Sign up here to get this delivered to your inbox every morning. In most parts of the country pronounced ‘Yer man’ etc.Good morning! This is our daily news roundup with everything you need to know in one concise read. Your man, your woman, your oneĪn informal way of referring to a person. So ‘fair play to you’ is sometimes used as a vocalized pause (see above) or purely as a mild way of saying, “Well done, sir” (or madam). But you get the pictureīut the expression fair play in Ireland is usually completed with a ‘to you’ or a “to him/her’ tagged on at the end. Oops sorry, didn’t mean to get political there. Cricket, tennis, subjecting the world to colonial rule. Sense of good sportsmanship - play up and play the game. Fair play to youįair play in standard English is of course rooted in the English Thus English is a relatively ‘new’ language, and the ‘so it is’ construct may have come about in an effort to make sure the listener understood what was being said in this foreign tongue.
Ironic though it is, Ulster, with six counties under British jurisdiction, has more Irish place names than any other province. The construct is particularly prevalent in Ulster, which was the last great Irish-speaking province. But it may have a deeper historical significance.
In Ireland, particularly in the North, the expression (or similar constructs) it is tagged at the end of sentences, such as: “It’s a cold day, so it is,” or, “I’m from Derry, so I am.” It is usually described as a vocalized pause, in the same category as ‘er’, ‘um’, ‘ah’. “Look at the picture again – isn’t that your Uncle Toby?” In standard English the expression ‘so it is’ is used for agreeing with what someone has said and for showing some surprise: This is derived directly from Irish syntax, for example: “Tá mé tar éis titim” (I have fallen). ‘After’ can also precede verbs as in “I’m after washing” where standard English would be “I have washed”. Thus “I’m just after my dinner,” does not imply in any sense that you’re chasing down your dinner, merely that you have finished it in the recent past. ‘After’ is another word that is used in the conventional standard English sense, but has an additional meaning: it can also refer to as a completed action. The traditional greeting, “How’s she cuttin’?” still common in Ireland, comes from enquiring how your sleán (or turf spade) is slicing through the turf. Probably alon in the world, we even have a Ministry of Turf, Born na Móna.
But in Ireland it means peat cut from a bog and then burned for fuel. In standard English turf usually refers to grass, or the sport of horseracing. Turf sods being 'footed' to allow them to dry 9. Thus in Belfast you’re likely to be asked for your ‘wee credit card’, or shown the way to the ‘wee Cathedral’ or the ‘wee shipyards’. In Ireland, above the ‘Ould-Wee’ line it is used in much the same way as ‘ould’. In England, the world wee is rarely employed, but when it is, it means ‘small’.
Louth westwards below which people say ‘ould’, and above which they say ‘wee’. Largely speaking there is an ‘Ould-Wee’ line stretching across the country from about Co. Thus you might hear: “I’ll have to get an ould new bike”. Pronounced ‘ould’ or ‘oul’’, it is a way of expressing affection or proclaiming ownership of something, and is independent of the age of that thing. OldĪs with ‘bold’, ‘old’ in Ireland carries two meanings. You’ll find a wheen of things in most parts of Ulster, from Donegal to Down. NB A clatter is an amount that would be greater than ‘a wheen’. The origins are obscure for this radical change in meaning. In Hiberno-English it means a lot of anything - ‘a clatter of children’, ‘a clatter of sheep’. In standard English, a clatter is a lot of noise.
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