Many areas of Ireland use unusual words known only to locals. Diarmaid Ó Muiritheoffers a glossary for bewildered staycationers
IF YOU are holidaying in Ireland this year, your trip may be enriched by words you would never hear in your home place.
You could go to Ulster. A Wexford girl I grew up with on the banks of the Barrow married a man from west Antrim, and they have spent a long, happy life there together. It amuses her to look back at her early years there when she didn’t know what the friendly people who became her neighbours were talking about.
For they spoke broad Ulster Scots among themselves and to her husband, and Northern Irish English to her, out of politeness. Her husband’s English is a variety of Scots, brought here by the planters after the Ulster plantation.
If you holiday west of the Bann you’ll hear Northern Irish English, whose main source was the speech of the various regions of England which also supplied planters. These new varieties of English were influenced by Irish and by Scots, leaving it quite a distinctive language in its own right.
The varieties of English found in the North are very conservative. The descendants of the planters regard their speech as an heirloom; it is, they will tell you proudly, the language of Ramsay and Burns. Holding on to it is a token of defiance, contra mundum, but it has come under attack by the educational establishment, and by the pernicious influences of television and the newspapers.
I’m afraid rural dialects in the south carry a stigma of being unacceptable to educated people, whereas in the North I have heard doctors, dentists, teachers and lawyers lace their speech with either Ulster Scots or Northern Irish English.
Examples of Northern Irish English: Seamus Heaney has written of glar, soft liquid mud, from the Irish glár, glit, meaning ooze or slime (glet is more common in Donegal) and daligone, meaning nightfall, dusk, from "daylight gone". I have daylight-falling, day-fall, dellit fall, duskiesand duskit, also from Derry.
Here are some more words. Geck: to jeer, mock. Graip: a four-pronged fork. Dring: loiter. Harn: bake. Ettle: intend, greet, cry. Wheen: some, a few, a number of. Swinkin: working hard. Sonsy: happy.
If you holiday in southern Ireland you’ll meet what may seem to you exotic words and phrases too.
Prof Henry of UCG, a Roscommonman, gave us these gems in a broadcast he made in the 1970s. Where Standard speech has "He's not looking too well", he found " He's lookin' half-shlack enough" (based on the Irish "Tá sé a' breathnú leathleicí go leor") in north Roscommon speech. "He's very mean," in Standard English is " He's verra near 'imsel" in Henry's dialect, from the Gaelic "Tá sé an-ghar dó féin".
As you travel south, stop off in Tuam, where you'll find perhaps the richest form of urban English in the land, Dublin apart, a lot of it based on Sheldru, the Travellers' cant, and by and large the speech of the young. I once referred to my friend, Joanna Lumley, with whom I correspond about words, as a tome feek, and she wrote that she hasn't stopped blushing since. This is Tuam slang for "beautiful woman". Here, gloakis a look, a riddleis a loo, a pineappleis a church, and a skate is both a dance and a dancer.
If you journey into Munster, you'll hear in every county the echoes of an Irish that is not long dead. A Muskerry farmer told RTÉ recently that he once kept cattle but, being old now, "I rose out of them". (D'éiríos astu.) In south Tipp, a flash flood is a moonshlay(Irish, maidhm sléibhe).
In north Kerry, a candamis a part or share of, say, a pot at cards. The story is told of a Dublin boy who came courting a Kerry lassie, and who left his poker stake on the table when his girl said it was time to go. He was shocked when her mother told him to take his candam with him.
Cork city English is rich and rare, and Seán Beecher’s collections of Cork slang are wonderful. And all along the coast from Cork to Wexford you should listen to the strange words used by fishermen to describe their work, and the all-important weather.
You could do worse than stop off in Dungarvan, that most hospitable of towns, and in Kilmore Quay in Wexford, ruined by the County Council and by developers. Along this coast I've heard to hile, to hide, from Old Norse hylja. A ragis a sea mist, from Danish rag, same meaning. A rigis a fierce gust of wind. A screedis a shoal of fish, from Old Norse skreið, same meaning.
Well, wherever you go, whether you tour around or stay in one place, have fun; and, believe me, a lot of fun can be had in this word game. And if you come across words or phrases that flummox you, I’ll be glad to help, if I can at all.
domuirithe@irishtimes.com
