- With one or two exceptions, notably Patrick W. Joyce, English As We Speak It in Ireland (London, 1910).
- The word bróg in Irish means ‘a shoe,’ and was used in English with the same meaning until the early eighteenth century. How it came to mean an Irish accent is uncertain.
- The few exceptions—persons not born in Ireland who have acquired a “brogue” from residence there, or through family tradition, may be overlooked. Under the term characteristic we would exclude certain types of speech hereditary in English colonial families, since the average English speaker would not recognize them as Irish.
- For these terms see John P. Hughes, The Science of Language (New York, 1962), pp. 19–20.
- Pope and Burns, for example, of ten rhyme line with join, sky with enjoy, and so on.
- A dear friend of mine, rest his soul, used to say with great emphasis “be the lard” for “by the Lord.”
- Mary C. Bromage, De Valera and the March of a Nation (New York, 1956), p. 75.
- Joyce, p.2. The other “substitute” for th mentioned by Joyce is, of course, just a different spelling of the same sound.
- A humorous story current in Boston many years ago pictured a new father telling his friends at a christening that this child was going to get every opportunity in life—he was going to be sent to college and study Greek and Latin. “Well,” observed one of the guests, “the Greek won't be much use to him unless he goes into the restaurant business, but if he studies plasterin’ along wid the lathin’, he'll make a good living.” Colleges today have pretty well accommodated themselves to this viewpoint.
- Joyce, p. 3.
- Under which spelling it appears in Patrick S. Dinneen's Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla (Dublin, 1927). Note that this also illustrates the substitution of [s] for [z], since Irish has no /z/. This can be heard in western Ireland, but only among speakers whose first language is Irish.
- Cf. J. O. Bartley, Teague, Shenkin and Sawney (Cork, 1954), pp. 18, 20, and 112.
- The well-known writer and lecturer, Seán O Faoláin, was born John Whelan.
- In the United States, the isogloss on this point appears to divide New England and the Middle Atlantic states from the Midwest. A native of New York City pronounces what as watt (compare the vaudeville joke about Hu on first base, Watt on second), while to a native Chicagoan where and wear or wheel and weal are not homophones.
- Cf. Tomás de Bhaldraithe, The Irish of Cois Fhairrge, Co. Galway (Dublin, 1945), p. 31.
- Cf. Brian O Cuív, Irish Dialects and Irish-Speaking Districts (Dublin, 1951), pp. 19–22.
- This probably accounts for the expression aye is it (Joyce, p. 12). is ‘This
- last winter was exceptionally cold.’
- ‘Yes, it was.’
- ‘Everything is taxed today.’
- ‘Yes, it is.’
- ‘Is your son coming from America this summer?’
- ‘No’ (i.e., ‘he is not [coming]’).
- Put “he says he will do it” into the past tense, and you get he said he would do it. Here English uses a subjunctive in the second clause, where Irish uses its Past Future. This has led many grammarians to assume that the Irish Past Future is a “Conditional,” which is incorrect, though this tense may be used in conditional expressions.
- Examples from Joyce, p. 86.
- Ibid., p. 80.
- Anton G. van Hamel, ed., Immrama (Dublin, 1941), p. 33. The phrase cia leth may be an abbreviation from cia leth isin bith: cf. ibid., p. 29, ni finntais cia leth no téigtis.
- Standish H. O'Grady, Silva Gadelica (London, 1892), I, 189.
- In “The Blue-Eyed Lass.” See The Poems of Robert Burns (London, 1903 [World's Classics, vol. 34]), p. 450.
- I believe that this point will eventually be demonstrated again in the case of American and Caribbean Indian languages, and the African languages of Negro slaves of the early nineteenth century, as substrata of American and West Indian English.
- It must be kept in mind that the total population of Ireland fluctuated a good deal in the seven centuries between 1200 and 1900. Cf. O Cuív, pp. 11 and 14.
- Cf. Seán O Faoláin, The Story of Ireland (London, 1946), p. 18; O Cuív, p. 9.
- Cf. O Faoláin, p. 29.
- Cf. O Cuív, p. 5.
- Choose new content alerts to be informed about new research of interest to you
- Easy remote access to your institution's subscriptions on any device, from any location
- Save your searches and schedule alerts to send you new results
- Export your search results into a .csv file to support your research