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Wasn’t It Herself Told Me?
Last month I mentioned my new essay on Irish English dialect, ‘Wasn’t It Herself Told Me?’, commissioned for the winter 2020 edition of the literary magazine The Stinging Fly. If you didn’t get a copy...
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Gently enchanted
The Last of the Name by Charles McGlinchey (1861–1954) is an account of life in rural Ireland generations ago: customs, beliefs, practicalities, peculiarities. Published in 1986 with Brian Friel as...
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Irish words in English and the OED
Dozens of Irish English words and phrases were added to the OED in March 2022, including Irish words used in Irish English. I’ve written about some of these before (hames, notions, plámás, ráiméis,...
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10 more words from Irish English dialect
One of my pet linguistic topics is Irish English dialect, which I explored at length in an essay a while back. Here are 10 words, usages, and grammatical features characteristic of English as it’s...
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Mom vs mam, and Americanisms in Irish English
I was recently approached by the Irish Independent newspaper for comment on the influence of American English and pop culture on Irish English speech. The resulting article, by journalist Tanya...
View ArticleLink love: language (78)
A round-up of linguistic items – essays, news, blog posts, papers, and podcasts on language – for your enjoyment and diversion: Learning Na’vi. On plurals of hapax. Birds in English place names. A...
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Banjaxed and bockety words in Ireland
‘Lucky might get going all of a sudden. Then we’d be banjaxed.’ (Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot) Banjaxed and bockety are a fun pair of words in the Irish English vernacular. Banjaxed I heard from...
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