THE dialect of English used in Ireland has two characteristics which distinguish it from all other branches of English: influence from the Irish language in matters of vocabulary, idiom, syntax and pronunciation, and residual influence from archaic, obsolete, and dialectal forms of English, especially as regards vocabulary and pronunciation.
This fascinating dictionary deals with the Irish lexical component and its integration into English sentences. It contains thousands of Gaelic words from oral and literary sources, commencing with a babun interj." and ending with "utamali n. A fumbler, bungler" (Example: "Don't let him service your car. He's the biggest utamillai God ever put life into").
Each entry includes a head word, the grammatical description, alternative form(s), the meaning(s), and (where available) a citation or citations to illustrate the use, as well as a note on the location of the usage. The majority of the headwords are nouns, and the collection is based on the contributions of informants and on printed sources. The book concludes with a bibliography and an index.
This book will stimulate its readers to check meanings in both O Donaill's and Dinneen's dictionaries because many of the meanings here ascribed to respective headwords are restricted to a certain area, and sometimes, seemingly, to an individual. For instance, "pardog" is entered as meaning "a three leggedpot", which must be considered a local gloss: O'Reilly's Irish English Dictionary gives "a hamper or basket used in mountainous places for carrying things on both sides of a horse"; for pardog, O Donaill gives "pad; mat; pannier; small thickset woman".
Elsewhere, "crochan" (in form "cruckaun") is defined as "a type of straw bed on which a dying person Was laid". Under crochan, O Donaill gives "(boat) sling". There seem to be endless local refinements of words. For example, an informant of mine in Rathmore, Co Kerry, gave me "an animal that strays into your farm" for "stocaire", which fits in well with Dr O Muirithe's "an uninvited guest at a wedding ...; A dog that sits watching a person at meals in expectation of getting food".
Some of the words are not to be found in O Donaill, for instance, "sleisinn", "a method of wrestling whereby the leg is put over the hip of the opponent, with a sudden pull downward". Compare O'Reilly's "sleiss, the thigh". Discoveries such as these demonstrate the inventiveness of this dialect, and provide endless recreation for the reader.
The citations from informants possess a ring of authenticity from their very ordinariness (e.g., "Fuiseog n. - The lark. He rises with the fuiseog"). By contrast, some of the literary examples raise the spectre of the Stage Irish person, as, for instance, in this quotation from Mrs S.C. Hall, illustrating the word "prata, pratey, etc. Mother, hould your whisht and mind the paytees (sic)". This impression also holds true for the many citations from Michael Banim.
For the next edition of this work, the introduction (six pages) could perhaps be expanded to provide a fuller explanation of the relationship between the Irish and English lexicons, fuller guidance to pronunciation (or, better still, each headword could be represented phonetically)and a note on the difficulties of furnishing etymologies for Irish words (here, understandably, only a few words are given sources, e.g., "Sprochall, Preceall
This important dictionary celebrates the creativity of the macaronic vernacular used in Ireland. It also reveals much about the doings, preoccupations, and prejudices of rural culture - everything from how to call a stray sheep ("Keerie!") to what to call someone with big feet ("spagaide"). It is a deeply satisfying piece of work, both linguistically and sociologically, and leaves us with the perennial puzzle as to why so few Gaelic words, other than "galore", "smithereens", "whiskey", and the like, have crossed over into Standard English.
