Hiberno-English

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Hiberno-English – also known as Anglo-Irish and Irish English – is English as spoken in Ireland, partly the result of the interaction of the English and Irish languages. English was mainly brought to Ireland during the Plantations of Ireland in the sixteenth century and established itself in Dublin and in the area of Leinster known as the Pale. It was later introduced into Ulster during the Plantation of Ulster through Belfast and the Lagan Valley in the seventeenth century. The linguistic influence of the Irish language is most evident in Gaeltachtaí, areas where Irish is still widely spoken, as well as in areas where, before the complete adoption of English, Irish continued to be spoken for longer than in other areas.

The standard spelling and grammar of written Irish English are largely the same as British English. However, some unique characteristics exist, especially in the spoken language, owing to the influence of the Irish language on the pronunciation of English.

Pronunciation

Hiberno-English retains many phonemic differentiations, which have merged in other English accents. Phonetic transcriptions are given using the International Phonetic Alphabet.

• With some local exceptions, 'r' is pronounced wherever it occurs in the word, making Irish English a generally rhotic dialect. The exceptions to this are most notable in Drogheda and some other eastern towns, whose accent is distinctly non-rhotic. R is pronounced as a postalveolar tap/fricative [ɾ] in conservative accents. Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh and Jackie Healy-Rae are both good examples of this.
• /t/ is not usually pronounced as a plosive where it does not occur word-initially; instead, it is pronounced as a slit fricative /t̞/, between [s] and [ʃ].
• The distinction between w /w/ and wh /ʍ/, as in wine vs. whine is preserved.
• In some varieties, the dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/ become dental stops [t̪ʰ] and [d̪] respectively, making thin and tin, and then and den, near-homophones,^{[citation needed]} where the pair tin and den employs alveolar pronunciation (as in other varieties of English). In other varieties, this occurs only to /θ/ while /ð/ is left unchanged. Some dialects of Irish have a "slender" (palatalized) d as /ðʲ/ and this may transfer over to English pronunciation. In still others, both dental fricatives are present since slender dental stops are lenited to [θʲ] and [ðʲ].
• The distinction between /ɑ/ and /oː/ in horse and hoarse is preserved, though not usually in Dublin.
• A distinction between [ɛɹ]-[ʌɹ]-[ʌɹ] in herd-bird-curd may be found.
• /l/ is never velarized, except in (relatively recent) Dublin English.
• The vowels in words as boat and cane are monophthongs: [boːt], and [keːn] respectively, though not in Dublin.
• The /aɪ/ in "night" may be pronounced [ɔɪ] or [əɪ] line-loin merger
• The /ɔɪ/ in "boy" may be pronounced /aɪ/ in some cities e.g. Cork
• In some varieties, speakers make no distinction between the [ʌ] in putt and the [ʊ] in put, pronouncing both as the latter.
• In some highly conservative varieties, words spelled with ea and pronounced with [iː] in RP are pronounced with [eː], for example meat, beat.
• In words like took where "oo" usually represents /ʊ/, speakers may use /uː/.
• The /ʌ/ of words such as cut tends to be rounded to [ɔ] in most varieties (cf. Irish phonology).
• The a in any and many is sometimes pronounced as a "short a".
• /eɪ/ often becomes /ɛ/ in words such as gave and came (becoming "gev" and "kem")
• Consonant clusters ending in /j/ often change.^{[citation needed]}
  • /dj/ becomes /dʒ/, e.g. dew/due, duke and duty sound like "Jew", "jook" and "jooty".
  • /tj/ becomes /tʃ/, e.g. tube is "choob", tune is "choon"
  • /nj/ becomes /n/, e.g. new becomes "noo"
  • The following show neither dropping nor coalescence:
    • /kj/
    • /hj/
    • /mj/

Dublin English

As with London and New York, Dublin has several dialects that differ significantly based on class and age group. Some features include:[1]

• Traditionally the /ai/ vowel in words like "price" and "ride" ranges in pronunciation from [əi] in working-class speech to [ai] in middle-class dialects. However, among speakers born after 1970, the pronunciation [ɑɪ] (more typical of other Hiberno-English dialects) has become more frequent.
• The /au/ diphthong in 'around' and 'south' is fronted to [æu] or [ɛu]. Upper middle-class speech tends to preserve this as [au] (note that the tense off-glide slightly distinguishes this diphthong from American or English pronunciations).
• Low-back vowels are typically lengthened, hence 'dog' becomes [dɑːɡ], 'lost' becomes [lɑːst], etc.
• The 'horse-hoarse' distinction in other Irish dialects is sometimes lacking modern dialects. Both are usually pronounced with the same low-back vowel (i.e. [hɑɹs] or [hɔɚs] in upper-middle-class dialects.
• Working-class dialects are weakly rhotic, with some historically non-rhotic pronunciations (e.g. [pʌʊtɐ] for 'porter'). Rhotic speakers pronounce written /r/ in all positions, while non-rhotic speakers pronounce /r/ only if it is followed by a vowel sound (see "linking and intrusive R"), and not always even then.
• In upper-middle class speech, however, final 'r' is often retroflex, a feature which creates a strongly rhotic auditory effect, and as such a clear means of disassociation from the city's weakly-rhotic vernacular.
• Final 't' is heavily lenited in working-class Dublin English so that 'sit' can be pronounced [sɪh], [sɪʔ] or even [sɪ].
• In younger speakers, intervocalic 't' may be tapped as in North American and Australian English (i.e. 'patted' realized as [paɾəd]).

Grammar derived from Irish

The syntax of the Irish language is quite different from that of English. Various aspects of Irish syntax have influenced Hiberno-English, though it should be noted that many of these idiosyncrasies are disappearing in urban areas and among the younger population.

Irish lacks words that directly translate as "yes" or "no", and instead repeats the verb in a question, possibly negated, to answer. Hiberno-English uses "yes" and "no" less frequently than other English dialects as speakers can repeat the verb, positively or negatively, instead of (or in redundant addition to) using "yes" or "no". [1] [2]

• "Are you coming home soon?" "I am."
• "Is your mobile charged?" "It's not."

There is no indefinite article in Irish (fear means "a man", whereas an fear means "the man"), and the use of the definite article in Hiberno-English has some distinctive functions, which mark it out from Standard English by following and sometimes extending the usage of the definite article in Irish. [3]

• She had the flu so he brought her to the hospital. (This construction is normal in American English, but not in most British dialects).
• She came home for the Christmas

The Irish equivalent of the verb "to be"[2] has two present tenses, one (the present tense proper or "aimsir láithreach") for cases which are generally true or are true at the time of speaking and the other (the habitual present or "aimsir gnáth láithreach") for repeated actions. Thus, 'you are [now, or generally]' is tá tú, but 'you are [repeatedly]' is bíonn tú. Both forms are used with the verbal noun (equivalent to the English present participle) to create compound tenses.

Some Irish speakers of English, especially in rural areas, especially Mayo/Sligo, use the verb "to be" in English similarly to how they would in Irish, using a "does be/do be" (or "bees", although less frequently) construction to indicate this latter continuous present: [4]

• "He does be working every day."
• "They do be talking on their mobiles a lot."
• "He bees doing a lot of work at school." (Rare)
• "It's him I do be thinking of."

Irish has no pluperfect tense: instead, "after" is added to the present continuous (a verb ending in "-ing"), a construction known as the "hot news perfect" or "after perfect". [5], [6] The idiom for "I had done X when I did Y" is "I was after doing X when I did Y", modelled on the Irish usage of the compound prepositions i ndiaidh, tar éis, and in éis: bhí mé tar éis/i ndiaidh/in éis X a dhéanamh, nuair a rinne mé Y. [7]

• "Why did you hit him?" "He was after showing me cheek."

A similar construction is seen where exclamation is used in describing a recent event:

• "I'm after hitting him with the car!" Táim tar éis é a bhualadh leis an gcarr!
• "She's after losing five stone in five weeks!"

When describing less astonishing or significant events, a structure resembling the German spoken perfect can be seen:

• "I have the car fixed." Tá an carr deisithe agam.
• "I have my breakfast eaten." Tá mo bhricfeasta ite agam.

Irish has separate forms for the second person singular (tú) and the second person plural (sibh). Mirroring Irish, and almost every other European language, the plural 'you' is also distinguished from the singular in Hiberno-English, normally by use of the otherwise archaic English word 'ye' [ji]; the word 'yous' (sometimes written as 'youse') also occurs, but primarily only in Dublin and across Ulster. In addition, in some areas in Leinster, north Connacht and parts of Ulster, the hybrid word 'ye-s', pronounced 'yis', may be used. The pronunciation does differ however, with that of the northwestern being [jiːz] and the Leinster pronunciation being [jɪz]. [8]

• "Did ye all go to see it?"
• "None of youse have a clue!"
• "Are yis not finished yet?"

In rural areas, the reflexive version of pronouns is often used for emphasis or to refer indirectly to a particular person, etc., according to context [9]. 'Herself', for example, might refer to the speaker's boss or to the woman of the house. Use of 'herself' or 'himself' in this way often indicates that the speaker attributes some degree of arrogance or selfishness to the person in question. Note also the indirectness of this construction relative to, for example, 'She's coming now'