on the radio, although I agree with some of his conclusions, he doesn't speak Irish himself and he was pronouncing most words way off, I think he invented a lot of it in fairness

conor2007

im sure people were working with him with irish

well irish is older than english
english is notorius for ''borrowing'' from multiple languages

Snickers Man

conor2007 wrote: »

im sure people were working with him with irish

well irish is older than english
english is notorius for ''borrowing'' from multiple languages

all languages "borrow" from others. That's how they evolve. If you're an English speaking chef, you actually spend a lot of your working life using French vocabulary. If you're an English speaking doctor, you spend a larger proportion of your working life using Greek vocabulary.

What I find interesting in this book is that I recognise many of the Irish words and can clearly see how it is plausible that they might have evolved into English slang. But it could be just coincidence.

For example, the similarity of the name of the world's greatest ever soccer player, Pele, to the Irish word peile meaning football could be explained by an Irish missionary christening the young Edson Arantes De Nascimento so on seeing his skills. That's plausible too, but is probably only a coincidence.

conor2007

ah cool ^