A phrasebook of Irishness abroad
This was around the time that I'd first moved away from home and was, again for the first time, mixing with English people.
I remember it distinctly. I was sitting in the living room which led on to the kitchen and simply asked, there being a clock in the kitchen, what time is it there?
The time here, came the reply? The time here? Well, the time here is exactly the same as it is there.
I honestly didn't get what the joke was.
Now, I have a Birmingham accent, even after more than twenty-five years back here in Ireland. Accents form early and even though they change over the years it seems as if the basic architecture is built wherever you spend your formative years.
What I did have though, I suppose, was certain Irish phrases or certain Irish ways of saying things that I wasn't even aware of.
Who's yer man, was probably the next one. That seemed to cause some confusion too as I remember. Yer one I don't remember saying but I can only imagine the guffaws that would have been met with. Ah, sure.
What's that yoke?
Suddenly I was in a new world of being conscious of things I said. Irish words with a Brummie accent. To be fair it must have been confusing for them.
I do remember one time saying where's me geansaí but by that time I'm fairly sure I'd become so self conscious that I might have been putting it on.
My speech pattern was fairly banjaxed by then, you see. Wisht, I said once calling for silence, something my Granny Murphy never stopped saying, and just got funny looks.
Of course, there was the craic. I think the English have taken this one up now, even though they still don't know what it really means, but back then, I'm talking about the 1980s, early 90s here, it was still just ours.
I remember distinctly not even telling them about the craic but showing them it instead. I took a few English people at different times to Irish social clubs and pubs in Birmingham and always said I'm guaranteeing that you have never seen anything like this.
What that actually was it was harder to define but I'd learnt enough to know one thing without doubt.
An Irish social club in inner city England, bursting at the seams, the music and the drink and the talk and the smoke and I knew these English people had never seen anything like it.
And they hadn't. As for what the craic is or was I couldn't say even now. I just knew that we had it and they didn't.
If I had to choose a favourite though it would always be one that still makes me smile now whenever I hear it.
'I will, yeh' must be one of the greatest and most underrated Irish phrases ever.
It has that soft sarcasm that seems uniquely Irish. I've always loved the idea of explaining it to an English person and I remember using it and getting very quizzical looks.
I remember using it once with an English person and when it caused confusion revelling in explaining that, when I say 'I will, yeh' in what sounds like a very affirmative way what I actually mean is completely the opposite.
I mean, in fact, that I will not under any circumstances, ever. Apologies, I thought that was clear.
Grand, good luck said on departure, sound.
All these I think might have been co-opted by the English now and have lost their distinctively Irish flavour and that's okay because that's how language works. We steal from here and there and they steal from there and here.
I'm not saying any of these phrases either with any sense of superiority, all the places I lived in in England, had their own sayings and phrases too, I'm just doing it out of a memory of distinctiveness. I'm sure, you see, that the sayings and phrases I grew up with will eventually fade away.
After all, I'm struck that one of the Birmingham phrases I picked up along the way was what we called the many wastelands we played on as children.
We called them bomb pecks, which only much later I realised, probably meant that they were left over bomb sites from the Second World War.
Only an Irish person, though, or even more specifically a Cork person would realise how I never stopped smiling back then whenever I heard the name of the German golfer, Bernhard Langer.
Joe Horgan posts on X at @JoeHorganwriter
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