20 October 2013
715
R. Linda:
Doo ye knoe hah hahd it be ta wriote in yer oown ahcent? Ya, cun't 'ear yerself's way o' tahkin' becaus' yer used tee it an' to poot i' ohn paper, well its moor den a wee bit o' a cryme.
So, when me American mother-in-law said to me that me emails lacked me personality and I asked her why, and she said because she can't SEE me accent, and to her, it just was like another American emailing her. Yup, that's what she said and for me part, I sat there looking at the screen reading that drivel and wondering what be wrong with her. So I went to me wife and barked at her about her mother. She laughed and walked away. What now? What do I do about this, because between you and me, we both know that THIS bit of crazy is going to be put to me until I do like me first paragraph. And we both know what will happen next, she'll write and say, "I can't understand why the birthplace of the Queen's English didn't teach you to spell GABRIEL."
And you know that will put me in a state of Irish flux it will because me country's original language be Gaelic or garlic as she calls it, and the Queen's English was forced upon me unsuspecting ancestors that were too busy wondering where all their land went to and who were those English and Scottish persons redecorating their abodes. And birthplace? I be seeing green I'd be over THAT bit of misinformation.
AND there be one more thing, I do NOT have a burr-to-me accent it be a BROGUE! Brogues in Scotland are shoes, in Ireland, they be an accent. She's good at laughing at me in person and saying such things as, "Oh Gabriel you must be tired, your burr is so thick today!" I mutter under me breath how thick some person's heads are because she has a knack of getting me Irish up she does. But I digress as usual.
I have decided to give here and now an Irish lesson. Oh yeah, in the hopes that this crazy foolishness can be put to rest. I have established the brogue is not a burr so let me take you onward because I know this just piques your interest.
Besides the brogue, there be several different kinds of Irish dialects as there are several accents in the good old U.S. of A and elsewhere. If you are a person who lives in the western portion of Ireland, you will be more easily understood than if you were from Belfast in the north. Personally, I think Dublin is the most westernised for those in the States to understand, and if you be from Cork, don't even try to speak, even I won't know what you're sayin'.
So to make this easy and have you speakin' like me, here are some clues on how to do it. I'll just put down a few common words and move on.
We Irish love the 'oo' sound and we use it as 'mooch' (much) as we can get away with. So anything with a 'u' change to 'oo'. That goes for 'uh' as well, just throw in the Irish 'oo'.
When you get to the 'th' throw the 'h' away. Like in the word 'thing' drop your 'h' and it becomes 'ting'. The same goes for the word 'three' that becomes 'tree' and so on and so forth. We don't like the 'h' sound, and me mother-in-law just loves it when I say 'togeter' instead of 'together'. She thinks her little joke, "Gabriel what girl you going to get?" is funny. Oh ha, ha.
For those of you with Jersey accents (since me wife's family be from there, I be very familiar with it), you say the word 'talking' like "tawking' and in Ireland, we say, "tahking' with emphasis on the 'ah' sound. The butchered word 'coffee' which in Jersey is 'cawfee' is said in Ireland is 'cahfee'. So much more refined on our end.
The other thing or ting you should know is that we 'tahk' like we are asking a question. Though we aren't it just sounds to YOU like we are. All we are doing is emphasising a word and it sounds like we are unsure or asking, but we aren't. We do it just to confuse. For example, I would say, "I'm not crazy about Annie, yeah." as a statement of fact, but to you, it would sound like I said, "I'm not CRAZY(?) about ANNIE(?), yeah?" Like I don't know?
Now I want to give you a few words that when said by an Irish person, always get a "What?" and I would to clarify them here so you know ahead of what be coming the next time you find yourself trying to have a conversation with an Irish person.
Fight - we say fuhight
Have - we say hah
Common - we say cawmon
Such - we say sooch
Sun - we say soon
Matter - we say mattah
After - we say ahfta
Also - we say ahso (which too many times is misinterpreted as asshole and that's not correct and decidedly NOT what we were sayin')
And to throw in a couple of directions, when we say go 'nort' we mean north, go 'sout' is south.
And on it goes, but those simple words seem to make for a lot of Americans scratching their noggins in wonder to what we said, was it an insult or just what did we say? And we stand there waiting for an answer thinking our American friend has a terrible case of lice.
And one more lesson for the road, a Catholic Irish person has a rather unique vocabulary that has to do with things Catholic.
Catholic - we say Catlick
Cathedral - we say Cateedral
Trinity - we say Trinty
Holy Ghost - we say Holly Goost
Jesus - we say Jaysus
Mary - we say Mara
Joseph - we say Joseph ;)~ Actually it be Jooseph yes, we throw in the 'h' for that one.
So I have no easy out of me dilemma. I started to write to the Dragon-in-law in me accent but then I thought, nah, she'll not appreciate the effort and to be quite honest it took me but a while to write the first paragraph of this nonsense. I just can't hear me accent when it's normal to me and I don't have one.
At least I noticed one thing or ting, when an English person speaks Americans snicker. Like they think that person is putting on airs. How do they get this from something like this: "Ey' u, wot dah bloody bollocks ar' ya doin' wit me gale?" Which is "Hey you, what the bloody bollocks are you doing with my girl?" And this sort of English is of the lower classes, so where the airs are I've no idea. Just sayin'.
Gabe
Copyright © 2013 All rights reserved
R. Linda:
Doo ye knoe hah hahd it be ta wriote in yer oown ahcent? Ya, cun't 'ear yerself's way o' tahkin' becaus' yer used tee it an' to poot i' ohn paper, well its moor den a wee bit o' a cryme.
So, when me American mother-in-law said to me that me emails lacked me personality and I asked her why, and she said because she can't SEE me accent, and to her, it just was like another American emailing her. Yup, that's what she said and for me part, I sat there looking at the screen reading that drivel and wondering what be wrong with her. So I went to me wife and barked at her about her mother. She laughed and walked away. What now? What do I do about this, because between you and me, we both know that THIS bit of crazy is going to be put to me until I do like me first paragraph. And we both know what will happen next, she'll write and say, "I can't understand why the birthplace of the Queen's English didn't teach you to spell GABRIEL."
And you know that will put me in a state of Irish flux it will because me country's original language be Gaelic or garlic as she calls it, and the Queen's English was forced upon me unsuspecting ancestors that were too busy wondering where all their land went to and who were those English and Scottish persons redecorating their abodes. And birthplace? I be seeing green I'd be over THAT bit of misinformation.
AND there be one more thing, I do NOT have a burr-to-me accent it be a BROGUE! Brogues in Scotland are shoes, in Ireland, they be an accent. She's good at laughing at me in person and saying such things as, "Oh Gabriel you must be tired, your burr is so thick today!" I mutter under me breath how thick some person's heads are because she has a knack of getting me Irish up she does. But I digress as usual.
I have decided to give here and now an Irish lesson. Oh yeah, in the hopes that this crazy foolishness can be put to rest. I have established the brogue is not a burr so let me take you onward because I know this just piques your interest.
Besides the brogue, there be several different kinds of Irish dialects as there are several accents in the good old U.S. of A and elsewhere. If you are a person who lives in the western portion of Ireland, you will be more easily understood than if you were from Belfast in the north. Personally, I think Dublin is the most westernised for those in the States to understand, and if you be from Cork, don't even try to speak, even I won't know what you're sayin'.
So to make this easy and have you speakin' like me, here are some clues on how to do it. I'll just put down a few common words and move on.
We Irish love the 'oo' sound and we use it as 'mooch' (much) as we can get away with. So anything with a 'u' change to 'oo'. That goes for 'uh' as well, just throw in the Irish 'oo'.
When you get to the 'th' throw the 'h' away. Like in the word 'thing' drop your 'h' and it becomes 'ting'. The same goes for the word 'three' that becomes 'tree' and so on and so forth. We don't like the 'h' sound, and me mother-in-law just loves it when I say 'togeter' instead of 'together'. She thinks her little joke, "Gabriel what girl you going to get?" is funny. Oh ha, ha.
For those of you with Jersey accents (since me wife's family be from there, I be very familiar with it), you say the word 'talking' like "tawking' and in Ireland, we say, "tahking' with emphasis on the 'ah' sound. The butchered word 'coffee' which in Jersey is 'cawfee' is said in Ireland is 'cahfee'. So much more refined on our end.
The other thing or ting you should know is that we 'tahk' like we are asking a question. Though we aren't it just sounds to YOU like we are. All we are doing is emphasising a word and it sounds like we are unsure or asking, but we aren't. We do it just to confuse. For example, I would say, "I'm not crazy about Annie, yeah." as a statement of fact, but to you, it would sound like I said, "I'm not CRAZY(?) about ANNIE(?), yeah?" Like I don't know?
Now I want to give you a few words that when said by an Irish person, always get a "What?" and I would to clarify them here so you know ahead of what be coming the next time you find yourself trying to have a conversation with an Irish person.
Fight - we say fuhight
Have - we say hah
Common - we say cawmon
Such - we say sooch
Sun - we say soon
Matter - we say mattah
After - we say ahfta
Also - we say ahso (which too many times is misinterpreted as asshole and that's not correct and decidedly NOT what we were sayin')
And to throw in a couple of directions, when we say go 'nort' we mean north, go 'sout' is south.
And on it goes, but those simple words seem to make for a lot of Americans scratching their noggins in wonder to what we said, was it an insult or just what did we say? And we stand there waiting for an answer thinking our American friend has a terrible case of lice.
And one more lesson for the road, a Catholic Irish person has a rather unique vocabulary that has to do with things Catholic.
Catholic - we say Catlick
Cathedral - we say Cateedral
Trinity - we say Trinty
Holy Ghost - we say Holly Goost
Jesus - we say Jaysus
Mary - we say Mara
Joseph - we say Joseph ;)~ Actually it be Jooseph yes, we throw in the 'h' for that one.
So I have no easy out of me dilemma. I started to write to the Dragon-in-law in me accent but then I thought, nah, she'll not appreciate the effort and to be quite honest it took me but a while to write the first paragraph of this nonsense. I just can't hear me accent when it's normal to me and I don't have one.
At least I noticed one thing or ting, when an English person speaks Americans snicker. Like they think that person is putting on airs. How do they get this from something like this: "Ey' u, wot dah bloody bollocks ar' ya doin' wit me gale?" Which is "Hey you, what the bloody bollocks are you doing with my girl?" And this sort of English is of the lower classes, so where the airs are I've no idea. Just sayin'.
Gabe
Copyright © 2013 All rights reserved
