Have you ever thought about your surname? Do you know where it comes from, what it means? Many English-language surnames are derived from jobs: Continue reading
Surnames
Irish
Putting the “R” in Accents
Obviously it’s quite clear that there are many different English-speaking accents. But what are the practical elements that distinguish these accents? One of the most important is rhoticity. If you’re not sure if you have a rhotic or non-rhotic accent, simply say the following words and phrases out loud:
car, flower, computer, pasta and pizza, Georgia Allenby
If you pronounce the r sounds in the first three words, you have a rhotic accent.
If you don’t pronounce them, but add an r sound to the end of pasta and Georgia, then you have a non-rhotic accent. Continue reading
American Life: Appalachian English
It seems appropriate today to cast my eye on the United States, but not in the way you might expect. You’ve probably heard and read enough about that already, so I just want to share this video about the way the natives of the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States speak English. It’s delightful to hear their accents and very specific vocabulary. It sounds quite unique, though I think I definitely detect something of the original Scottish and Irish settlers. I think there’s definitely a link between the fact that they call a bag a poke, and in Irish the word for pocket is póca. I’m not surprised that their vocabulary and accent wouldn’t change much over time, being so isolated.
These are the type of people who might be stereotyped as hillbillies, but they all seem like nice folk. Hard to understand at times, but nice. I don’t think there’s much point to this really, just to show what English can be, and how diverse, culturally and linguistically, America can be.
How do You be Doing?
When does English sound like jazz?
When you’re Irish.
When I was a younger man I thought nothing of talking about my habits and routines in such terms:
I do be going to the park regularly.
I do be often working on Saturdays.
If I were to translate that into more standard English, it would be:
I go to the park regularly.
I often work on Saturdays.
These latter sentences are in the present simple tense, which we use to talk about routines, habits, and general truths. So why would I choose a more convoluted form instead of something more… simple? Well, you can’t change where you’re born. Such a structure (I do be +-ing), while not so common anymore, was a common part of Irish English (or Hiberno-English). Continue reading
My Left Hand: a Sinister Tale
I hope you appreciate how lucky you are to be right-handed. Of course you might actually be left-handed, in which case my apologies for the assumption, but statistically you’re probably right-handed. You’re also probably right-footed (90% of right-handers are also right-footed, and about 50% of left-footers). You might not have been aware that footedness is a thing. If sports involving kicking balls don’t occupy a position of any importance in your life, the concept may not have occurred to you. If you’re not sure which is your dominant foot, go kick the nearest person in the shin with each foot (not simultaneously, you don’t want to get hurt) and see which one hurts them more.
I’m entirely lopsided: both left-handed and left-footed. I was quite proud of this when I was a child. I felt it made me stand out. As a football fan, I was impressed by how left-footed players like Ryan Giggs always seemed to be so quick and dynamic and creative. My footballing career did not quite follow his trajectory, mind you. But mostly I just liked being different from everyone else. And I still do. But as I got older, I began to realise that it wasn’t so easy being left-handed… Continue reading
From Ireland to Jamaica
The English language has an amazing variety of accents, not just internationally, but within different regions of countries. One of the most recognisable, and oft-imitated, is the Jamaican accent. And of course people often imitate it badly. And when they do, a common remark is that they sound more Irish than Jamaican. Well, that’s no coincidence… Continue reading
Hooligans, the Lot of Them!
Hooligan‘s a great word, isn’t it? The sound of it really matches what it represents. Now the word is mainly associated with troublemakers at football games, but it’s been around for quite a long time. It first appeared in British police reports in 1898, and seems to have been based on the surname Houlihan. Coming from the original Gaelic surname Ó hUallacháin, it came to be used to represent a stereotypical comic Irish figure in music-hall shows in the late 19th century.
Given the stereotypes of Irish people in cities like New York and London at the time, it’s not such a surprise that the name became a synonym for an angry, violent, and probably drunk, individual. The word was also quickly absorbed into Russian as khuligan, to refer to violent young men harassing people on the streets, and political dissenters. Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 