Blood of the travellers

slowburner

dubhthach wrote: »

The Guardian/Garjan thing is classic Hiberno-English feature. It's probably a reflection of "Slender D" in the Irish language. It's one of those features that are disappearing due to Hyper-Correction. Obviously "Local-Dublin" has other features that inherited from Irish. In general Hiberno-English is becoming more mainstream in terms of English phonology eg. you are seeing less influence from the Irish language.

As an aside I was listening to the Radio this morning and they played a Weather radio broadcast from 1939 (3 months before start of war). The presenter accent hardly sounded Irish at all. Clear influence form RP etc. I recall hearing that when RTÉ started in the 1960's that there was a woman in charge of Elocution who wouldn't allow TV presenters unless the spoke with specific accent (Rathmines/South Dublin influenced)

I might be able to verify this RTE business.

Where does 'minyut' instead of minute, come from. I can understand the variety of 'd' sounds coming from Irish, but not this particular oddity.

Jellybaby1

Hah! I do not believe that any RTE presenter uses their own accent on-screen, there are too many slip-ups especially on radio. I used to love Charles Mitchell and Maurice O'Doherty when they read the news.

dubhthach

slowburner wrote: »

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I might be able to verify this RTE business.

Where does 'minyut' instead of minute, come from. I can understand the variety of 'd' sounds coming from Irish, but not this particular oddity.

That's a good question, Irish consonants have glides (semi-vowels) after them. You get a w or a y type sound after consonant (semi-sound). You can hear this particulary when a native speakers says Gael (Fine Gael) the G been broad has a w-glide (Gwale vs. Gale), slender consonants have a y glide. So in Minyut you might be seeing preservation of this.

Only a guess on my part though

Obviously with regards to the topic, travellers tend to actually preserve more of the features of "Hiberno-English" then most Irish have.

Enkidu

dubhthach wrote: »

That's a good question, Irish consonants have glides (semi-vowels) after them. You get a w or a y type sound after consonant (semi-sound). You can hear this particulary when a native speakers says Gael (Fine Gael) the G been broad has a w-glide (Gwale vs. Gale), slender consonants have a y glide. So in Minyut you might be seeing preservation of this.

Only a guess on my part though

A correct one. This is mentioned in the Edinburgh series on dialects of English and the "Varieties of English" series with Clive Upton as Editor, the British Isles volume.

Enkidu

Only saw slowburner's message in the linguistics forum!

You guys might find it interesting that Received Pronunciation, which is a particular register of the Southern England dialect of English, is one of the least conservative dialects of English in England.

There are notes from around the 15th century, when elements of its pronunciation started to appear, which indicate that these sort of sound changes were viewed as corruptions.

As for Hiberno-English, it has been going through a process of de-celtization since it first appeared. I remember seeing transcripts of 18th century Hiberno-English in Dublin containing dialogue like:
(Standard English after the

I'm at the shoe's make = I'm making the shoe.

A Charle(sh)! = Charles!, s becoming sh in the vocative (calling somebody's name) in Irish, pretty cool because the vocative was lost in Proto-West-Germanic circa 1st century B.C.

It's possible with me to do it = I can do it

There's hundreds of these examples, basically because a lot of the last Bards detested the poor English being spoken by people who were highly literate in Irish. So there are a few poems were they record and mock it.

slowburner

Excuse my ignorance, but who are these bards?

Enkidu

slowburner wrote: »

Excuse my ignorance, but who are these bards?

Basically before Christianity arrived Irish society would have had three major "elites", the religious elite of the druids, the social elite of the nobles and the literary elite of the bards. The main function of the Bards was to remember old stories, be living encyclopedias of law and finally to write poetry which performed social functions, such as funeral eulogies, praises (for the noble family who paid them) and satires (for the noble family's enemies). When Christianity arrived the druids were replaced by the monastic orders, but the basic structure continued.

The monks then took to setting down the stories, myths, poetry and laws of the bards (but not really much from the druids, which is why we don't know much about the druids and the actual practice of Celtic religion.) Eventually the Bards themselves began to write. They used a literary standard created by the monks, which today we call "Old Irish".

However, during the Norman invasions, the monastic orders fell from power, leaving only the Bards and the nobles. Due to this, the nobles came to rely on the Bards as preservers of Irish culture and traditions and their function as writers of praise poetry became even more important, basically as a way for the Nobles to convince themselves of their relevance in a changing Ireland.

The Bards were basically now in charge of all literary creation and they also realised that in these changing times it was becoming impractical to continue writing in the archaic Old Irish. So around 1250, the Bards created a new standard called Classical or Early Modern Irish.

From 1250 - 1650, they were in a way the most powerful social group in the country. Usually the term "The Bards" or "The Poetic Classes" refers to them during the 1250-1650 period when they were the major producers of literature. Although they did exist before that, as mentioned above, they were not the ones doing most of the writing. (In fact early on we know they didn't trust writing.)

dubhthach

slowburner wrote: »

Excuse my ignorance, but who are these bards?

The poetic class of Irish society up until the end of the "Gaelic order" at the end of the 17th century. Obviously the class didn't fully die out until the late 18th/early 19th century.

Interesting enough of course is the common traveller name Ward = mac an Bhaird (Son of the Bard)

It's amasing actually the amount of oral folklore/tradition that was "rescued" from oblivion in Ireland. Mainly due to the Folklore commission in the 1920's etc.

One of the most famous of the later bards is "Brian Merriman" (Brian Mac Giolla Meidhre) who died in 1805 and wrote the 1,000 line poem "Cúirt An Mheán Oíche" (The midnight court). Funnily enough the english translation of which was banned by the censorship board in independent Ireland. You could still buy the version in Irish. Of course Merriman didn't even write it down, it was only written down in the 19th century (like many other poems)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Merriman

slowburner

Enkidu wrote: »

There's hundreds of these examples, basically because a lot of the last Bards detested the poor English being spoken by people who were highly literate in Irish. So there are a few poems were they record and mock it.

I am indeed ignorant.:o
This is the part of your post which made prompted the question. I was confused by the fact that the Bards were critical of poor English - I would have expected the Irish Bards to be solely concerned with the Irish language.
Was Rafteirí an file a bard in the same tradition?

slowburner

dubhthach wrote: »

The poetic class of Irish society up until the end of the "Gaelic order" at the end of the 17th century. Obviously the class didn't fully die out until the late 18th/early 19th century.

Interesting enough of course is the common traveller name Ward = mac an Bhaird (Son of the Bard)

It's amasing actually the amount of oral folklore/tradition that was "rescued" from oblivion in Ireland. Mainly due to the Folklore commission in the 1920's etc.

One of the most famous of the later bards is "Brian Merriman" (Brian Mac Giolla Meidhre) who died in 1805 and wrote the 1,000 line poem "Cúirt An Mheán Oíche" (The midnight court). Funnily enough the english translation of which was banned by the censorship board in independent Ireland. You could still buy the version in Irish. Of course Merriman didn't even write it down, it was only written down in the 19th century (like many other poems)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Merriman

I've heard that Cúirt an Mhean Oíche is fairly visceral alright. I have a vague recollection of glancing at a passage (must have been in English) where there was something about a pregnant woman being dragged by a carriage - it might have been a bit naughtier, the memory is a distant one.

Enkidu

slowburner wrote: »

I am indeed ignorant.:o

Oh don't worry! There's hundreds of examples, but to get at them you have to go through journals of Celtic research, certainly not an ignorance thing.

This is the part of your post which made prompted the question. I was confused by the fact that the Bards were critical of poor English - I would have expected the Irish Bards to be solely concerned with the Irish language.
Was Rafteirí an file a bard in the same tradition?

They hated poor language of any kind and actually admired good English as spoken by the educated in England. What they hated was the idea of an Ireland where people spoke bad English and bad Irish.

It's hard to call Antoine Ó Raifteiri, he was educated in the tradition, but he didn't really get formally trained in one of the bardic schools. He's either one of the last bards or the first post-bardic poet.

slowburner

Enkidu wrote: »

They hated poor language of any kind and actually admired good English as spoken by the educated in England. What they hated was the idea of an Ireland where people spoke bad English and bad Irish.

Bards.ie - where English is spoke good

dubhthach

slowburner wrote: »

Bards.ie - where English is spoke good

The same lot were probably complaining about the standards of "Hiberno-Latin" a 1,000 years beforehand