ANGLO-IRISH

ANGLO-IRISH.
1. Relating to England or Britain and Ireland: the Anglo-Irish agreement, Anglo-Irish tensions.

2. Relating to the English in Ireland and the Protestant Ascendancy: ‘PAT. He was an Anglo-Irishman. / MEG. In the blessed name of God, what's that? / PAT. A Protestant with a horse’ ( Brendan Behan, The Hostage, 1958, Act I). The term is disliked by many Irish nationalists when used to refer to Irish literature in English or when it obtrusively recalls the centuries of English/British rule over Ireland.

3. A term, especially in linguistics, for a variety of English spoken over most of Ireland. It derives mainly from the English brought to Ireland by 17c Planters (settlers) from England, modified by contacts with Irish Gaelic, Ulster Scots, and Hiberno-English. It is a continuum of usage influenced by the level of education of its speakers, their regional origin, and the area of original settlement. The usage of more educated speakers approximates to Irish broadcasting norms, whereas less educated speakers have more distinctive accents and non-standard usages.

Pronunciation

The middle-class Anglo-Irish accent has been influenced by and continues to be close to RP. However, it is rhotic (with a retroflex r) and the /t, d/ in words like true and drew tend to be dental rather than alveolar, suggesting ‘thrue’ and ‘dhrew’. In working-class speech, the following features are common: (1) Words such as leave and tea sound like ‘lave’ and ‘tay’, cold and old sound like ‘cowl’ and ‘owl’, bull and could can rhyme with ‘cull’ and ‘bud’, and which and whether are distinguished from witch and weather (beginning with /hw/, not /w/). (2) In such words as arm and film, a vowel often opens up the consonant clusters: ‘aram’ and ‘fillim’. (3) In the South, words such as pence are often pronounced ‘pensh’ (an /ʃ/ in word-final position) and story and small are often pronounced ‘shtory’ and ‘shmall’ (an /ʃ/ in consonant clusters). Less often, such words as fizzed and puzzle sound like ‘fizhd’ and ‘puzhl’ (a /ʒ/ in consonant clusters). Also in Southern Anglo-Irish, words such as thin and then sound like ‘tin’ and ‘den’ (/ǒ, ɵ/ replaced by /t, d/). Words such as try, dry, butter, and under sound like thry, dhry, butther, and undher (with interdental rather than alveolar plosives).

Grammar

Standard Anglo-Irish is close to the standard BrE varieties. Non-standard Anglo-Irish syntax has six features also found outside Ireland: (1) Done and seen in the past tense: She done it because she seen me do it. (2) Special past participles: He has div He has dived; They have went They have gone. (3) Auxiliary have reduced to a: You should a knew You should have known; They would a helped you. (4) Them as a demonstrative plural adjective and pronoun: Them shoes is lovely yet. Them's the ones I wanted. (5) A plural form of you. In the South, it tends to be ye (rhyming with he: Ye'll all get what's comin to ye) or youse (rhyming with whose: Youse childher will get a good beatin' when your father gets in!). In the North, it is yiz (rhyming with his: Yiz'll all get what's comin to yiz, Yiz childher will get…). (6) Singular be with plural subjects: Me and Mick's fed up, Mary and the daughter's out shopping, Yiz is late, Themins (those ones) is no use. Such features are probably tolerated higher up the social ladder than in Britain.

Vocabulary

1. Distinctive words never current in the standard language: atomy a small, insignificant person, as in Did you ever see such a wee atomy of a man?; cog to cheat, for example by copying, as in I wouldn't let just anybody cog my exercise; thole to endure, as in There was nothin for it but to thole (shared with ScoE).

2. General words with distinctive senses: backward shy, bold naughty, doubt strongly believe, as in I doubt he's coming (shared with ScoE). Most regionally marked words occur in the speech of older, often rural people; it is unlikely that biddable obedient, feasant affable, pishmire/pismire ant, occur in the natural usage of people under 40. See BELFAST, DUBLIN, IRISH ENGLISH, NEWFOUNDLAND ENGLISH, NORTHERN IRISH ENGLISH.