Third: independently of these two sources, dialectical expressions have gradually grown up among our English-speaking people, as dialects arise everywhere.
In the following pages whenever a word or a phrase is not assigned to any origin it is to be understood as belonging to this third class:—that is so far as is known at present; for I have no doubt that many of these will be found, after further research, to be either Irish-Gaelic or Old English. It is to be also observed that a good many of the dialectical expressions given in this book as belonging to Ireland may possibly be found current in England or in Scotland or in both. But that is no reason why they should not be included here.
Influence of Irish.
The Irish language has influenced our Irish-English speech in several ways. To begin with: it
has determined the popular pronunciation, in certain combinations, of three English consonants, t, d, and th, but in a way (so far as t and d are concerned) that would not now be followed by anyone even moderately well educated. The sounds of English t and d are not the same as those of the Irish t and d; and when the people began to exchange the Irish language for English, they did not quite abandon the Irish sounds of these two letters, but imported them into their English, especially when they came before r. That is why we hear among the people in every part of Ireland such vulgarisms as (for t) bitther, butther, thrue; and (for d) laddher (ladder), cidher (cider), foddher, &c. Yet in other positions we sound these letters correctly, as in fat, football, white; bad, hide, wild, &c. No one, however uneducated, will mispronounce the t and d in such words as these. Why it is that the Irish sound is retained before r and not in other combinations—why for instance the Irish people sound the t and d incorrectly in platter and drive [platther, dhrive] and correctly in plate and dive—is a thing I cannot account for.
As for the English th, it may be said that the general run of the Irish people never sound it at all; for it is a very difficult sound to anyone excepting a born Englishman, and also excepting a small proportion of those born and reared on the east coast of Ireland. It has two varieties of sound, heard in bath and bathe: and for these two our people use the Irish t and d, as heard in the words given above.
A couple of centuries ago or more the people had another substitute for this th (in bathe) namely d, which held its place for a considerable time, and this
sound was then considered almost a national characteristic; so that in the song of 'Lillibulero' the English author of the song puts this pronunciation all through in the mouth of the Irishman:—'Dere was an ould prophecy found in a bog.' It is still sometimes heard, but merely as a defect of speech of individuals:—'De books are here: dat one is yours and dis is mine.' Danny Mann speaks this way all through Gerald Griffin's 'Collegians.'
There was, and to a small extent still is, a similar tendency—though not so decided—for the other sound of th (as in bath):—'I had a hot bat this morning; and I remained in it for tirty minutes': 'I tink it would be well for you to go home to-day.'
Another influence of the Irish language is on the letter s. In Irish, this letter in certain combinations is sounded the same as the English sh; and the people often—though not always—in similar combinations, bring this sound into their English:—'He gave me a blow of his fisht'; 'he was whishling St. Patrick's Day'; 'Kilkenny is sickshty miles from this.' You hear this sound very often among the more uneducated of our people.