Be Jaysus boy

Jeez it's been a while since I posted a new topic so I decided to post something more intellectual that the usual mutterings and garbage I usually come out with.

Anyway yeah english eh? The language I mean... it's a pretty crazy language it can be the most specific and vague language out there and there's so much slang that the stuff you could learn from a textbook would probably only last you a day.

English-English as in the english english people speak and the english non-english people learn is apparently quite different to the Hiberno-English that me, rob and kev use. Obviously there are a lot of very basic things like grammar structure that are near identical and we'd generally have no problem communicating ever in a formal situation. But I was looking through a load of wiki pages and wound up on the hiberno english page, and I never realised how many things that we irish would say that would probably leave you completely stumped if you werent used to it, and it reminded me of an incident probably a year ago were me marv and chris were having a chat about english and how hard it is to learn and I gave what i thought was a great example in that the word deadly is used to mean something cool or exciting or loads of fun, e.g. aww man that party last night was deadly, meaning it was fun but not fatally so, but marv and chris disagreed with me and I was like what the hell they must just not get out much.

Never did I realise that it was cause I was speaking a different dialect like for instance read this sentence

"s'craic lads, how's she cuttin, but here johns after saying I met your one from down the road when I was on the lock last night, she's a quare looking yoke if ever I saw one"

Would you know what that meant?

Might be a bit exaggerated but It's not too uncommon to hear something like that... anyway have a look at this see if there's anything you'd use daily or would you find it all a load of malarkey?


Hiberno English

I would say that saying the Irisih speak this crazy Hiberno English is just a fancy way of saying they speak Middle Agian....
But yeah, I've really only used the word "deadly" to describe something unpleasant, sure something that may be perfectly fine, sometimes things that wont make sense... e.g. "She looks deadly", could mean she looks like a skanky skank skank.... I do not know, brovver!


(I did also think about replying in gangsta talk and calling it English-English...)

I use the seemingly english "innit" a lot.

As in, isn't it.

I just break down into mindless ramblings on the floor a lot of the time... my friends sort of leave me when that happens, besides... I think the "innit" thing started off as a joke... but then chavs started to use it anyway...

What I found really remarkable about the irish english was that Sean said Tink instead of Think, something I never heard before, it confused me for the first 5 minutes we walked around in Amsterdam, but then I got it. Then again I have to say some conversations we had in the pub made me pretty clueless, I usually just laughed along and then tried to translate what had actually been said, when I got it I'd silently laugh again.

Sounds pretty stupid, but if you think about it, if every time I wouldn't understand something I'd say "I don't get it" then I would have pretty much spoiled the fun for the rest so ye...

But eventually, I think I've learned a lot that night, well off of the things I can remember talking about. And I'm sure the next time we meet up it will be a lot easier =D

I actually never thought that you might not have understood what we were saying, it's kind of weird when I look back now.

Did you have any problems with things like when we say dis, dat and de instead of this, that and the, some english people say fink which I assume causes just as much confusion, or joo/ja for "do you"? (as in the hard sound, not the way you dutch pronounce the J )

I dont think you ever said anything, in english, that I didn't understand. I can pick up english in different accents pretty well apparently, I'm usually a translator for some of the irish newbies in work who cant understand the polish and lituanians etc who work with us.

I'm sort of semi-good at that sort of thing, when someone has a really strong accent, it is like 50-50. I remember in America we had a waitress from Belgium or some European country that started with B.... and I struggled to get what she was saying some times, just because it was VERY VERY strongly sounding like whatever language they speak in whatever place....
I've always known that the Irish struggle to pronounce "th"s, probably from growing up with kids suddenly breaking out into Irish accents for the lulz (xP)

Well Sean it was not so much those things but more words like... well whatever words you used that a semi-good English speaking dutch guy has never heard of

It didn't happen often but sometimes it did, comparable to when my German granddad tells a joke and I don't have a clue what the joke was about.. just laugh along lol