Hiberno-English

Hiberno-English, or Irish-English as it is sometimes called, is a variety of English strongly influenced by the Gaelic that was spoken by most of the Irish population until well into the nineteenth century. Other formative influences were the Englishes of the Planters who came to Ireland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the southwest of England, and from Scotland in the case of the north of Ireland.

Formal study of the dialect has had a relatively late start. In the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, Hiberno-English was associated with what is called the "stage Irishman" in the theatre and periodical cartoons of the times, which depicted the Irish as subhuman figures of fun. The Irish accent, called a "brogue" even in the time of Jonathan Swift, was something which educational systems tried to eradicate in the children of the Irish, whether in Ireland or abroad. In the early years of Irish independence the new state tried to focus on the restoration of Gaelic, and paid little attention to Irish use of English. With the advent of postmodernism and postcolonialism, attitudes to Hiberno-English and other World Englishes have changed radically across the globe. From the late decades of the twentieth century especially, scholars through books, surveys, and dictionaries have recognised its distinctiveness, and tried to describe Hiberno-English.

Hiberno-English has a distinctive phonology; for example, a dental pronunciation of t and d, which leads to pronunciation sometimes transcribed as 'throuble' (trouble), vocabulary (e.g., words derived from the Gaelic such as boreen [little road]), grammar and syntax, (e.g., "I'm after washing the dishes" to indicate the recent past), and is particularly noted for its witty and expressive use of images and tropes ("He'd mind mice at a crosssroads" [O'Farrell 1980, p. 28]). It is not surprising that writers, especially dramatists, were the first to recognize the potential of Hiberno-English, beginning with Shakespeare's colorful portrayal of McMorris (Henry the Fifth). Nobel prize winners W. B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, and Seamus Heaney, and other famous writers such as James Joyce, J. M. Synge, Sean O'Casey, and Brian Friel, have used it to great effect in their works. New Irish poets and fiction writers as well as playwrights, continue to use this vibrant dialect today.

In spite of Ireland's new confidence, Hiberno-English is declining. The Gaelic past is further removed in time; education and Ireland's new cosmopolitanism have also been responsible. What remains, especially in informal situations, is the pronunciation, recurrent words, and grammatical expressions, and continuing invention of new idioms and images.

Bibliography

Christensen, Lis. A First Glossary of Hiberno-English. 1996.

Dolan, T. P. A Dictionary of Hiberno-English. 1999.

Fippula, Markku. The Grammar of Irish English: Language in Hibernian Style. 1999.

Kallen, Jeffrey L., ed. Focus on Ireland. Varieties of English around the World. 1997.

Kiberd, Declan. Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation. 1995.

Kirk, John M., and Dónall Ó Baoill. Language Links: The Languages of Scotland and Ireland. Vol. 2 of Belfast Studies in Language, Culture and Politics. 2001.

O'Farrell, Padraic. How the Irish Speak English. 1980.

Ó Muirithe, Diarmaid. A Dictionary of Anglo-Irish. 2000.

Share, Bernard. Slanguage—A Dictionary of Slang and Colloquial English in Ireland. 1997.

Todd, Loreto. The Language of Irish Literature. 1989.