Programme 2

Background Information

"You can spot an Irishman or a Yorkshireman by his brogue. I can place any man within six miles. I can place him within two miles in London. Sometimes within two streets."

(Henry Higgins in Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw)

Dialect and accent
Local speech conveys messages about our geographical origin. Linguistic identity, however, can be a complex affair. We speak English, but so do some billion people around the world who are not English. People from different parts of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland who speak English as their native language may not necessarily find each other mutually intelligible. Similarly, English speakers from urban and rural areas of the same geographical region can have difficulty in comprehending each other, as the 'Bog Off' drama illustrates.

Regional dialect is characterised by distinctive grammar, vocabulary, idiom and accent. Linguistically, by definition, no one dialect can be superior or inferior to any other. The status enjoyed by Standard English - itself a regional dialect - derives entirely from its societal and political values.

A person's linguistic origin can often be identified through their distinctive pronunciation (or phonology). The essential difference between the commonly confused terms of accent and dialect is that the former is strictly a reference to pronunciation and not to vocabulary or grammar.

Ulster Scots dialect
The distinctive Northern Irish rural dialect and accent featured in the programme derive largely from settlers who moved to the province from the Scottish Lowlands from the seventeenth century onwards. So Ulster Scots speech, locally known as 'Braid Scotch' (broad Scots) is one variant of the Scots tongue.

Like any regional dialect, it is characterised by particular features of vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. Most people in Northern Ireland speak English, though the number who can speak the Ulster Scots tongue has been estimated at upwards of 100,000 people. It is formally recognised by the European Union as a traditional regional language.

Scots and Scottish English (originally derived from the same Indo-European and west Germanic roots as Standard English) developed separately from the language in England in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries.

Vocabulary
Ulster Scots is phonologically similar to Lowland Scots, many words deriving from the same Germanic stock as English. Hence the fourth-century Germanic word 'gretan' survives in Scots as 'greetan' and in Ulster Scots as 'greet' (meaning 'to weep'). Similarly, the fourth-century Germanic word 'thulan', which means 'to tolerate', has evolved into 'tholean' in Scots and 'thole' in Ulster Scots.

In the drama 'Bog Off', Jase challenges Drew to spend a night on the bog 'on yer ain' (on your own). When Drew cannot understand the rural dialect, he is asked 'De ye no ken (understand) English?'. Drew's Aunt Josie addresses her children as 'weans' (wee - or little - ones). In 'Big Mucker', Doug reports having to manhandle Diana by lifting her under the arms, 'Me an' Donald had to oxtercoggle her 'til her bed.' Here, 'oxter' means 'armpit'. In 'The Interview', Lynne describes her hobbies as 'greetin' and girnin' ower me exams' (in other words, crying).

Grammar
A typical grammatical construction of Ulster Scots dialect involves use of the negative, 'no'. While one boy in 'Bog Off' demands of Drew 'De ye no ken English?' one of the adults who chases after the young people asks 'Can he no spake?'.

Another distinctive feature is the addition of '-nae' to an auxiliary verb. In 'Big Mucker', Doug reveals: 'Ah dinnae laike it much here… An' thon Diana wudnae gie ower last nicht…Ah cannae staun onymair o' this.' In 'Bog Off', Aunt Josie insists 'Drew disnae want tae spend his first day up till his oxters in peat", and the mad scientist of 'Pride of Frankenstein' protests: 'Ah dinnae want te change me way o' spakin'.'

Accent
Any difficulties in comprehending a dialect are more often caused by pronunciation than by grammar, vocabulary or usage. Dropping the final 'g' of the present participle is very typical of this speech: growin', grievin', greetin', girnin', rubbin', takin', wantin'. When Martina in 'Bog Off' tells Drew 'Yer saft in the heid' (soft in the head) or the village boys ask Drew 'Are ye deef?' (deaf), pronunciation is characterised by transposed vowels, as seen in the table below.

Finally, we can find semi-vowel addition to Standard English, for example, in 'gyood', used in Ulster as the sound for 'good', and 'kyap' as the pronunciation of 'cap'.

Irish (Gaelic) Language

It is believed that the Irish language arrived in Ireland around 350 BC with the first settlement of Celts from southern France. English has been used in Ireland since the 12th century and has absorbed many influences from the native Irish language . The Plantation of Ulster in the early 17th century saw the settlement of some 150,000 Scottish and about 20,000 English. From the time of the Plantation, English achieved greater currency in Ireland, north and south, as its acceptability became more established. With the greater number of settlers in the north from Scotland, the influence of Scots on the emerging English dialects was inevitable, but these emerging English dialects in the north also absorbed much of the character and substance of the indigenous Irish language.

As the 'Gaelic Coffee' sketch reveals, everyday English words of Irish origin include 'shanty', 'slob', 'smashing', 'smithereens' and 'bottom'. Even the apparently American English words 'phoney' (false) and 'to dig' (to appreciate, enjoy) had their origins in Irish.

Many so called solecisms in Irish English (or Hiberno English to give it its proper title)
owe their existence to Irish grammar." Several deviations from Standard English syntax
are due to the absence of a verb 'have' in Irish.The most noted example is the construction with 'after' in place of the English 'have' in expressions such as 'I'm just after eating my dinner' ( Irish: 'Ta me tar eis mo dhinnear a ithe; Standard English: 'I've just eaten my dinner'),in which the 'after' represents the Irish conjunction'tar eis'."

"Possession may be expressed in Irish by the verb 'be'(ta) and the preposition 'at' (ag); for example: 'Ta an leabhar agam' literally 'Is the book at-me' meaning 'I have the book'.

The British English perfect and pluperfect tenses are often replaced with the past tense in Irish English giving such patterns as 'Did any of you find my pen?' instead of 'Have any of you
found my pen?' or in such non standard usages as 'The children are gone back to school'( in place of 'The children have gone back to school').

In Irish the verb normally stands first (verb-subject, e.g. 'Thit se den bhalla' he fell off the wall), whereas the basic word order of Standard English is subject-verb (He fell off the wall')."

These and many other examples of how Hiberno-English departs from Standard English grammar can be found in the Introduction to Prof. Terence Patrick Dolan's excellent 'Dictionary of Hiberno-English' published by Gill & MacMillan.

Today the Republic of Ireland is officially bilingual with public signage appearing in both Irish and English. In specially designated Gaeltacht areas (mainly along the western seaboard)
Irish is the working first language of thought and speech. In the North there are thriving
Irish speaking communities in Belfast, Derry and elsewhere who have developed successful
Irish medium schools.