Irish origins of US slang…
Fascinating piece from the New York Times which traces some noteable US slang words back to origins within the Irish language… Thanks to Frank and Rory for the multiple prompts…
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Books
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The lost art of reading (or drowning in too much information)…
Here’s a great review of a fascinating book (H/T reader Rory) on how the Internet is destroying our capacity for intelligent, focused and critical thought. It opens thus: …here is the news that Ulin brings in this slim, meandering book: that reading is “an act of contemplation”; that such an act becomes more difficult in [...] read our review »
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Hearing the Other Voice from the Grave: Why Should we Listen to David Ervine’s Stories?
Ed Moloney’s Voices from the Grave: Two Men’s War in Ireland has received considerable attention in the press and in the public realm since its publication earlier this year. Although the book relates the experiences of the Provisional IRA’s Brendan Hughes and the PUP/UVF’s David Ervine, much of the discussion has focused on Hughes’ stories [...] read our review » -
Belfast port celebrated as hopes rise for lower corporation tax
The House of Lords was the suitably grand venue for the London launch of Alf McCreary’s magnificently illustrated tome Titanic Port, a history of Belfast Harbour. Before I got a chance to take a good look at my copy, my ears pricked up when the chairman of the harbour commissioners Len O’Hagan said hopes were high [...] read our review »
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“Fall is the word for autumn in Shropshire. ”
Never knew that – always thought it was one of the few American words that I liked – evocative, meaningful and four letters long !
Love your 12:50, Rory, especially the bit about the guy whose name you forget.
It’s been at least 5 minutes and I’m still chuckling.
Had a few chuckles there myself Joe!
Malcolm @ 09:16 PM
There was no put down intended neat or otherwise. As someone who speaks Scots on a daily basis I understand how hard it is to read written Scots. Many of us speak Scots, yet use standard written English hence the unfamiliarity to us. Never mind those not used to hearing it on a regular basis.
Dewi
Hope all turns out well with your Da, maybe promise him another trip to NZ when he recovers.
ahh yes… I see the sarcasim now. It was well past midnight here on the Pacific Coast and I had just taken a dose of a cold medicine to help me sleep and so in my sleep deprived, drug addled state I took things literally and missed the joke… apologies.
To be sure, it was the wit and sarcasim of the Irish that first attracted me to my Belfast boy!!! Plus that Norn Iron accent is dead sexy
Bill Bryson wrote a very good book on the origins of American-English in which he proves that many of the so-called “Americanisms” so despised by English purists are in fact old English expressions brought over by the early settlers. I think it is no coincidence that so many of the old wild west characters in the old movies spoke with English west country accents (“darn varmints” etc) who were after all among the original European settlers. In a similar way most Australian vernacular can be traced back to London/Cockney slang.
I was amazed to discover that the oul’ Derry talk so discouraged by our teachers was in fact perfectly acceptable Elizabethan English imported into the town at the time of the Plantation.
Anyone like me with the privilege of having a genuine Derry grandparent will know such expressions as “fornenst” (opposite), “starving” (very cold), “wanting” (lacking, ie only one arm), “doubt” (fear, as in ‘I doubt she’ll be home tonight’), “shade” (shed), “divil” (devil), “grayze” (grease), there are many others but it’s time for bed, any Derry wans can add a few others.
My mother was a Derrywoman, Harry, and I went to high school there so I well remember the English teachers trying to (literally) batter us into using proper English.
And by the way, none of the words you mention above ended in “g”.
I still drift into the vernacular when over there (or even over here when I’ve had a few).
My wife is Canadian but when we meet anyone new, they think she’s Irish because of the idiomatic quirks she has picked up from me.
One of my favourite expressions (maybe Strabane rather than Derry) is “wile cowl the day” (very cold today).
I have no idea on how Irish is Eddie Murphy, but his full birth name is Edward Regan Murphy.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000552/bio
That’s about as Irish a name as you’ll get, anyway the Irish are whores for claiming anyone in the world who may have drunk a pint of Guinness and the Irish will claim them as fully fledged Irish.
Having spent 4 years in South Wales I’m familiar of course with the widespread use of butt, butty and butty boy for mate.
And then one night in deep dark Laois I heard the locals use it in the same way.
While I find myself more easy with ‘buddy’ for ‘body’ and had always assumed that the Severn Estuary usage of ‘butty’ (I have lived and worked in South Wales and the Bristol area) was simply a local pronounciation of ‘body’ and used much as as the Scots term for someone they might meet “comin’ thru the rye” (or anywhere else for that matter). it remains simply that – something that sits more easily with me and my own limitations of precise knowledge of how language develops dynamically with widespread social intercourse.
Speculation and ‘hunch’ is all in the tool box of the linguist of the spoken word and is always at least “a dollar short and a day too late” in the sense that, even within a given area in a modern shifting world the young scholar at the age of 35 or 40 will be hopelessly incummunicado with the youth of his own social grouping. The wilder speculations of some badly thrown darts in the OED give testimony to that difficulty. The problem for the linguists is that those who are most familiar with slang usage are also those least likely to consult their findings and so correct their howlers.
Paddy Reilly’s assertion that “Personally I believe that one should not treat one’s buddy with the same familiarity that one treats one’s body.” for example holds out the possibility of all sorts of speculative sexual imagery which I am sure he was not intending, but which, as sure as shooting, if such imagery were to be lewdly referred to and spread and developed throughout the web could well leave Paddy as the inadvertent father of outlandish practices beyond the visions of his wildest imagination.
Cassidy’s contentious speculation is delightful for the bright new spark that it provides in a field of many sparks but yet a field poorly illuminated. Like a new introduction to a pyrotechic display it adds initial excitement then another glimmer and the teasing possibility of greater illumination and then we wait for the next.
We may not see much in such light but, with more and more communication and the greater holiness of increasing miscegenation I yet hold out hope to see evidence that the Tower of Babel may be crumbling.
Cassidy reinforces my hope and, besides, he makes me smile. I like him.
My fun with Fred Astaire and Eddie Murphy was my poor way of teasing old Harry Flashmen, Slugger’s Irish equivalent of “the self hating Jew”, a kind of Irish “Step’n'Fetchit” it would appear from his rush to denigrate anything Irish other than ‘doff yer cap’ Anglo-Irishism. But I suppose my overtures to make him realise that, to paraphrase Rod Steiger in Blake Edward’s film How to Murder your Wife, ” Just because I’m Irish doesn’t mean I’m a bad person” (best done with a NYC ultra camp gay accent) have yet again been unsuccessful.
Never mind. God loves a trier*.
* Old Welsh: n. a football player who places a ball beyond an opponent’s end-line thus setting up the opportunity for a try.
try n see also girl’s blouses; pushing up of.
…..could well leave Paddy as the inadvertent father of outlandish practices beyond the visions of his wildest imagination.
Not at all. The late Tom Driberg MP was approached by two young Scotsmen near his flat in Paddington one night, who asked if he could put them up for the night. He agreed, but pointed out that he had only one room and one bed, though big enough for three. Had they known what he was like, they might have preferred the street. The three of them went to sleep with Driberg in the middle. In the morning, Driberg woke to the sounds of Scottish curses. The police were called. At Bow Street the next day, he advanced the novel but effective defence that in the confusion of somnolence, he had mistaken his neighbour’s person for his own. [see Driberg’s Autobiography].
Rory – I repeat you have a wonderful way with words butt. Prince – glad to see u back – things a little better thanks.
The Dubliner
“We tend to forget that only Latin and Greek is older than Irish Gaelic in European literature, so much of what followed is bound to have been based on that which went before. The Celtic languages dominated Western Europe. Latin and Greek are duly noted in the etymology of English language words, but Irish, unsurprisingly perhaps, isn’t.”
Yes. And doesn’t that make you wonder?
An bhfuil seans ann go bhfuil Gaeilge an Chead Teanga?
I’ve read Driberg’s autobiography, Paddy, but thanks for recalling it. I recall another episode when he brought home a Scots labourer he had picked up off the street and I recall that the too, too graphic detail there was better read on a empty stomach.
The best Driberg anecdote I recall came from Gore Vidal who recounted how, with the Labour Party confidently expectant of entering government under Gaitkskill at the next election, he had had dinner with Driberg and mentioned that he was dining with Gaitskill at his home the following evening.
Driberg became very excited and pressed Vidal to lobby Gaitskill on his behalf for a cabinet position (he fancied the Foreign Office – as who wouldn’t?).
Vidal brought the matter up with Gaitskill the next evening and Gaitskill at first thought it was a joke but then upon being assured that Driberg was most sincere in his ambition he mellowed over the port and mused that perhaps Driberg might well be a candidate for the Ministry of Public Works responsible, among other things, for government buildings.
“I can just picture the old dear fussing over the curtain materials and the wall hangings and it would make him happy”. And, says Vidal, that was more or less it – Driberg had the gift of the job for his asking decided there and then.
Unfortunately, as we know, Gatskill did not make it to the premiership – mostly on account of him being dead (although such a small handicap didn’t seem to stop John Major).