nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Child Item

Hiberno English

Spore

Doing a bit of ESL teaching at the moment and I have to constantly check how I speak, here are some of the things I catch myself saying:

"Yer man", "Yer one" - the first is obviously male, but how is "one" female?
"Amn't I only after showing yiz!" what the hell tense is this?!
"Amn't" - a contraction that only we Irish use apparently
"Yous" (as in more than one 'you')
"I does be watching the tv..." ok I don't use this one but I've heard people saying it, it's present continous I'm guessing...

So AH post up your favourite examples.

Find more posts tagged with

Quick Links

Comments

44leto

Me moth

I heard it comes from maith, as in Culchie for "the girl I like", something like that.

arse..biscuits

44leto wrote: »

Me moth

I heard it comes from maith, as in Culchie for "the girl I like", something like that.

Maith an cailín

arse..biscuits

My mother uses the word do all over the place.

I do eat fish on a Friday.
I do do the shopping in dunnes.

Lando Griffin

"You'll not be doing that
"Frath then I will"

Wibbs

44leto wrote: »

Me moth

I heard it comes from maith, as in Culchie for "the girl I like", something like that.

It might be from Irish I dunno, though growing up I heard it always with a hard T. "Me mot". Some claims for roots in Irish I'm a bit dubious about. EG "Mom" claimed to be from the Irish pronunciation. The thing is I never heard "Mom" a la American pronunciation until the early 90's even among proto DART accents. Mum, ma, or mam yea. IMH it's influenced (certainly in Dublin) by American English.

grenache wrote:

I love the way Irish has influenced how we approach and speak English. It's unique. Hiberno-English should be cherished and be allowed to flourish, not corrected!!

+1. It's certainly way better than the mid Atlantic nasally twang heard more frequently these days. One cool one is "devil a bit" from the Irish for none/nothing IIRC? Sleeveen another. Gobshíte has both Irish and English. Shít mouth.

Other influences are from older English. The aforementioned "amn't" being one of them. Press for cupboard and Shore for a drain. Maybe even some French going on in the case of sliced pan for bread(Pain = bread in French). Ones you hear rarely today in Dublin would be Bowler for a dog or chiseler for a kid, bowsie seems to be rarely heard too. Even when talking about languages themselves we do it. IE "he has no French" Again from the Irish. Goes the other way too. The English country gent asking for brogues in a shop, is describing the shoes as Gaelige. If later he has a whiskey he's doing it again. If he's a Tory supporter he's doing it again. Tory = Outlaw IIRC. I'd say some Conservatives would shíte a brick at that one.

All over the world when people ask the time the reply is it's x o'clock. Clock(cloch) is the Irish word for bell. From the bells that rang to sound out the time from monasteries and churches(they were the first to have clocks in any numbers). The word "car" is an old Irish/Celtic word. Gluastain(fast thing) was an invented word because car sounded too "English". They didn't realise the origin at the time.

Sea Filly

grenache wrote: »

I love the way Irish has influenced how we approach and speak English. It's unique. Hiberno-English should be cherished and be allowed to flourish, not corrected!!

Can't believe I'm thanking your post after us butting heads last night!

But anyway, +1.

HalloweenJack

Spore wrote: »

"Amn't I only after showing yiz!" what the hell tense is this?!

There's a fairly close equivalent in regular English = the present perfect with just, i.e. "I have just shown you".

I'm also an English teacher and I don't worry about dropping Irishisms into my classes. A lot of my students are ecstatic that they have a teacher who's first language is English so they want to hear how it is spoken by native speakers. The way we speak English here may be a bit different from how it is in England but it's a variant of native English and it's equally valid as other forms.

In other languages, there's plenty of grammatical mistakes made by native speakers but they've slipped into everyday speech and nobody gets worked up about it.

the keen edge

"Of a Saturday", emm quite.

Cú Giobach

bennyineire wrote: »

also when I was in the states the people over there could'nt get over me saying "it's half ten" when saying its 10.30, not sure if thats an Irish thing, maybe the brits say it to

It would come from the Germanic with a slight change.
In German and Dutch "Halp zehn" and "Half tien" (literally half ten) mean half nine, they say half to the hour, whereas English uses half past the hour.

[Deleted User]

Cú Giobach wrote: »

It would come from the Germanic with a slight change.
In German and Dutch "Halp zehn" and "Half tien" (literally half ten) mean half nine, they say half to the hour, whereas English uses half past the hour.

in denmark/finland etc they all use "half" for to- the hour as well.
I am starting to think that using it for past the hour is unusual

Cú Giobach

bluewolf wrote: »

in denmark/finland etc they all use "half" for to- the hour as well.
I am starting to think that using it for past the hour is unusual

I always wondered where the change actually came from, but since the Latin languages also use "Half past"/"and a half" I guessed it must have come from the French/Latin influence.

Enkidu

One of the weirdest ones for me is the case inflections of Old English are still in some Hiberno-English speech.
Both my parents' families say "childers" for children when talking about possession. For example:

The children are outside

but

That's the childers dinner.

Unsurprising since childer is the original genitive plural.

mikemac1

"Well"
"Well"
"Are ya well?"
"Yeah well"

That's how we do things in Tipp :cool:

Not sure if it qualifies but the French people I've met don't quite get me when I say I'm "taking the car for a spin"
They hear spin and think spin, silly French :P

hiromoto

This might be a little off the point but anyway. It's been suggested that the word didgeridoo is derived from irish. 'Dudaire dubh', dudaire being smoker, puffer, piper, and dubh black. Aboriginal languages don't use the word didigeridoo

Spore

Used to love hearing "craythur" in the South West (Kerry region mostly) as in "ah the poor craythur" I think craythur stands for "creature". Used to hear it on a daily basis in Tralee.

Spread

Craythur in Kerry
Creature in Middle England
Critter in the good ol' US of A

Wibbs

I've heard craythur in Dubin and Waterford too. Maybe they were blow ins

The other one again from the Irish is the sometime lack of a direct yes/no. "Are you well?" "I am". "Is it raining?" "It is". "Sea" in Irish sounds odd to me("Ta" sounds really odd. Kind of a lonely word hanging in the breeze). It sounds more like an agreement with another person in the convo, rather than a definitive "yes", if you know what I mean? When I've heard it in convo between native Irish speaking folks that's what it came across as anyway. Like a conversational lubricant, the way some English speakers use "right" in response to the other person. Probably not explaining that one well.

Native Irish speakers to the rescue.

Latin doesn't have a yes/no either(IIRC neither does ancient Greek), so it seems to be a Germanic/English languages invention? Well (older)english has the "aye" convo lubricant one, but has the extra definite "Yes" too. I wonder is "nay" the negative version of that, with no being the definite?

Wibbs

Spread wrote: »

Craythur in Kerry
Creature in Middle England
Critter in the good ol' US of A

Food in Arkansas.:D

30txsbzmcu2k9w

use of Craytur is pretty common is scotland too

44leto

I heard country folk refer to cattle as "beasts" or "beyasts"

But to be fair me a Dub didn't know what the monsters where.

paddyandy

People themselves decide how a language is spoken and it's very attractive most of the time .Wunnnnnerful is what it is .Who wud wanna souind like a bleedin' epidemic outa univer'ty .

vektarman

I'm waiting on instead of for a bus, I always picture people lying on the roof of a bus....:)

ChunkyLover_53

Turty Tree & a Turd (33 1/3)

trad

Here's a very useful book on Hiberno English
http://www.gillmacmillan.ie/reference/reference/a-dictionary-of-hiberno-english

Terry Dolan used to do a slot on Moncrief on Newstalk a few years ago and it was enlightening.

His dictionary of Hiberno English is a great dip in dip out book.

Mahou

Phone call a few months ago,

Me "I left the laptop in the press"
English woman "The what"
Me "The press"
English woman "The what"
Me "The press"
English woman "The what"
Me "The bleedin wooden thing with doors"
English woman "OOOh the cupboard"
Me " Yes, THE PRESS"

lividduck

Yizzer reckkin me buzz so yiz is:D

Spore

I did some sound recording work a while back, again in Kerry, and we accidentally left the tapes running one day and I picked up this chestnut (it's a man talking about an illiterate miser he knew that had died a few years ago, and was subsequently found to be loaded after his death):

"A neighbour of mine took me there, he was an old man, millionaire. Thirty-seven million he was worth when he died. Ten years ago. Thirty-seven million he was worth, in money.
Now when you die you’re worth nothing.
Which is something you know, because he could hardly write his name.
He was a small farmer here and he was very poor when he was growing up. He’d be about eighty-five now if he’d lived, he’s dead about six or eight years.
But, what he told me, he was injured in the railway, whether genuine or not, he drew a few pounds. This was sixty years ago. He bought a shack of a house. And he told me he knew so little about the house he could hardly lock the door.
But what he told me as well was don’t ever hire professional tradesmen because they’ll brake you. Go to the corner, he says, with the winos or whatever you’d like to call them and sober them up and don’t pay them until they finish the job. Give them porridge and give them soup and bring ’em on, and get them working."

44leto

lividduck wrote: »

Yizzer reckkin me buzz so yiz is:D

That's more the queens English Or Dublin northside speak, rather then Hiberno.

amdublin

Spore wrote: »

I did some sound recording work a while back, again in Kerry, and we accidentally left the tapes running one day and I picked up this chestnut (it's a man talking about an illiterate miser he knew that had died a few years ago, and was subsequently found to be loaded after his death):
"A neighbour of mine took me there, he was an old man, millionaire. Thirty-seven million he was worth when he died. Ten years ago. Thirty-seven million he was worth, in money.
Now when you die you’re worth nothing.
Which is something you know, because he could hardly write his name.
He was a small farmer here and he was very poor when he was growing up. He’d be about eighty-five now if he’d lived, he’s dead about six or eight years.
But, what he told me, he was injured in the railway, whether genuine or not, he drew a few pounds. This was sixty years ago. He bought a shack of a house. And he told me he knew so little about the house he could hardly lock the door.
But what he told me as well was don’t ever hire professional tradesmen because they’ll brake you. Go to the corner, he says, with the winos or whatever you’d like to call them and sober them up and don’t pay them until they finish the job. Give them porridge and give them soup and bring ’em on, and get them working."

I don't see what is "chestnutty" about this.

This sounds like the ravings of a lunatic IMO.

Spore

The guy was a gent, brilliant musician and sort of a local raconteur. Nothing lunatic like about him.