Bluffer's Guide to Irish & Hiberno-English Dictionary

[Beith]

Hi there!

- and you thought Irish was a difficult language to learn...well here's the solution: A 'bluffer's guide', allowing you to "Gaelify" words from your own language and convince a passing Paddy in a pub that you are indeed speaking his language!

I particularly like lessons 5 & 7..wonderful stuff! (ps. "Aon seans" = "any chance?" and usually used in the sense of encouraging a sexual encounter...ooooh Get the priest!)

http://homepage.eircom.net/~abardubh/ga ... index.html


Now this link, is a serious academic archive (but a lot of fun) created by Professor Terry Dolan, who researches Hiberno-English - that is the type of colloquial English we speak in Ireland, as opposed to "the neighbours across the water"! It is derived either from anclizations of Irish words, borrowings from other languages and these are words generally only found in Ireland within the English language, not found outside the Emerald isle. (we've been hoarding them to ourselves all these years!)

Click on the archive link and type in a word eg. "eejit", will take you into the dictionary. You can then choose from A-Z to bring up lists of H-E words, pronunciation and definitions. This can be bought as a book for those who favour the "manuscript tradition" rather than online!

http://www.hiberno-english.com/grammar.htm

enjoy!

Beith