I'm not really complaining about Hiberno-English, I'm wondering about the etymology of certain words and phrases. It's clear that we have a somewhat unique manner of using the English language, but how did we arrive at it?

For instance, 'giving out': I didn't think it was an unusual or particularly Hiberno-English phrase, until I discovered that no-one else uses it. My brother's Scottish girlfriend was baffled by it, and it got me to thinking. The Irish version of it is 'ag tabhairt amach', a very literal translation. But, did the Irish lead to the English version, or did the English version lead to the Irish?

Another one which the Scots couldn't get* was 'press' to mean 'cupboard'. Here, the Irish word 'cófra' doesn't really inform the English version, so where did we come up with the word?

I'm sure there are other examples, but I can't think of them right now.


*I'm using the example of Scottish people because they are quite close to us geographically and culturally, and there are links between Gallic and Irish, which could have followed through into our use of English.

Some examples
Irish - English

Getting the messages - going to the shops
Delft - China
Press - Cupboard
A glass of beer - A half pint
A couple - several
Tansad - buggy

There is no right and wrong word.

cactus flower wrote:

Some examples
Irish - English

Getting the messages - going to the shops
Delft - China
Press - Cupboard
A glass of beer - A half pint
A couple - several
Tansad - buggy

There is no right and wrong word.

Tansad!? What the hell is that? Is it like calling a vacuum cleaner a hoover?

I know it's not right or wrong, I just thought it'd be an interesting topic: what influences our use of language?

I never thought of giving out as a Hibernicism. Wikipedia has a lot of info on this subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-english
I heard a story somewhere about someone asking French tourists 'How come you're in Ireland?' To which they apparantly replied 'We came in a boat'.

905 wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-english

Excellent thread TheBear, I hope it'll be a long one. The wiki article above is very good and so far I've just dipped into the pronunciation of Hiberno-English. A lot of Hiberno-English comes from Irish probably but our pronunciation ... especially the way we pronounce the 't' at the end of words - it's almost an 's' (listen to yourself say 'eat') Definition below from wiki. I think Californians do this too but where did it come from? And has some Hiberno-English come back at us from the US? Does anyone else call them 'sneakers' like the Americans?

Quote :

/t/ is not usually pronounced as a plosive where it does not occur word-initially; instead, it is pronounced as a slit fricative /t̞/, between [s] and [ʃ].

Grand is another word, people from other Anglophone countries simply do not understand the context in which most of us use the term grand. I was chatting to an English person not too long ago and it took them a while to get their head around it.

I have never heard of a tansad

905 wrote:

I never thought of giving out as a Hibernicism. Wikipedia has a lot of info on this subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-english
I heard a story somewhere about someone asking French tourists 'How come you're in Ireland?' To which they apparantly replied 'We came in a boat'.

I hadn't either, until aforementioned girlf queried it. The thing is, I can't think of another way of saying it, at least a way of saying it which isn't too strong in meaning. Must look through that wiki page when I move some of these piles of invoices off my desk.

I like that French tourist story. I'm sure there are plenty of others. Indeed, when I was living in France, I was told that I used some unusual grammar constructions; it seems I was using some rules from Irish grammar to say particular things in French.

I haven't heard of a tansard either. Ireland's strong dialect is thought to be a result the speed in which we shifted to English in the 1800s.

Here's another good source on Hiberno-English:
http://www.uni-due.de/LI/

I am prone to use grammatical constructs which are Hiberno-English but I would not generally use Hiberno-English words. A product of my upbringing I guess - father Irish, mother English. So we have no presses in our house, only cupboards, certainly no delft to be seen, it is either the china or the crockery, we certainly don't have a hotpress, it is a rather quaint 'airing cupboard'.

johnfás wrote:

I am prone to use grammatical constructs which are Hiberno-English but I would not generally use Hiberno-English words. A product of my upbringing I guess - father Irish, mother English. So we have no presses in our house, only cupboards, certainly no delft to be seen, it is either the china or the crockery, we certainly don't have a hotpress, it is a rather quaint 'airing cupboard'.

But would your mum give out to you for calling it a press?

English bold = courageous
Irish bold = naughty

An English child would pat a dog and an Irish child would rub him.

No, I would frown on rubbing the dog myself. I would pet her though.

I agree with 905 on that one. I've never seen anyone rubbing a dog... a dog in a tansard, now that would be a sight.

the whole jazz thing is cool

lostexpectation wrote:

the whole jazz thing is cool

What's all that jazz?

johnfás wrote:

I agree with 905 on that one. I've never seen anyone rubbing a dog... a dog in a tansard, now that would be a sight.

Tansad. (I think)

Delft is a town in the Netherlands known for its pottery.

Rubbing the dog? Sounds kind of rude...

"Its true for you!" is a phrase that I use. It causes much confusion amongst non-hiberno speakers, and even my fiancee was confused by it and her from Meath!

Ending a sentence with a preposition is also something we do which the Americans find funny.
Such as - "When God made time, he made plenty of it".

eoinmn wrote:

Delft is a town in the Netherlands known for its pottery.

Similar story for 'press', which was current in the 18th century. We've preserved quite a few usages.

The Scots, on the other hand, are actually linguistically further away from us in their dialects of English than the English are. The two main Scots dialects are Doric (North-East/Aberdeenshire) and Lallans (Lowlands, usually Glasgow). The former I'm more familiar with, and many of its dialect words are Scandinavian - such as "kwine" for woman from the Norse "kvinne". Lallans I find almost completely incomprehensible.

There's at least a couple of minor dialects of Scots as well, like Orcadian (Orkneys), Western Highland, and Fife. None of them are particularly similar to Hiberno-English.

deas=jazz

Another endearing feature of Hiberno-English is our refusal to use Yes and No to answer questions.

Example:
Are you going to the shop?
I am!

We use the verb rather than Yes or No. Its a classic example of using Irish language constructs when speaking English.

cactus flower wrote:

English bold = courageous
Irish bold = naughty

An English child would pat a dog and an Irish child would rub him.

rub?!

In our part of the world, we'd "bonny" the dog.

'shur' (sure) is another one as used in question tags -

'it doesn't rain much in Dublin, shure it doesn't?'

as opposed to

'it doesn't rain much in Dublin does it?'

The formula usually is: positive question, negative tag and vice versa but the Irish can use negative everywhere.