IRISH English and What Makes it Different
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This video is all about Hiberno English, also known as IRISH English - the varieties of Irish spoken in Ireland and Northern Ireland. In this video I talk about its history, accents, vocabulary, and grammar.
Special thanks to Peter O’Brien for his suggestions and audio samples, as well as Mike Synnott and Jude Murphy for their feedback and suggestions.
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00:00 Introduction
00:24 General info about Irish English
00:40 History of Irish English
03:01 Varieties of Irish English today
03:41 Video Sponsor: Lingoda (online language school)
05:22 Irish accents
07:00 Irish vocabulary and expressions
09:53 Irish English grammar
16:11 Concluding comments
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I can't believe you found my English! 😀
😄
You should do a video on the Ulster-Scots dialects of the Anglic language Scots, which now has an army and a navy again!
@@bigfoxgamingbro7526 and also industry and agriculture.
Very interesting, I also use different forms for plurals, for example, you & yous as well as ye & yens, and these forms should also be used in standard English as plural forms should be different, and the form youse should be used as the form for the direct object, and now I will also be using the form yizzer as the possessive form, it’s a really good idea, so it should also be used in standard English, while your / yer should only be used with the singular you / ye - I am also learning the Irish language and the other modern Celtic languages, and also, Old Norse and Icelandic and Gothic and all other Germanic languages, and I am advanced level in Dutch and intermediate level in Norwegian / German / Swedish and writer level in English, and beginner level in most other languages I’m learning, and Irish & Scottish Gaelic are definitely the hardest languages I’m studying, being a category 3 language!
I'm Irish. The video highlights, almost exclusively, the features of the Dublin dialect. While many are common throughout the country, most of the features highlighted are exclusive to Dublin, specifically, the Dublin working class. Great video. Really interesting to have our dialect and accent described with such expertise. Very well done.
Yeah as a Dubliner I was going to comment much of this vid is extremely Dub. Even at that it’s mad to hear just how different our English is haha. Always take it for granted. Have a girl from cork working with me and she always points out my Dublinese. My mother used to always try to correct my accent partially because her own mother was raised in the Uk and that accent was thought to be more upper class.
@robertomacari501 Yep, the middle class to a fair degree, but definitely the old money speaks with more than a hint of an English accent. The horseshow at the RDS, the upper courts, hockey and tennis, and even rugby and golf clubs, often filled with semi-English voices.
Aye, tis a pretty good breakdown of Dublin ramblin' specifically. We've far too many variations across the country to sum up in a wee video like this. A Kerryman and Dub sit down to lunch, you need a multilingual waiter.
@@rdctd8690If they speak the dialects of their regions that is. The middle classes (particularly the younger women) speak almost the exact same dialect - Supraregional Irish English, which is essentially a middle class Dublin dialect in origin but no longer specific to Dublin as it spread rapidly via the media. Communities which remain tight-knit over many generations are the ones that retain their dialects more stably, so in this day and age it is mostly traditional working class areas and to a lesser extent certain rural areas that are retaining the unique dialects of Ireland for us!
@@JGrowl-er9mdIf you're not from that part of Dublin it's actually very difficult to tell that class of Dubliners apart from private school English types, unless you hear the r or the t, which is the most distinctive difference between those dialects.
"Yer wan" for women and "Yer man" for men (or your one and your man) is a unique thing that we Irish say. I sometimes say it by accident with other nationalities and when I explain they think its strange. But I really like it. Its a really handy way to refer to someone we don't know the name of or their job/position
learned recently that "yer wan" actually came from "yer woman" and us young ones have bastardised it. don't care tho, it's "your one" now
We also say so instead of then. We’ll meet up later so, instead if we’ll meet up later then.
Also "himself/herself" when referring to your spouse is a pretty Irish feature
Ya and I say me Im gonna get me keys Me self What can you do when u live in a ? Ik the answer do you? 😂🤣🤣🤣
@@Edvinas97ya what where you expecting if some whent to your country they would do the same there common sense saying
Irish dude here, I live and grew up in Ireland and have been all over the country, this video is highly accurate and clearly well researched. My only note is that this is a real Dublin way of speaking, which is uniquely Irish, but a bit different to the softer accents of much of the country. A really fun watch to have our accent broken down by it's defining features! An-mhaith!
Ar fad.
My ancestors came from your country. I don't even know how to pronounce your last word.
@@DennisMSulliva Haha ya learn something new every day! An-mhaith means very good in Irish. It sounds kinda like “Ana Wah” when you say it
I find it interesting you say that, because you'd expect that Dublin had a softer accent, either because since it's the capital, they'd have ppl from all over the country, so arrive at a more "neutral" accent or even because it would have more foreigners (like english and other europeans) and a more "neutral" accent would make things easier, while ppl from the country could develop a "thicker" accent without much issues. But it's actually the other way around, which is very interesting.
There are some loan words in English from Irish such as "galore" in English comes from "go leor" in Irish meaning "a lot". Also brogues like the shoes, broga is the Irish word for shoe. Smithereens, like when something smashes into a million pieces comes from the word smidiríní. I'm sure there are others as well
@@qazaq-qyiat From late 19th century in the US, I dig it - Tuig me - I understand
@@qazaq-qyiatisn't the Irish word for whiskey, (uisce beatha) Which translates into, water of life.
@@qazaq-qyiat why would you say whiskey baha? That doesn't make sense even if you wanted to say that. That's saying whiskey life. Absolute jibberish. Uisce means water, beatha comes from the word bethu meaning life. Both words together mean whiskey. Uisce (Ìsca) on its own definitely doesn't mean whiskey. Kids in the west would be in for a serious shock asking their mother for water, only to be given a glass of whiskey.
@@qazaq-qyiatthat’s not the Irish for water. It’s uisce.
@@paulwalsh598"Thuigim" would be a more common way of saying that. I'd say it came from "An dtuigeann tu?" which is the question form and sounds more like "dig".
A note from an Irish painter and decorator "Let ye not be walking on the stairs until it's after drying". I've kept it for many years, it's just beautiful.
presumably "da stairs" ?
My god this is just so Irish 🤣
Now if ye go down road to ".......", ye've gone too far.
@@fToo And "walkin'" and "dryin'."
A lot of older Irish use a tagged-on “let you” (or ye if plural) to emphasise that they are speaking in the imperative. “Leave me alone, let ye”.
During my trip to Sligo, Ireland last summer one Irish English phrase I would often hear was "Thanks a million".
Thank you in Irish is "go raibh maith agat" but a more literal translation would be "may you have goodness at you". Thank you very much is "go raibh míle maith agat" or "may you have a thousand goodnesses at you". Míle means thousand but it's quite likely that the million in "thanks a million" comes from that in the same way as million in English is comes from the Latin mille which also means thousand. Another phrase in Irish that uses a number to add emphasis is "céad míle fáilte". Fáilte means welcome and "céad míle fáilte" means "one hundred thousand welcomes".
That can also be heard in the US (sometimes ironically).
tanx a mill feen x
You’re welcome sham
They don't say that in Dublin. It's like "super" that they say a lot in Limerick, but not in Dublin. I'm trying not to keep this irish slangs because they change a lot by county
A feature that creeps into Hiberno English is the fact we often dont answer with a yes or no. Those dont exist in Irish, and that has carried over to our English to a large extent. "Are you going to the shop?" "I am" ,as opposed to a simple "yes". "Did you get that in France?" "I did."
I think this tendency is dying out now, particularly in the big urban areas.
@@jas1049 certainly not dying out in North Tipp and Limerick, I hear it used all the time, and I use it myself.
What utter nonsense. Who doesn't just say Yes or No to simple questions or matters? Absolute nonsense from you - pure blarney, possibly. I've never run into a fellow Irish (or Northern Irish) man or woman in the Republic or North alike who didn't constantly and routinely use Yes and No as part of their everyday conversation.
@@blazebyrne Not "meself?"
Southern US speech uses this commonly, too.
This video is great! I'd just like to say the 'after perfect' is very similar to Irish. In irish, you would say "Táim tar éis (rud éigin a dhéanamh)" which means "I've just (done something)" but literally translates to "I'm after (doing something)" The same kinda goes for the 'extended now perfect'. In Irish you'd say 'Táim ag obair anseo ó bhí mé i mo dhéagóir' which means "I've worked here since I was a teenager", but literally translates to "I'm working here since I was a teenager." The and/while interchanging also occurs in Irish :) Brilliant video!
Those examples are very similar to constructions in Newfoundland English.
This "I'm living here" is also a common construction used by native New Yorkers.
I'm Irish and another dialectical grammar feature is the use of 'will' instead of 'shall' when offering to do something for someone, e.g. Will I switch on the heating to warm up the room? instead of 'shall I switch on etc. We call a cupboard a 'press', the hot-press is the airing cupboard. To 'do the messages' is to run errands but this may be something older generations would use. We use 'ye' to distinguish the second person plural you ' from 2nd person singular 'you', this is more common all over Ireland rather than the 'yiz' which is more common in Dublin. I enjoyed this video but have to say that a lot of it is more reflective of the local slang and grammar spoken in Dublin the capital. In the west of Ireland where I live we sometimes use the diminutive ending 'een' ( e.g. girleen, a biteen, for a little bit, a whileen, for a little while, at the end of some nouns which comes directly from the Irish language diminutive. It works like the Spanish 'ito' or 'inho' diminutive of Portuguese. Keep making such interesting content, I love your videos.
That diminutive "een" is something I really love about the way we speak English, because while most languages have a very common diminutive ending, English really doesn't. Sure, it has "y" or "ie", like "Pig - Piggy", but it doesn't always work. "Cannie" as in a small can, doesn't sound right, but a "Caneen" works fine. German has "-chen", Dutch has "-tje", Spanish has "-ito", Italian has "-ini", why not English?
A press for a cupboard is common Scottish usage too , as is " going the messages ".
American English hasn't used the word "shall" (except in in period pieces to sound old-fashioned, and a couple of obscure industry-jargon cases, notably in certain types of legal proceedings) since some time in the nineteenth century. The only Americans who even know which contexts "shall" historically would have been used in (instead of "will"), are language nerds who have studied historical versions of English (principally, via Shakespeare and the KJV). The same is also true of "whom", "thou", "thee", "thy", "thine", "ye" (except when it means "the", as in "ye olde Newe Englande gifte shoppe"), "wherefore", "whither", "hither", "thither", the -eth and -est suffices on verbs, and the interjection "O", among other archaic features. However, we would generally say something like "Do you want me to..." or possibly "Should I ..." when making an offer to do something.
okay, so I watched a comedy sketch about dublish by foil arms and hog, it did have yiz and other features. It seems to me that irish english should be granted status now
@@xshayahyawzi3666 I saw this too and it's hilarious. I love Foil Arms and Hogg. I saw them live earlier this year.
At least in Western Ireland, people still use the archaic English "ye", the plural form of "you". "Are ye going on holiday?" (said to a group of people) vs "Are you going on holiday?" (said to one specific person).
Especially those from Donegal 😂
Actually, "ye" is the nominative (subject form) of the accusative (object form) "you". Older English has singular thou - thee and plural ye - you, but most English speakers got so polite and began addressing everybody in the plural. It's interesting though that "ye" and "you" are used to distinguish singular and plural, when they originally distinguished subject and object. Is it "have ye taken everything with ye" or "with you"?
@midtskogen Wrong. "Ye" is still used when addressing multiple people.
@@slifer0081 Yes, did I say otherwise?
To be honest what you wrote confused me as you began talking about nominative/accusative but then switched to talking about plural. Which is it?
Sláinte actually means "health". We use it during a toast to wish good health on everyone. Anyway I'd love to see how many definitions of "bollix(ed)" you can find. You'll probably miss more than a few! 🙂
I am fond of banjaxed too.
Or... "Me ballix" lol
is it not bollocks
@@oisinbiswas Depends... "ballix" is lighter than "bollocks" - In my day at least... 80s Dublin, calling someone a ballix can be almost 'playful', but calling someone a "bollocks" carries more impact. My two cents.
To add - They are the same word; it's purely a pronunciation thing.
I would argue that pluralising the word "you" is actually a very useful feature of language. (BTW i am from Belfast)
The word 'Ye' should never have been dropped and is reminiscent of the utter stupidity which we see today by the constant over-simplifying and abbreviating of the language. It is slowly losing its *precision* and thus its purpose. Language is necessary for comprehension. Precision brings greater comprehension, and though it takes a bit longer to learn, overall it makes life far easier afterwards.
@@Sionnach1601 Funny enough, people say "ye" all the time in Ireland; especially if you go outside of Dublin, where you'll primarily here "yous".
@@Tearseach Oh we're in absolute agreement friend. I'm saying that the REST of the Anglophone world should never have dropped it. It's ridiculous. It is so extremely useful and time-saving.
Yes, many or even most languages have a word for the second person plural. That English does not have it seems odd in a language that’s so useful most of the time. “Youse” has been mocked for decades as the usage of gangsters and illiterates, while the highbrow types among us have to use odd constructions to get around the lack of what is a very useful word/person. French has “vous”, Chinese has “nimen”, and English has ???.
@@Sionnach1601 English is in a state of flux at the moment, even more than usual. When I hear odd expressions being used by national TV news reporters and readers, I see that the new usage goes all the way to the top. Some of these expressions formerly used by semi-literates and now heard everywhere is “Where are you at in this project?”, and the disappearance of the indefinite article “an”. Apparently, it’s now acceptable to say “He has a idea, which I support, because he’s a engineer.” On prime-time news, no less. Do you remember how “the” would be pronounced “thee” before vowels, like “She’s thee expert.” It just makes the words flow better. It’s euphonious. I use that word while we still remember what it means. Anyway, the current pronunciation sounds like “She’s thuh expert.” Seriously. While listening to CBC Radio 1 in Canada, I heard a linguist explain that English is becoming more “choppy”, with more abrupt stops and starts. Also, spelling seems to be less important now. When you look at a full-page car ad on the back cover of a magazine, describing the latest model, and it has one or more spelling mistakes, you see what happens when large numbers of editors and proofreaders get fired or laid off/made redundant. Schools in Canada no longer teach phonics, so when kids see an unfamiliar word, they don’t know how it sounds. When I asked my daughter what she was taught to do when seeing a new word, she told me the teacher said “guess at it”. When people who have gone through high school and university without having been taught how to read properly, we get the results that we see every day. I could go on, but you get the idea. Imagine an online forum where new members have to be told not to use textspeak. Even when using normal English, some of their questions are indecipherable. How long until we line up for food and hear the person in front of us say, “Burgh an’ umshake.” I’d better stop before I get going about the lack of numeracy, and the university students who can’t do basic arithmetic in their heads. RANT MODE OFF.
I'm Irish and can confirm this is absolutely spot on! Fair play, good man yizz'rself.
Английский - это язык ваших эксплуататоров
@@Ivaninho Сказал эксплуататор Сибирии.
The accuracy is confined to Dublin working class english. Very little of what Paul put forward is applicable outside the traditional Pale area.
@@Ivaninho 'Tis just a tool for communication it is
Are you really irish or 10% irish american?
The accent and vocab section were particularly Dublin focused I would say but I didn't realise how much of the grammar features I use all the time without knowing they weren't standard English. "The most of/ the both of" I had no idea was not standard English. Fronting as well, is something I do all the time. I had no idea this was particular to Ireland I think "ye" is probably a more widely used plural "you" in Ireland rather than youse or yizzer which are more of a feature in Dublin and surrounding counties
I would say ye myself. However more people are from Dublin and youse. Half nearly half the population is there.
@@Togher01 1.5 mil in Dublin county and 7 million on the Island(5 in the Rep).. I think your maths needs a bit of work.
Absoulutely Dublin focused. There are plenty of characteristics that the whole Island uses but half of what was covered doesn't apply outside of Dublin and it's commuter belt, particularly on pronunciations and slang. Though to be fair, the alternative is to go county by county because we're all just a wee bit different.🤪
@@dzzope I was thinking of greater Dublin area which is about 2,073,459. Not quite half which was inaccrated for me to say. However my main point is that Dublin accent/speak is the most common in the country. As a man from the west of the country I do find this a little disappointing.
Gilbert O'Sullivan's hit song 'We Will' contains the lines "Take off your shoes / The both of yous". You can easily see his Irishness coming through there.
I had 3 grandparents who were born in Ireland or were children of Irish immigrants (the 4th was Scandinavian). A lot of this reminds me of how they spoke when I was a kid back in the 50's, with what we called a brogue.. And the US-born grandparents would sometimes code-switch into how their parents spoke. My grandmother would sometimes refer to her husband ironically as "himself." And he pronounced the word cathedral as cat-heedrul. This vid brought back memries, it did.
A comparison of Irish English and that of Newfoundland English, which is rooted in the Waterford area would be interesting. This video is very well researched, as usual!
I must say that I have noticed that the *Wexford* English is very very quaint. They say things like "You may go and get a bottle of milk before the shops close", instead of "You *should* go and get a bottle of milk before..." When first I heard it, I laughed and made silly fun out of it: "You're giving me permission to go to the shop is it??"!!!
"Yoke" is an interesting one. It almost certainly came from the yoke used to connect a horse to a horse drawn vehicle, which later came to applied to any contraption. The 'hames' was a part of the horse's yoke that it was easy to attach incorrectly, giving rise to another expression "he made hames of it", meaning he messed it up. "He made a right bloody hames of that yoke, and we were all morning putting it right again" was the kind of expression my father often used.
thanks dude my parents constantly accused me of making a hames of things. Never knew the origin. Nova scotia parents.
Yokes also has a specific meaning - ecstasy tablets. "Well lad, any yokes on ya?"
Not only that, he made a hames of the yoke and now it’s banjaxed.
Also ‘knacker’ on the horse theme haha
@@CMCMTTTV People would say “Give us one of them yokes.” And always better to use vague terms with plausible deniability should porcine ears be eavesdropping.
Been living away from Ireland for 6 years and still didn’t realise so many of these grammar structures were Hiberno English! One that I only realised was an Irish thing recently is to say someone is “giving out” to mean they are telling you off for something that was done wrong. “I was late so my ma gave out to me” or “my mam was giving out to me cos I was late”
Yes, I was amazed when I found out this was unique to Ireland. It's very much standard speech for us, not slang at all.
The aul lassy was giving out stink to me
Giving out is lifted straight out on the Gaeilge "tabhairt amach" It's definitely a different kind of complaint 😊
Also didn't know "giving out" wasn't a thing outside Ireland! Although I've not had many people ask me what it means because I think in the context it's usually used in, it's pretty obvious 😂
I didn't realise "amn't" is an Irish thing until Americans would laugh at me. It's sort of odd as there is isn't, aren't etc
The phrase “giving out” meaning to chastise is very common. Most non-Irish don’t understand its meaning. Very accurate video: I’ll slip into using some of these expressions if I’m excited or tired.
Billy Joel is aware of the expression. In the song ‘Always a Woman’ there is a line, “She never gives out and she never gives in, she just changes her mind”.
The only place I’ve heard that expression is on “Mrs. Brown’s Boys”, but thanks for the Billy Joel reference. I’d wondered what he meant by that. Maybe he grew up in Brooklyn, where there were lots of Irish immigrants. In the movie of the same name, “Brooklyn”, the part about the miseries of crossing the North Atlantic by ship in the early 1950s brought memories of being seasick, although I was a small child at the time.
We also say "give over" as in to stop something being done or said.
@@imastaycool Like, “Would you give over about that?”? Is that proper usage?
@@nomorokay you'll hear parents saying to kids "give over doing that" or when in disbelief or surprise we say "ah give over".
On the tv show Derry Girls I heard a character pronounce “car” as “kyohr” not as two syllables though, just with the y/i stuck in between the “c” and the “a”. It’s probably a Derry thing.
It's a northern irish thing
I'm Irish and I always say "will" instead of "should". I'll say "Will we leave?" instead of "Should we leave?" and people will be confused as to why I'm questioning whether we're leaving at all, when what I'm really trying to communicate is that we should get a move on.
I don't see the difference, should is also questioning?
Funny as I'm Irish and I would never say that
@@PanglossDrthe problem is SHOULD they leave because they have already decided that they WILL leave eventually. “Will we leave?” “Yeah sure we will.” (Although agreeing, it could be some uncertain time in the future) “Should we leave?” “Ye we should” (Agrees, Time to go) it’s a small nitpick that i wouldn’t mind. it’s similar to someone asking “Can I go to the toilet” and responding “I don’t know, CAN you?” because they should be asking “May I”.
@@conorx3 Should implies that there is pressure to leave.
We head?
One feature I'm missing in this video, is the marked tendency among Irish English speakers to avoid using 'yes' and 'no' in response to direct questions. Q: Are you alright? A: I am. Q: Did you bring the book? A: I did. Q: Is it time to go? A: It is. Q: Have you seen her recently? A: I have not. I believe this derives from lack of specific yes/no words in the Gaelic, although I'm not 100% sure of that. I do wonder if this is still the norm among younger speakers as I haven't socialised with Irish people for quite some time now.
Like Welsh, though I'm not sure if Welsh English speakers do the same.
Interesting and true... probably 'no' is more common, but to just respond 'yes' or 'yeah' could be a bit strange depending on the context!
Yes and no are more common nowadays, but many people absolutely still have that tendency
It is 😅
Definitely derived from Gaeilge as it is standard to answer a question with the positive or negative of the verb. Example Ar ith tú? (Did you eat?) Answer : D'ith / Níor ith (I did eat / I did not eat)
Honestly I think this is probably the best hiberno english breakdown I've seen on youtube. I'm actually quite surprised at how accurate you were in pointing out the many different shades and nuances that exist. I wouldn't go so far as to call them dialects tho 😂 If there is something in between dialect and accent, then thats what we speak 😅
"Honestly"
@@jamesmcinnis208 yeah, honestly. Whats wrong with that yank
@@MandNsvideos665 What yank?
"actually"
Some linguists use the term sub-dialect for varying speech patterns of the same language or dialect. Although, I don't think there is any internationally agreed upon definition for "dialect" and people tend to use the term differently. I suppose to some "Irish English" is a dialect of English and to others it's a language in its own right??
Man, there are so many similarities between Irish English and African American English! For instance, the way we use "be" to talk about what someone always or habitually does, the use of "is" for plural nouns, using "them" for "those," and the use of the 3rd singular with the 1st person (although in AAVE the last one is usually done to add a particular tone to a statement rather being regular way of wording it).
It’s interesting to note how this dialect (Hiberno-English), in addition to the influence of African languages, also impacted African American dialects spoken throughout the United States. Because of strong interactions and early intermixing between the two groups, the Irish left their mark on African American accents and some grammatical forms 💚
You should look up the black Irish of Montserrat.
the Irish and Scottish accent also left their influence on Jamaican and Barbados English Creole accents in the Caribbean.
A Good Reference is the Book Irish Slave Girl to show this interesting connection especially in Monserat. Their off spring spoke the Gaelic language. The term of Red Shanks refers to the Scots who were cleared off in the Highland Clearances by Guess Who 😮
@@matiyas27accents. Plural
Irishisms have made it a lot further, the expression "deadly" has made it all the way with Irish immigrants and is commonly used by aboriginal Australians also of course "yous" is used in many places.
I’m kinda surprised you never touched on “give out” - it’s probably the most commonly used phrase here, that foreigners just do not understand intuitively!
Give out is my favourite Irish English. I'm not Irish but I use it to confuse people deliberately.
That is a phrase that is so commonly used here that I never thought about how strange it actually is. It must make no sense to anyone outside of Ireland
Tabhairt amach!
So what does it mean?
@@jameswalker68 it’s like “complain directly to”. Imagine you’ve done something to make your mother mad, and she yells at you. We’d call that “giving out”.
This video is really accurate! The dialect and accent here is a recognisable old-style North Dublin accent, for the most part. Other parts of the country - the more so the more you go westwards - would show much more influence from the Irish language, especially in loanwords. We often say ‘garsún’ for young man (from Norman French garcun, via Irish), ‘leaba’ for bed, ‘grá’ for love in some specific phrases (‘He always had a grá for the music’), etc. In Limerick, you will also hear ‘tackies’ for ‘runners / sneakers’, which is originally South African (apparently a local priest spent many years there and brought it back!) Another interesting thing to mention if we are including Northern Ireland, is the Ulster Scots dialect of Scots English found in the north of Ireland. Similarly, it occurred to me when you mentioned the different varieties of English present in Ireland in the 16th century, that Wexford was actually somewhat anglicised even before this, and that a variant developed from Middle English, Yola, was spoken there for centuries. Perhaps if there were time as well, the question of the Traveller language - with influence from English, Irish, and Roma, would be an interesting topic :)
Oh..........................!!!! You have just explained to me why people from Wexford sound so QUAINT!!!! "You 'may' do something" when anglophones would normally say "You *should*" or "You *ought to* do something". Even their accent, is it like Welsh or something?? It's the weirdest accent to my ears of all the counties, and I'm a Cork man.
“Sure” is another one we use a lot. “Ah, sure. Why would you be doin’ that?” “Sure, isn’t that what I’ve been tellin’ yeah!” Usually pronounced ‘Shur’
Paul, as an Irish person I've enjoyed your videos for some years now. A good test of documentary videos comes when the person who made the video deals with stuff you're familiar with already yourself. Congratulations, you really nailed it, but from your usual high standard I'd have expected nothing less! Your examples mostly came from Dublin however, while Hiberno-Irish is very rich in the west and south of the country, where the Irish (Gaelic) language lasted as the main language of the people in rural areas until well into the 19th century.
Ya it's definitely Dublin focused. Especially most of the pronunciations, but that's acknowledged in the video
It is rich among certain sections of society in the West. However large large cohorts of middle class people do not have regional dialects anymore at all and speak something closer to 'Supraregional Irish English' which originated in Dublin and spread (likely via the media and among younger women from the nineties onwards. Language/dialect change isn't uniform but men tend to lag behind women by a generation or two and thus retain dialect features for longer in situations of dialect levelling)
@@CCc-sb9oj once we don't all start talking D4 English, we'll be grand...
@@mieslepToo roight!
100% agree with the above, about half of it applies to the island of Ireland but the rest is North/inner city Dublin based. Be great to see other examples of West and South of Ireland as these I think will be more directly impacted by the Irish language. I'm fairly certain with the dos and be s as mentioned in this video is a direct correlation with use of the verbs in the Irish language. I always get corrected by my English cousins on that 😂
One thing I hear my Irish friends use that wasn't mentioned is "your man". I think it means something like "that guy"
Yes, and your one always for a woman
As somebody from Belfast, what I love about this video is that half of the things he mentions are things I do everyday and the other half is totally foreign. Honestly you could probably do a full video on Irish regional accents alone.
Major Scots influence up your way, my mam is from Belfast, living in Dublin 45 years and she's never been influenced by the accent here. She'll still regularly come out with things like "he's away like a lilty"
I think it has been officially stated that we have MORE regional accents per capita than any other country in Europe, so you're dead right there a chara
Paul Durcan's poetry has wonderful hiberno-english examples. "Me and my lover used bicycle up to the phoenix park" - using 'used + infinitive' instead of 'used to + infinitive'
Other Irish-isms I picked up when I lived there: more frequent negative sentence constructions for questions: “Do you not know?” “Are ya not coming out wit’ us?”; the emphatic use of “so”: “That’s fine so”; “yer man” or “yer wan”: “Who’s yer man, the one from the pub?” - can be used to refer to someone whose name you don’t remember; “Come here”: “Brian, come ‘ere while I tell ya” - which doesn’t mean to approach them, just to pay attention; frequent use of “like”, especially by friends from Limerick “Ya know, like”; repetition of “Bye” at end of phone calls “ok, bye now - bye bye bye”. And so many others
One of my favourite sentences I've heard on more than one occasion is "Come here, will ya fuck off, will ya?"
C'mere, shtop, go 'way!
Just in case didn't know, yer man and yer wan are distinct in that refer to man/woman respectively
@@drts6955 indeed, I did know that, but good to call out for those that don’t know.
‘Go on’ when saying bye haha. Also ‘is it’ after a question. ‘You’re from Canada is it?’ I find it endearing as an English guy living in Ireland. Also I’ve noticed everyone says there is with plurals and never there are. ‘There is coaches that will pick you up’
Go raibh maith agat a Phól! That was great. The one I would add is "at". Sometimes people ask "what are you at?" meaning "what are you doing?" It's also common in Newfounland.
@@CMCMTTTV And commonly: "where you ah'?"
Our version of this in (South- unsure of the rest of the country) Wales is 'where are you to' or where's that to', where standard English omits the 'to'
We’ve picked it up in Cape Breton from Newfoundlanders too! Most of the only English speakers on the island back in the day were Irish Newfoundlanders, they’re largely the people the Scottish Gaelic-speakers here learned English from
I heard someone say “fillums” the other day, instead of “films”. Always liked that one
Something you've missed and many Irish might also miss is "Well". We will always say "Well" when we want to say hello. It's often followed by "How are ya", or "Howrya now". ie. "Well, howrya now?" I'm certain this has been derived from the Irish word bhfuil, which is a complicated word used in many contexts that is typically used when asking someone a question, but addressing yourself or a thing in the sentence. (Very little Irish as most Irish do) But if you want to say hello like an Irish person, say "Well".
This is true in an area centred on Tipperary for definite but not universal.
You say begrudgery, we say "notions" 😅 Another fun one is the "so cleft" as in, "Will ye not go to the show?" "I will so." Many of these features exist in Newfineese.
Notions is definitely the more widely used and understood word. Everyone understands the idea of notions.
@@krombopulos_michael Oceans of notions like Bono!
If a woman answers in the affirmative with "fine, so" you going to regret whatever it is you just did or said...Incidentally I used to work with a Newfie who would say "Whats that now?" if he didn't hear you. He was a lovely fella but the first few times he said I thought he was picking a fight 🤣
Great video, spot on. There are more influences from Gaeilge that aren't immediately apparent. For example, commonly used in Cork to describe a nasty person "he's a gowl" which comes from the Irish word Gall, meaning an invader/ foreigner. Another example would be "he's a fierce nice fella". Fierce comes from fíor in Irish, meaning truly. Is fear fíor deas é.
Someone being a "dose" is a very confusing one, you'd think it means something good to describe someone as a dose of medicine, but it's the opposite. You can describe being sick as having a bad dose also, even though a dose of something is what cures being sick haha
You can dose with anything apparently - often hear the term ‘she’s an awful dose of shite’
"Give him a dose of his own medicine." means "treat him a bit like he has treated you." when he has treated you miserably. It can also be said as, "Give him a taste of his own medicine." Isn't a sexually transmitted disease referred to as "a dose"(slang term). He's on an anti-biotic because he got a dose from that girl he picked up last month.
its something I picture women saying more than men, with a added huff for effect ;-)
The number of Irish language loan words in Hiberno-English differs massively from place to place. Where I live, where Irish was the community language until 80 years ago, there is a massive amount of Irish language loan words still in use.
You don’t live in Montserrat by any chance, do you? There used to be many Irish people living and working there, but most of them left years ago. Irish skin and tropical sun don’t mix well. I can get burnt sitting in a car with the windows rolled up. When driving north from California, I have to put on the left sleeve of a jacket to protect my arm from getting roasted. Bob Marley’s accent had a bit of Irish to it. To my ears, anyway.
Another one for you, if you ask an Irish person of they're going to do something and they say "I am yeah", that means they're not going to do it. Another thing I didn't realise was unique to Hiberno English until someone pointed it out to me, is that we often use "would have" to mean something that we definitely did, as in "I would have been going to school in the Liberties then" or "I would have had plenty of money at the time". This might be because there are no perfect tenses in Irish and although we have a word for "used to be" (bhíodh, pronounced vee-uch), it is similar to the word for "would" (bheadh, pronounced the same but with only one syllable) and they can be used interchangeably in many cases.
'I am yeah' is simply a popular sarcastic retort
@@hotbeefymcd8162 It is, but it confuses people from other countries. Maybe they're just not accustomed to our advanced levels of sarcasm.
Your commentary on "would have" is very enlightening. I have always mused on why we would say that (did I just do it there?!?!) Is the word 'would' also used simply to give emphasis, or definite affirmation of rud éigin?? "I had plenty of money back then" Vs "I would have had plenty of money back then". It's like an added assurance that the recounting of a historical detail was without doubt, based on some unspoken reasons for the money in the speaker's mind, which is made palpable to the listener by the "would" have. Interesting. So much nuance.
Also, isn't the word 'bheadh' simply the conditional (future/possible) tense?? Whereas 'bhíodh' (being 'used to be') is most definitely a form of past tense. On reflection, I would say that your contention that 'would have' primarily derives from Irish is the most likely explanation. At the same time, was 'bhíodh' actually a very useful way of quickly describing a situation of 'definitely used to be because of some as-yet unspoken reasons in the speaker's mind'? I think it might be so. Anyway, great points. Thanks for your contributions to the conversation.
@@Sionnach1601 "bheadh" has no tense, that's another interesting thing about it, it could mean "would have done", "would do" or it could be in the future. Irish has no perfect tenses, as I said, so to say "I have done" something you say "tá sé déanta agam" (literally "it is done at me"). I'm sure you are aware that there are lots of verbs that seem pretty essential in English (mar shampla: to have; to own; to know) that don't exist in Irish and are expressed with nouns + prepositions instead (tá sé/sí agam; is liomsa é/í; tá galar orm; tá a fhios agam; who needs verbs, huh?). Native Irish speakers who learned English as adults tend to retain this very roundabout way of saying things that Americans find so charming. I am only speculating about the strange qualities of the conditional in Hiberno English and I would love to hear any theories anyone else has about it. It's something I associate strongly with my grandparents telling stories about the Rising and the Civil War. It gives it this kind of ongoing narrative tone, almost removing themselves one step from the stories they were telling. You hear people of all ages from all parts of the country doing it.
It blows my mind how such a small area of land can have so many dialects. I live in the southern USA, which is like ten times the size of Ireland, and we all basically talk the same-you have to drive hundreds of miles to the north or Midwest to start hearing other accents/dialects. But in Ireland or Britain, you only have to walk down the road to hear a new accent!
Well, we're quite tribal per county, and the way we speak english in our areas now is directly related to how we spoke Irish
You can hear plenty of dialect variation in the south. Low country South Carolianians sound different than those in the piedmont and high country just in a single small state.
@@19erik74 I’ve never been to SC, but here in TN pretty much everyone talks the same. I guess East TN is just slightly more “country” than the rest of the state, but it’s not really a big difference.
Bc we in the US speak English due to colonization, our ancestors only learned one kind of English
@@justjj21 I’m not sure if I buy that argument. Colonization should cause more dialectal variation, not less. The original English speakers in the USA were exposed to so many indigenous languages and tribes. Plus with the USA being the melting pot, we English speakers with British ancestry have been exposed to Italians, Germans, etc. Yet there’s far less cultural diversity in Ireland and the UK, ethnically speaking, yet there’s more dialectal differences.
I'm Scouse and we use similar vocabulary, such as ropey, class, lethal, youse, and the d sound and the plural subject being used, and a lot more
It's no coincidence why. A lot of Irish people immigrated across the Irish Sea to Liverpool, where they then either stayed or left to go somewhere else, mostly to North America but also Oceania and Southern Africa. That's why you sound similar to someone from Cork, for example. Fascinating, isn't it?
I was told by my Australian friend in the 90s that I speak the variety of English that is spoken in Ireland, I was surprised that it was so obvious. I was born in the North West of England but was brought up in an Irish household and was educated by Irish sisters/nuns; I obviously picked up vocabulary and dialect from my family and at school; this included idioms too. My dialect has changed since then because of the influences of social media, television, friends, family and work. These also included influences from the rest of the UK, New Zealand, Australia, US and Canada.
About the tis, I'm from Leinster in Ireland outside Dublin and I don't know how common it is but I and a lot of people drop ti from tis and just start a verb with 's for example, instead of "tis raining outside" I might say "'sraining outside".
Very interesting video. I'm Irish and I use a lot of these. Most of the others I was aware of, but plenty I wasn't. Outside of Dublin a common plural for you is the old 'ye'. We use that a lot where I'm from, Kerry. For the possessive it's 'yer', pronounced yeer.
Absolutely correct, I was going to say this.
Ah fecking hell lads, me ma's Galway accent is why my Dublin ass uses "ye did/ye are" - is that what you're saying?
I'm in Kildare, and we use 'yeh' as well. I also notice older people will say a word like 'owned' like 'own-did' like its two syllables. Maybe its just my area.
Brother I just love your channel, been following you for a while. Thanks for all the thorough coverage of languages, right up my alley! An awesome way to appreciate our diversity, shared history, and promoting unity.
A classic Irish phrase which makes perfect sense to us is "Come in out of the rain!".
I'm Irish and I noticed an interesting local dialect subjunctive feature in Co. Laois area (mid-east midlands area) about 10 years ago. Instead of saying - e.g. "you could ask my father where to find that", they always used the form "you MAY ask my ...". It was always "may" in place of "you could", "you can", "you should". Quite a nice feature and used by youth as well as older people.
Another Laois thing is 'upon, they seem to have kept that word when the rest of us replaced it with on, 'the keys are upon the dresser'.
i'd say thats a midl;ands thing in general- my father's family are from westmeath its also used a lot there
Up here in the North we have an interesting relationship with the word "may". It's often used for recommendations that are a little more... 'stern' than how I've seen it used in other dialects😂e.g. "Is that you making that noise? Well you may stop it, it's doin' my head in"
"Ya may fuck off" is another Laois-ism
@@danieloloan8525I hear you, in the southeast of Ireland ‘may’ means to have to, I may go now, It’s time to go, etc.
You could talk about african portuguese (🇦🇴 🇲🇿 🇨🇻🇬🇼) and what make it different from portuguese from 🇵🇹 and 🇧🇷
Yesss
A very enjoyable video, many thanks Paul. It really highlights the complexity of Hiberno-English and its relationship to the Irish Language as well as older English dialects.
LOVE IT!!! You've hit the nail on the head. Well done!!💚💚💚💚💚💚💚
Grand job, Paul! Another feature of traditional Dublin accents is pronouncing some diphthings and long vowels as two distinct vowels, so that "huge" (likely with a slient h) rhymes with "sewage". You might also hear consonant clusters broken up with a schwa or syllabic consonant, e.g. child-(e)r-en, fil-(i)m, wor-(i)m etc. They both have analogues in the Irish language, though they seem to be disappearing with the older generations as the accent becones less distinct from other English varieties.
Haha! this is total Dublin
Iinm, in many Dublin accents, there's also no FOOT-STRUT split so that words like "look" and "luck" are still pronounced identically
Ah yes, did ya see da man on da moon ( pronounced moowin )
I'm so glad to finally see Irish English being spoken about like this! I have been living in Ireland for nearly 10 years now, and boy do I love the way people speak here. 🥰
Ah yeah, sure it's grand like 😂
I have had a dream that someone will make an Irish version of 'Grand Designs'. "You are not leaving my house in this state!" "Agh, sure tis grand."
@@tworivers3518 I'm prety sure there is.. And it goes about as well as you'd imagine IIRC🤣
I've been looking forward to this one for a while. Incredible level of detail and accuracy. I grew up in Dublin but I have family all over the country. I lost count of the number of 'oh yeah' moments I had. Excellent job!
Fascinating as always. I'd love to see a video on the northern dialect, i.e. Belfast, Derry, etc.
Interesting! I'm a native speaker of American English, but I speak proficient Spanish and I'm familiar with most other Romance languages to some degree. That said, the "be" perfect construction Paul mentioned immediately made me think of French or Italian (cf "Nous sommes allés" or "Noi siamo andati" for "We went," literally "We are gone"). Good work, Paul!
It’s also very common in German: “wir sind gegangen,” (lit. we are gone) and since it’s the typical spoken/conversation past tense it gets a lot of use, and English-speakers have to really drill on it to not make mistakes.
the worst is in the expressions: in french we say "casser la tête" and "mortel", respectively for "wrecking the head" and "deadly", in a familiar way and exactly with the same meanings and in the same situations lmao
Correct but French mainly use "have" as auxiliary verb for past tense to keep it distinct from the passive form. For example: "Tu as observé" compared to "Tu es observé". English kinda took this grammar rule and made it invariable whereas French kept using "to be" for intransitive verb. As for Italian conjugation, it seems similar but even more irregular and convoluted than French.
Probably celtic influence
@@PainterVierax Yes, I know. Spanish, the Romance language I speak, takes a different approach: it uses "tener" (cognate with "tenir" in French) to express possession. "Haber" (cognate with "avoir") is used only as a helping verb for compound tenses, as in "Tú has leído el libro" ("You have read the book.").
I'm from Galway in the west of Ireland and there's definitely some of these features in use but quite a few differences as well. For example, we have a plural second personal pronoun but it's "ye" (pronounced to rhyme with "see") instead of "youse". The contractions using it can be especially difficult for foreigners to parse, e.g. "Did you (plural) see him" gets pronounced like "Jee see'm?" Weirdly I once had a roommate from Pittsburgh who tried to mystify me with "Pittsburghese" which he was shocked to find I could understand perfectly because it was so similar to my dialect of English. E.G. "jeet-jet" is the pronounciation for "Did you eat yet?" Also, in contrast to pronouncing dental fricatives as plosives (which is very typical in e.g. Dublin) in the West you do pronounce them as fricatives and even go further with coronal plosives sometimes "softening". Some of that is pretty normal, a "t" or "d" sound turning into a "ch" or "j" sound in contexts you see in plenty of English dialects but some are... weirder. An example that has provided non-Irish friends a lot of amusement is that when I'm not watching my pronunciation the "t" at the end of "what" or "that" turns into a sibilant sound that can vary from something like "whash" or "thash" to something so forward in the mouth it basically comes out as a whistle like I was a child whose front teeth had fallen out - wha*whistle*?! If I had to guess, that contrast between pronuciations of dental sounds is probably a borrowed feature from Irish as well. The Irish language doesn't really distinguish between dental plosives and dental fricatives, they're both realisations of a "broad t" or "broad d" (as opposed to the "narrow t" or "narrow d" which are pronounced like the affricates "ch" or "j") so depending on your dialect you tend to use one realisation over the other (excepting some consonant clusters). Afaik, the dialects of Irish that don't use dental fricatives line up with the varieties of Hiberno-English that don't pronounce dental fricatives.
I was educated out of these, but love them. So very Irish, thanks
In NW Accents like the Derry accent there will often be a Y sound before an A if it's after a consonant, so Car is Kyar
Is breá liom Éire agus muintir na hÉireann. Thank you for this instructive video.
Hey I'm irish and never seen muintir before the translate button says it's "person"? i am blanking on what I'd use as "person" though
@@waterOWpeople
@@waterOW Muintir is people (members of a nation, ethnicity, etc). But it's also used by Irish speakers to refer to one's parents or family. As in "táim ag dul ar cuairt chuig mo mhuintir" (I'm going to visit my family).
@@hughanquetil2567 ah that makes sense it maybe a dialect thing? I'm from limerick so i originally thought they misspelt múinteoir (teacher)
As a South African I noticed "shebeen" is an Irish word that appears uncommon in Irish English but is common in South African English for an unlicensed drinking spot.
Shebeen is definitely still used here. My dad used to run one selling his homemade beer, cider and poitín when I was a kid.
How the feck did that word get to South Africa? That's really interesting! The origins of the word are from the Irish "Seibe", with the diminutive form "Seibín" meaning "a small mugful/bottle/liquor measure".
In Limerick running shoes are called tackies, and the only other part of the world I heard this was SA. Derived I suppose from track, running track shoes.
@@gearoiddom that's hilarious! I've always wondered about the etymology. I thought maybe the Afrikaans tekkie was derived from "atletiek" somehow, and then anglicized.
The word is alive and well but you'll mostly hear it in the countryside, it became vey common during the covid lockdowns
Thank you so much for doing this from Ireland! And we really do speak like this. Partic in informal situations amongst ourselves and at home!
My partner and I are in our 40s - when she first met my grandfather, she couldn't understand one word he spoke, even though shes from Tipperary and we are from Cork. He used many old words with the sentence structure of Irish. He used a word 'scut' when referring to a bold person - I later learned it's from Fingallian an early form of English spoken in Ireland in the Middle Ages. Glad to say Irish is alive and well in our household today and many of our friends are speaking it again - the old stereotype of the language being connected with poverty is dead and buried, thankfully. Thanks for the video.
I went on a college trip to northern England a good few years ago. I had to slow right down when speaking with locals. They told us it was rude to speak Irish to one another in their presence. I said that I agreed it would be, but none of us could speak Irish. (Edit: We were from Clare / Galway / Mayo by the way).
I’m currently studying linguistics and my syntax professor knows welsh so he gives us a lot of welsh examples in class. It’s really cool to see a lot of similar syntactic features in the Celtic family and how they get translated into an English dialect
@MajorCharlesCarringtonVC that's very interesting! I never knew that.
@MajorCharlesCarringtonVC Thanks very much for that. Very interesting. Always wondered, and always strongly disliked the more classist "Mum" ugh!
That's actually very interesting, bordering on fascinating!! Can you please give us some examples??
Yay! I’m excited for this one. I didn’t know Irish English was actually a thing… makes sense though with the way we do be speaking in Ireland! 😉
'You know the way you'd usb!'😂
We do be doin' dat, so we do for sure
Very well made video! There's a lot of uniquely Irish English elements that I genuinely thought were standard English 🤣 Regarding phrases not in the video, if someone is behaving in a way that isn't fitting of their social class, I hear the word "notions" a lot. It may be a fad but around North Dublin, I've heard people omit "to the" in a sentence, like "I'm going shop" instead of "I'm going to the shop" or "are you coming pub?" instead of "are you coming to the pub?"
I was like” nah he won’t get it”, he got it, spot on!
Thanks for this!! There's a load of these that i don't use at all and never heard of. One thing i'd add is that 'youse' is primarily in Dublin and the north - most of the rest of the country says 'ye'. I love a bit of Hiberno-English, thanks for coming through for us 😊
Yup, we definitely say ye a lot!
I was taught ye as the plural form of you in school.
I was about to say that, yeah. Only Dubliners say "Youse" or "Yis", the rest of Ireland tends to say "Ye".
I think ye is rooted in the Elizabethans of the West Country. Makes sense when you consider the Munster plantation. Yous features more in Belfast and Dublin. Probably derives from Lowland Scots and the Ulster plantation.
Dubs also say yiz when referring to a group, see yiz later
"Deadly" meaning "really good, excellent" is also found in Australian Aboriginal English. I wonder if it's connected to the Irish usage, given the large number of Irish immigrants (both convict and free) here in the 19th century.
Yes, as someone who's lived in Australia and Ireland, I asked myself the same question!
Only Dubs use Deadly in Ireland
Sounds connected to "bloody" in australian english
In Scotland we use “dead”
@@John316OBrian-cm4fj This is utterly untrue.
I"m a New Yorker, Born and bred, So much of of your Irish English is pure New York. I love it. Another contribution the Irish made to my city.
Care to share some examples? As an Irish person who visited New York I didn't notice major similarities on the surface of things (Newfoundland in Canada is the only place I noticed very noticeable similarities right off the bat. People in Appalachia seemed to have Scottish influences, all dialects are fascinating to me!)
Thank you! I'll be showing this video to my adult esl learners here in Ireland. Tis a grand one😊
Just after seeing this on my feed, should be class.
I always loved the way the Irish speak English. I can see where the Jamaican varieties of English got their influence from.
I've always noted similarities between Irish and Jamaican English
@@derekscanlan4641It's indeed not a coincidence. A lot of Irish settlers used to live in Jamaica and intermixed with the majority black population.
Dem influences are clear
You should look up the black Irish of Montserrat.
@@CiaraOSullivan1990 indeed. They speak with a Cork accent.
Loved this- such a good overview 😁 I’m Irish and from the west - I’m bilingual and was educated through Irish, although I use english almost exclusively in work and most of my social interactions nowdays. A couple of things I’ve noticed I do (my attention drawn to it by your class video!) “**** is my name” rather than “my name is…”. “How are you keeping?” Is my greeting. “Don’t be looking at me like that!”. “Ara…”- now this is proper Culchie English (culchies are those of us from the country- it’s a pejorative term from Dubliners 🤨). Ara is hard to define. It’s like a verbal shoulder-shrug. “Do you think you’ll go to that party?” - “ara I can’t be arsed!” You have to toss your head sharply upwards when you say Ara.
Yerra never mind the jackeens
This is fascinating as an ESL teacher from Ireland. So many of these feature in my own Irish dialect, yet I never knew many of them were specific to Hiberno-English and just thought they were mistakes in my speech. Really thorough and informative video - thank you!
I now understand where the Boston accent in American English came from. I've also heard some Irish elements in the English of the American South.
You like to hugely exaggerate how ‘Irish’ you are in America but your accents are clearly FAR more influenced by English ones than Irish. You forget that Britain used to have far more rhotic speakers in the past than it does now, and we still are rhotic in some places, and you’re overlooking the non-rhoticity of the Boston accent in any case. Also in the American South people speak with ‘I-monophthongisation’ like in Northern England and even to a lesser extent in some parts of the (English) Midlands - for example “A nice night for a knife fight” becomes “A naas naat for a naaf faat” with a lengthened ‘a’ or sometimes ‘o’ sound instead of the usual diphthong.
Thanks for doing this video. You did a great job touching on many of the common features. As Irish English gradually (and very sadly IMO) dies off as a distinct variety, this sort of video will be important for understanding older recordings of Irish people speaking English.
I don't think it's dying off at all
@@RisteardOhAIt depends on what you would define as 'dying'. With the spread of features from New Dublin English becoming widespread nationwide over the last few generations it is not inconceivable that the dialects of Ireland are being levelled and replaced by the speech from the capital (the kind of dialect spoken by the vast majority of newsreaders, radio personalities and tv show hosts on RTÉ and Virgin Media). This happened in New Zealand, a similar sized country to Ireland which was once diverse dialectically, but today nearly everybody speaks a more 'standard' New Zealand dialect, which was once only spoken in Auckland.
This was *fascinating* I have a North Carolina Southern accent. And some of these accent markers, especially in the grammar section, was so spot on for my own accent. Got me thinking
I’m English and also American but I love the way the Irish speak. Some of the wittiest/sharp people I have met too.
You sort of touched on this but I'll expand on it. My father, who was Irish/French, grew up in an Irish American neighborhood. He told me that whenever the "man of the house" walked by you'd often hear someone say "there goes himself". Also, it appears American English got the article "the" from Irish English. A Brit would say "I'm going to market" whereas we would say "I'm going to THE market". Lastly my wife, who is from Panama, learned her English initially from her Jamaican grandmother. She to this day will use the "i'm goin to market" or "I'm going to Post Office" forms. Hope I didn't bore anybody.
Slightly related, I have the impression that Americans are more likely to refer to "The Home Depot", whereas here in Canada we're more likely to say just plain "Home Depot"; as in, "I got it at Home Depot".
In north west England we’d drop the “to” and say “I’m going the post office” etc
@@user-bn9kr6nz5h Perhaps it's regional, here In southern California, I have only heard "Home Depot", never a "the".
Don’t know if this applies to the rest of Ireland, but here in Dublin (North Dublin at least) you’d hear some people do away with the “to” and “the” completely like “I’m going school on Monday” or “I’ve to go Post Office later, d’ye wanna come with?” or “I’m after goin’ town yesterday” or “Did ye hear about Siobhán having to go hospital? Was having stomach pains she says”
I fell in love with “An Cailín Ciún” this past spring, and began looking online for information about the making of the film, its locations in County Meath, and the importance of it being in the Irish language. In the process of looking into things Irish, I was amazed to discover that “the island of Ireland”-that’s how I usually found it referred to, not the country or the nation of Ireland-had so many variations in regional dialects. I’ve heard of people in England worrying that their regional dialects were being homogenized due to the spread of modern media and rapid transportation, so I was surprised and pleased to find that doesn’t seem to be the case in Ireland. From your comment, there even seem to be dialect variations within Dublin. I find that fascinating. Here in Canada, apart from Newfoundland, the variations in spoken English are pretty minimal, though where I live in southeastern Ontario there is an Ottawa Valley twang in which the greeting, “Good morning” becomes “G’ marnin’”, or just plain “Marnin’”. Ottawa Valley residents are also likely to add the phrase “for to” to some sentence structures, such as, “I’m going to the school for to pick up my kids”, or “I need a pair of blue jeans and a denim jacket for to have a Canadian tuxedo to wear to the wedding.” @@hello1868
Another common feature is that instead of (or in addition to) answering a question with "yes" or "no", people often repeat the verb. This construct comes from the Irish language, which has no words for "yes" and "no", instead you repeat the verb for "yes", or repeat it with negation for "no". "Will you have a cup of tea?" "I will, yeah"
I often do that, but for a different reason (remove chance of ambiguity)
I think this comes from the fact that in Irish you say the negative or affirmative followed by the verb when answering. "An ndearnadh tu é?" "Rinne/ní rinne." "Ar mhaith leat tae?" "Ba mhaith liom/níor mhaith liom"
And we have taken this up in the US in the last 15 or 20 years. I think it comes from watching movies or TV shows about Irish people and thinking it's cool to answer that way.
I love the channel - I’m Irish from Dublin and did my thesis on Irish English. There is so so so much more to Irish English than is covered here but I appreciate it’s a whistle stop tour. We directly translate a lot of phrases eg. We give out (complain) which comes directly from “tabhair amach” also really interesting final clause “like” . It was good like. This video seems to purely focus on one of the Dublin dialects phrase wise. I’d love to speak to you about it because it’s so rich and there’s lot more to it especially with influence of the Irish language and also old English “ye” for the plural form of you. I could go on. Again I love the channel but this doesn’t cover Irish English as a whole
Thanks! Yeah, I can probably add new videos about additional regional varieties (like Cork etc.). I’ll probably do that sometime. My channel just moves kind of slowly because my production workflow is quite complicated.
There's also a common construction in Ireland that I haven't heard elsewhere - 'sure' as a negative confirmation, as in "You weren't here yesterday, sure you weren't?" or "You don't like salt, sure you don't?"
The contraction amn't is standard in Hiberno-English, including "Amn't I?"
It's not, really. I know of two people who say it.
I'm an American whose family are Irish. My Dad was born there, the other side were mostly what we called famine Irish. Growing up I heard a lot of Hiberno English. I have to say that all of this is familiar- I don't speak this way myself but some of the aspects are part of my dialect in American English, which comes likely both from my familial ties but also the influence of Hiberno-English on dialects of American English. Definitely lots of cross pollination. I grew up near a Jamaican community and heard that accent and always thought it was interesting to hear some parallels. I asked a friend who was Jamaican, "Oh my Grandfather was Irish." A lot of that going on: people move, they marry, they influence one another. More flavor for the soup.
So true! Many of these are so familiar to me although English is my second language and I have no Irish ancestry. Now, “give me some of those them there chili.”
The Jamaican accent is at it's base a Cork accent. The Irish slaves and later indentured servants are the ones who taught the African slaves their English.
You should look up the black Irish of Montserrat.
Thank you for the suggestion! @@CiaraOSullivan1990
@@TheBcvg2002 You're welcome.
Good! This was interesting and I learned a lot new things about grammar and vocabulary.
As an Irish man! I’m super impressed with the accuracy of your assessment of Irish English……….bleedin deadly it is 👏🏻👏🏻
Well this is spot on.... I wouldn't use all of them but most of them. And here is a widespread one you missed! The use of the subjonctive to talk about the past or the present: I don't use all of them /I wouldn't use all of them I was an energetic, rambunctious kid/ I would have been an annoying little gurrier She would have been 5 weeks in the hospital That's really key in Irish English and it must be really confusing to foreigners. Clefting is more widespread in the west, as well as adding so it is, so you are at the end is common in the north. What are you at? = what are you doing currently What ARE you at? /are you mad? What are you DOING Where would you be at? You'd be at nothing. = where would that leave you? You're wasting your time Also we never use fewer, just less. There ara less people here today/there is less people here today Oh and I nearly forgot.... Irish people do not like to say yes or no so you'll get roundabout ways of saying it.... And would you be from Galway, now...? I would. Would you be hungry? I wouldn't/not at all. /I ate an hour ago Often when yes is used it's overemphasised, Yessss
There's more that keeps coming to me 😂 We don't use who or which all that often, but that: That man that's a painter And this... which I don't know how to even describe. The removal of the verb to be: That car is fairly small and he a real tail man. How do(es) he be fittin in it? This one is common around Wexford
From west coast Scotland, I’m amazed at the similarity between local dialect and Irish English here. Class video, yous should all leave a like.
A bheil Gàidhlig na h-Alba agad?
Differences with Perceived English of the Easy coast ?? I remember overhearing someone mentioned that their friends were out in the Sitootoury. Meaning in posh Edinburger accent sitting ooutside !😊
If you heard the ulster dialect you’d be even more surprised. Due to the fact in Ulster there was a large plantation of Scot’s from the lowlands. It led us to speak very differently from the rest of Ireland and our accent and dialects are often described as a mash of Scottish and Irish
I’m from Cape Breton and most of our ancestors came from western Scotland and we use a lot of these as well.
In south east Wexford we had another dialect called Yola. In local areas especially with the older generation there are still such oddities left behind even with very little of it remaining. The last known speaker died in the 90s.
That is right, there was a similar Anglic language/dialect in North Dublin too - called Fingallian, but it did not survive as long as Yola.
Everyone in wexford knows at least 1 yola word - quare!
I was wondering for a long long time why Wexford people sounded so bloody ODD!!! I'm from Cork, but to my ears, there is no stranger Irish accent than the Wexford one. Also ye use very strange (quare strange!!) expressions like "You may go and start the dinner" rather than "You should go" or "You ought to go" etc. I must look up 'Yola' so. It probably explains why ye sound so very different to nearly every other county. God bless :)
@@Sionnach1601 we find cork and kerry accent hard to understand lol but yeah even when it's not actual yola words we still have some structures and semi yola/English thrown in most of us are so used to it we don't even know it's yola
@@goaway7272 Haha! Oh don't get me wrong: Wexford accent is a nice accent; but it sounds very 'old', like very old, quaint, rustic English, like early Medieval times or thereabouts. It's also, to my ears, very different to nearly every other county South of Kildare/Wicklow. It's very interesting though, and just hearing now about this 'Yola' dialect brings some enlightenment for me. I will check it up. Sláinte ☘☘🇨🇮🇨🇮
Irish here too - a few I remember my parents/grandparents using: saying "me auld segotia" to mean "my old friend", saying "James' Street" as euphamism for Jesus Christ when swearing, calling the radio "the wireless", saying "I'll not do that" instead of "I won't do that", saying "I used go there" instead of "I used to go there", asking "what are you up to?" to mean "what have you been doing lately"... asking "how are you keeping" to mean "how are you doing?" .. etc. etc..
Great video, thanks! Couple of stereotypical / cliché Irish-English phrases you missed out (possibly because they're less common now, except among non-Irish folks trying on an Oirish accent for laughs): - "To be sure", and "Not at all", for standard English "Yes", and "No" (or maybe more strictly as an affirmative agreement, a negation phrase). I'm told that these come from the Gaelic having no single words for Yes and No.
Not at all is definitely still used a lot
@@popland1977 I'm always using it.
Also, because Irish has no word for "Yes" or "No", you have to say answer questions like this: "Did you write your letter?" "I wrote." Which is why in Irish English it's very common to hear "Did you do the dishes" "I did."
I think that's because they've become common in standard English as well I've definitely heard not at all be used as a more specific version of no and also recognise to be sure but can't put my finger on what it's used for
@@popland1977And it's pronounced "Noh (h)a tall".
I am partly Irish, with Spanish (Latino) mother tongue and good proficiency in American English (in younger years also confronted with the Australian variant) and from this background I had the feeling that some Irish expressions have a similar structure as romance languages, or that the way to express things is often similar to the way we use our Spanish (the be perfect, etc)... I was in Ireland last week and realized that the Kerry dialect (my origins) was the easiest to understand, while in Dublin I had to sometimes ask twice in order to get the message... I did enjoy this video, Langfocus is always very interesting!
The Kerry dialects are beautiful, musical.
Ah Jeasus, you got us proper good you did. Best one of these videos ive seen in a long time. Fair play to ya mate!
It's a grand job you're after doin', Paul. Tanks a million🤭
“My lord, if you'll give me leave, I will tread this unbolted villain into mortar and daub the walls of a jakes with him." I somehow knew that "jakes" was an old English term for a privy, but had to google to find this quote. I wasn't aware that this archaism endured in Irish English.
I'm glad to see an analysis of Irish-English but there is a dominant focus on the Dublin dialect, which after all is an area that has one of the oldest dialects of English after those in Britain, but the rest of the country continued to be influenced by Irish and has some variations that are not typical in Dublin. Youse is usually not typical outside the east coast, where it's much more common to hear the archaic ye to refer to the plural of you. I think linguistically it's important to distinguish between eastern Irish dialects of English and those from the rest of the country as they have different historical trajectories.
The linguist Raymond Hickey has a map somewhere where the dialect groups in the country are layed out
"Yee" would be the plural of you in a lot of rural areas, "ye" or "ya" would be the singular.
@@oisinoc I think you might be referring to spoken English because someone might say 'ye' or 'ya' if they didn't fully pronounce 'you', which would happen quite naturally when the vowel is not stressed. However, I'm referring to the actual word 'ye', which is an archaic form of the plural of 'you', and is used all over the southern parts of Ireland both in written and spoken English. Some speakers of standard British English suggest that it's dialectic and incorrect but it's simply non-standard, not incorrect. All the same 'yous' or 'youse' is certainly dialectic and is not usually written and is usually only used in Dublin and the northern counties of Ireland, and in Northern Ireland.
My favorite Irish word: Bejaysus!