Dublinese: Know What I Mean?
Author: SHARE, Bernard.
Dublin: Collins Press, 2006. viii, 200 pages. Hardback.
The English say Dubliners speak the best English. Filmmaker Jim Sheridan insists they don’t, but that they speak the most entertaining English. Naming a piece of public sculpture (The Spike in the Dyke) or commenting on the hardness of life (living on the skin of a rasher) Dubliners have a flair for waxing lyrical. So, to fully appreciate them, one must learn Dublinese. Through the centuries the everyday language of Dublin has acquired its own accent, vocabulary and turns of phrase.
This guided tour looks at vowel play (kyar for car, muriels for murals), rhyming slang (Wolfe Tone for phone) and idioms (’I'll put manners on him!’). It draws on place names (’The Morgue’ - The Templeogue Inn), transport (Dart, Doort or Daart?), animals (the dead zoo - the Natural History Museum) and day-to-day living. Writers like James Joyce and Roddy Doyle lend verbal dexterity, as well as Joe and Josephine Soap and their co-citizens. All have enriched the speech of a city which, to coin a blasphemy, is in essence the word made flesh.
ISBN: 1905172079
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