English As We Speak It in Ireland - P. W. Joyce

Скачать книгу

turning the Voster' (i.e. after working through the whole of Voster's Arithmetic: Carleton). 'John and Bill were both reading and them eating their dinner' (while they were eating their dinner). This is also from the Irish language. We will first take the third person plural pronoun. The pronoun 'they' is in Irish siad: and the accusative 'them' is the Irish iad. But in some Irish constructions this iad is (correctly) used as a nominative; and in imitation of this our people often use 'them' as a nominative:—'Them are just the gloves I want.' 'Them are the boys' is exactly translated from the correct Irish is iad sin na buachaillidhe. 'Oh she melted the hearts of the swains in them parts.' ('The Widow Malone,' by Lever.)

      In like manner with the pronouns sé, sí (he, she), of which the accusatives é and í are in certain Irish constructions (correctly) used for the nominative forms, which accusative forms are (incorrectly) imported into English. Do chonnairc mé Seadhán agus é n'a shuidhe, 'I saw Shaun and him sitting down,' i.e. 'as he was sitting down.' So also 'don't ask me to go and me having a sore foot.' 'There's the hen and her as fat as butter,' i.e. 'she (the hen) being as fat as butter.'

      The little phrase 'the way' is used among us in several senses, all peculiar, and all derived from Irish. Sometimes it is a direct translation from amhlaidh ('thus,' 'so,' 'how,' 'in a manner'). An old example of this use of amhlaidh in Irish is the following passage from the Boroma (Silva Gadelica):—Is amlaid at chonnaic [Concobar] Laigin ocus Ulaid mán dabaig ocá hól: 'It is how (or 'the way') [Concobar] saw the Lagenians and the Ulstermen [viz. they were] round the vat drinking from it.' Is amhlaidh do bhi Fergus: 'It is thus (or the way) Fergus was [conditioned; that his shout was heard over three cantreds].'

      This same sense is also seen in the expression, 'this is the way I made my money,' i.e. 'this is how I made it.'

      When this expression, 'the way,' or 'how,' introduces a statement it means ''tis how it happened.' 'What do you want, James?' ''Tis the way ma'am, my mother sent me for the loan of the shovel.' This idiom is very common in Limerick, and is used indeed all through Ireland.

      Very often 'the way' is used in the sense of 'in order that':—'Smoking carriages are lined with American cloth the way they wouldn't keep the smell'; 'I brought an umbrella the way I wouldn't get wet'; 'you want not to let the poor boy do for himself [by marrying] the way that you yourself should have all.' (Ir. Pen. Mag.) You constantly hear this in Dublin, even among educated people.

      Sometimes the word way is a direct translation from the Irish caoi, 'a way,' 'a road'; so that the common Irish salutation, Cad chaoi bh-fuil tu? is translated with perfect correctness into the equally common Irish-English salute, 'What way are you?' meaning 'How are you?'

      'This way' is often used by the people in the sense of 'by this time':—'The horse is ready this way,' i.e. 'ready by this time.' (Gerald Griffin, 'Collegians.')

      The word itself is used in a curious way in Ireland, which has been something of a puzzle to outsiders. As so used it has no gender, number, or case; it is not in fact a pronoun at all, but a substitute for the word even. This has arisen from the fact that in the common colloquial Irish language the usual word to express both even and itself, is féin; and in translating a sentence containing this word féin, the people rather avoided even, a word not very familiar to them in this sense, and substituted the better known itself, in cases where even would be the correct word, and itself would be incorrect. Thus da mbeith an meud sin féin agum is correctly rendered 'if I had even that much': but the people don't like even, and don't well understand it (as applied here), so they make it 'If I had that much itself.' This explains all such Anglo-Irish sayings as 'if I got it itself it would be of no use to me,' i.e. 'even if I got it': 'If she were there itself I wouldn't know her'; 'She wouldn't go to bed till you'd come home, and if she did itself she couldn't sleep.' (Knocknagow.) A woman is finding some fault with the arrangements for a race, and Lowry Looby (Collegians) puts in 'so itself what hurt' i.e. 'even so what harm.' (Russell and myself.)

      The English when is expressed by the Irish an uair, which is literally 'the hour' or 'the time.' This is often transplanted into English; as when a person says 'the time you arrived I was away in town.'

      When you give anything to a poor person the recipient commonly utters the wish 'God increase you!' (meaning your substance): which is an exact translation of the equally common Irish wish Go meádaighe Dia dhuit. Sometimes the prayer is 'God increase your store,' which expresses exactly what is meant in the Irish wish.

      The very common aspiration 'God help us' [you, me, them, &c.] is a translation of the equally common Go bh-fóireadh Dia orruinn [ort, &c.].

      In the north-west instead of 'your father,' 'your sister,' &c., they often say 'the father of you,' 'the sister of you,' &c.; and correspondingly as to things:—'I took the hand of her' (i.e. her hand) (Seumas Mac Manus).

      All through Ireland you will hear show used instead of give or hand (verb), in such phrases as 'Show me that knife,' i.e. hand it to me. 'Show me the cream, please,' says an Irish gentleman at a London restaurant; and he could not see why his English friends were laughing.

      'He passed me in the street by the way he didn't know me'; 'he refused to give a contribution by the way he was so poor.' In both, by the way means 'pretending.'

      'My own own people' means my immediate relations. This is a translation of mo mhuinterse féin. In Irish the repetition of the emphatic pronominal particles is very common, and is imported into English; represented here by 'own own.'

      A prayer or a wish in Irish often begins with the particle go, meaning 'that' (as a conjunction): Go raibh maith agut, 'that it may be well with you,' i.e. 'May it be well with you.' In imitation or translation of this the corresponding expression in English is often opened by this word that: 'that you may soon get well,' i.e., 'may you soon get well.' Instead of 'may I be there to see' (John Gilpin) our people would say 'that I may be there to see.' A person utters some evil wish such as 'may bad luck attend you,' and is answered 'that the prayer may happen the preacher.' A usual ending of a story told orally, when the hero and heroine have been comfortably disposed of is 'And if they don't live happy that we may.'

      When a person sees anything unusual or unexpected, he says to his companion, 'Oh do you mind that!'

      'You want me to give you £10 for that cow: well, I'm not so soft all out.' 'He's not so bad as that all out.'

      A common expression is 'I was talking to him to-day, and I drew down about the money,' i.e. I brought on or introduced the subject. This is a translation of the Irish form do tharraing me anuas 'I drew down.'

      Quite a common form of expression is 'I had like to be killed,' i.e., I was near being killed: I had a narrow escape of being killed: I escaped being killed by the black of my nail.

      Where the English say it rains, we say 'it is raining': which is merely a translation of the Irish way of saying it:—ta se ag fearthainn.

      The usual Gaelic equivalent of 'he gave a roar' is do léig sé géim as (met everywhere in Irish texts), 'he let a roar out of him'; which is an expression you will often hear among people who have not well mastered English—who in fact often speak the Irish language with English words.

      'I put it before me to do it,' meaning I was resolved to do it, is the literal translation of chuireas rómhaim é to dheunamh. Both Irish and Anglo-Irish are very common in the respective languages.

      When a narrator has come to the end of some minor episode in his narrative, he often resumes with the opening 'That was well and good': which is merely a translation of the Gaelic bhí sin go maith.

      Lowry Looby having related how the mother and daughter raised a terrible pillilu, i.e., 'roaring and bawling,' says after a short pause 'that was well and good,' and proceeds with

Скачать книгу