Irish Dialect

job · Aug 29, 2007

Very Dear All --

Once again, insatiable for assistance, I beg for help with dialect. Does anyone here have an 'ear' for Irish dialect?

This is 1810, a conversation between a Dubliner of dubious antecedents and an upperclass Englishman.

If I were being authentic, I'd represent a nearly impenetrable brogue. I've made the pusillanimous decision to be inauthentic and employ just a hint of cadence and a word or two.

*******************
Dubious and Criminal Irishman: "Liam's dying."

Englishman: "Then your share will be that much larger."

I: "We won't be after trying that again. Not today. It's too soon."

E: "Another day, and she'll be guarded like the crown jewels. It's today or never. She's on her way to her warehouse on Garett Street. Take her there."

I: "Yer brave, yes, when it's my neck." "I need more money. Fifty pounds."

E: "We keep to the agreement."

I: "I tell ye, Sean and Fergus are dead. Dead in their blood. Cut down like dogs."

E: "And therefore in no need of money."

I: "They were me cousins."

E: "My condolences. Get me the girl."

I: "Ye said it'd be easy, damn yer eyes. There's four men dead and Bastard Kennett after our necks. This ain't the job we was hired for. Fifty pounds more."

E: "Ten."

I: "I say fifty. Fifty now and a hundred when we deliver the girl."

E: "And I say you're a bungler and a fool. There's a dozen men upstairs who'd take this work and be glad of it." "Do it this morning. And don't hurt her. Dogmeat's no good to me."

I: "She'll be alive. Yes. The rest of the money better be waiting when we get her to the boat."

E: "Half of this goes to ..." "... his care. Or his family, if he dies."

I: "I'll see to that."
********

Help?

Snowberry · Sep 5, 2007

As a non-Irish person, that all sounds completely authentic to me! Have you tried http://www.whoohoo.co.uk/irish-translator.asp

arrowqueen · Sep 5, 2007

If not, keep it that way. It's a spoof site.

JimmyB27 · Sep 5, 2007

I'm not Irish either, but I have known several Irish people, and I'm living in Dublin at the moment.
I think you need 'to be sure, to be sure' in there at least a couple of times. And a couple of instances of 'begorrah!' for good measure.

*Runs, in case a real Irishman turns up and reads this*

Ok, I jest, it all sounds fine as it is to me.

arrowqueen · Sep 5, 2007

The only bits I'd change are:

"We won't be after trying that again. Not today. It's too soon."

to:

'We'll not be trying that again. Not today anyway. It's too soon.'

I: "Yer brave, yes, when it's my neck."

to:

'Aye, you're brave enough when it's my neck.'

and

I: "I tell ye, Sean and Fergus are dead. Dead in their blood. Cut down like dogs."

to:

'I tell ye, Sean and Fergus are dead. Dead in their own* blood. Cut down like dogs.'

* Yes, I know. Who else's blood would it be - but it still sounds better to me.

(P.S. Ok, I'm a Scot - but we're just across the water from Ireland and are known as 'the Galloway Irish.')

job · Sep 5, 2007

arrowqueen said:
The only bits I'd change are:

And thank ye kindly. I'll be after looking at those lines and weighing the changes to make.

You are so kind to help me out.

job · Sep 5, 2007

JimmyB27 said:
I think you need 'to be sure, to be sure' in there at least a couple of times.

Yo be sure.

rosebud1981 · Sep 5, 2007

Top of the morning to ye!
Begorrah, the original text was not bad at all, to be sure.

I'd agree with the things that arrowqueen mentioned. Maybe just a couple of other small things as well.

You might change this line:
"I say fifty. Fifty now and a hundred when we deliver the girl."
to this:
"I say fifty. Fifty now and a hundred when we're after delivering the girl."
The after + gerund construction is very common in Irish English.

This line:
"She'll be alive. Yes. The rest of the money better be waiting when we get her to the boat."
I would just change slightly to:
"She'll be alive, alright. The rest of the money better be waitin when we get her to the boat."

One other thing... I've never heard of the expression "damn yer eyes". A quick google search shows it's quite common but I've never heard it said in Ireland.

Good work. Sounds pretty authentic

Soccer Mom · Sep 5, 2007

You might PM BrianM and ask him to take a looksee as well.

ideagirl · Sep 8, 2007

The warehouse being "on Garett Street"--sounds wrong. I used to live in the British Isles, still have tons of Irish friends from those days, and on both sides of the Irish sea people describe buildings as being "IN Yada Street," not "ON Yada Street." It's always "in" if there's no address ("the warehouse in Baker Street") or "at" if there's an address ("the shop at 14 Baker Street").

Fifty pounds--that was a GIGANTIC amount of money in 1810. See the earlier discussion on this forum about British currency. Fifty pounds was more than double the ANNUAL salary of most working-class people. So, consider whether the transaction your characters are discussing is appropriate to that amount; if not, change the amount. (It sounds like they're discussing a kidnapping, and there's far more money discussed--the hundred pounds later--so that's 150 pounds, which is more than six years' salary for working class people back then. It's like $150,000. How on earth could these people even come by so much money? How could they transport it? What possible kidnapping victim could ever be worth that much money?! I'm guessing you'll want to change the amount.)

Ain't--never heard an Irish person say "ain't." Their contraction for "is not" sounds like "in't." There's no "ai" sound.

job · Sep 8, 2007

ideagirl said:
It's always "in" if there's no address ("the warehouse in Baker Street") or "at" if there's an address ("the shop at 14 Baker Street")..

'In'. That does sound nice. I like ... 'a house in George Street.' Sounds right.

'A hospital in George Street' or 'a boys' school in George Street ' or ' a warehouse in George street' ...

I know a Brit. I shall run this by her at once, since I don't trust my ear.
Thank you so much.

ideagirl said:
Fifty pounds--that was a GIGANTIC amount of money in 1810. See the earlier discussion on this forum about British currency. ")..

The hundred was for ten men to do something illegal and dangerous and included some expenses.
The guy didn't get his fifty bonus. He got ten.
Heh heh.

I haven't done my 'historic money is complicated' screed because I'm so utterly fraught and it's a long screed with lots of historic backup.

But the summary is that historic money is complicted.

In thinking about historic money values, it's probably not useful to look at salaries. Salaries tended to include a lot of non-money compensation ... housing, food, clothing, tips, perquisites of various kinds.

Better to look at goods and services.
In 1800-ish -- Seven shillings bought a yard of dress fabric. Two shillings to take a hackney coach for a mile and a half. A meal in a pub, with wine, cost about a shilling.

40-to-one is a reasonable rough multiplier for certain kinds of solid, traditional goods.
A hundred pounds in 1800 -- in this very general way -- would be more like four thousand pounds in 2000. Call it eight thousand American dollars.

ideagirl said:
How could they transport it?

Pound notes.

ideagirl said:
Ain't--never heard an Irish person say "ain't." Their contraction for "is not" sounds like "in't." There's no "ai" sound.

But I hate to try for a more phonetic representation. It might confuse the reader.
So bloody hard to represent dialect.

job · Sep 8, 2007

rosebud1981 said:
... I've never heard of the expression "damn yer eyes".

I wonder if it could be, like, old fashioned. That's good, if so.

CatSlave · Sep 8, 2007

Read a couple of Anne Perry books.
Her dialogues sound authentic to this American ear.

job · Sep 8, 2007

CatSlave said:
Read a couple of Anne Perry books.
Her dialogues sound authentic to this American ear.

I've read her. But not ... like ... with attention. I'll have to look at her representation of dialog if it is particularly fine.

ideagirl · Sep 14, 2007

job said:
But I hate to try for a more phonetic representation. It might confuse the reader. So bloody hard to represent dialect.

Give it a try--write out the same sentence with "in't" where you've put the "ain't." Or you could spell it "i'nt." I think, in context, it'll be obvious what's meant. If not, rephrase or just write "isn't." Using "ain't" really sounds wrong, because it's American slang. The -ai- sound just doesn't exist, to my knowledge, in ANY British or Irish slang negation.

job · Sep 14, 2007

ideagirl said:
If not, rephrase or just write "isn't." Using "ain't" really sounds wrong, because it's American slang. The -ai- sound just doesn't exist, to my knowledge, in ANY British or Irish slang negation.

I just can't think of it as American slang. I don't want to quibble or anything .. but lotsa folks use 'ain't to represent British dialect.

Lookit Shaw in Pygmalion --

THE FLOWER GIRL [springing up terrified] I ain't done nothing
wrong by speaking to the gentleman. I've a right to sell flowers
if I keep off the kerb.

And Dickins in Oliver Twist --

'Why, it's what I'm obliged to keep a little of in the house, to
put into the blessed infants' Daffy, when they ain't well, Mr.
Bumble,' replied Mrs. Mann as she opened a corner cupboard,

And, really ... lots of others ...

JoB

ideagirl · Sep 15, 2007

job said:
Lookit Shaw in Pygmalion -- And Dickins in Oliver Twist

Oh, forgot about that. Sorry. But Eliza Doolittle speaks in a Cockney accent, which is East London working class. Mrs. Mann in Oliver Twist isn't supposed to be in/from London, but Dickens himself grew up near and then in London (from ages 5-10 his family lived in Kent, in the southeast not far from London, and then from age 10 on they lived in Camden Town, which is in northern London). They were very much working class; by age 12 Dickens was working in a factory.

In the novel, Mrs. Mann et al live in an unnamed town--I don't think Dickens even mentions the region, or what direction it was from London; he just said it was 70 or 75 miles away from London (a radius that could include Kent, or Hampshire where he was born). My point here is that it's not a specific place, and so he wasn't trying to reproduce a specific dialect. Television has slightly modified this, but still, to this day in England, accents--especially the accents of working-class people, who tend to spend their whole lives in one place*--are incredibly localized; people who grew up ten miles away from each other have different accents. So my guess is that with Mrs. Mann and all the other characters in the non-specific non-existent town where Oliver Twist was born, Dickens was just reproducing the language with which he was most familiar: southeastern English, and especially London, working class. Probably their language is like his own must've been: a mixture of London working class and Kent/Hampshire working class.

I wonder if Australians say "ain't." That might make sense, given that so many of them are descended from working-class Londoners who were convicted of some petty crime or other and shipped out to the south Pacific.

* (Caveat re the tendency of working-class people to be born, live and die in the same town: that wasn't the case in Dickens' childhood, as evidenced by his parents moving from Hampshire to Kent and then London. In the early/mid 19th, with England in the process of industrializing, lots of working-class people moved into London from the countryside, like Dickens' family.)

job · Sep 15, 2007

ideagirl said:
Ain't--never heard an Irish person say "ain't." Their contraction for "is not" sounds like "in't." There's no "ai" sound.

And after having brought up the use of 'ain't' in other dialects ...
Still thinking about the Irish lads.

As I said ... I' worried about becoming dense and incomprehensible in my dialog usage. I want the lightest possible hand here.

-- 'Isn't' feels too formal.
-- I'm perfectly willing to concede 'ain't' may be wrong for Irish dialect. (I have no ear at all for Irish.) It's not in Ulysses, fr'instance.
-- But is that 'ain't' , incorrect as it may, strictly, be, still the closest, instantly recognizable, approximation?

Still looking at 'inn't' and 'in't' ...

There'd be only the one instance of it.
Is it too much? Would it be comprehensible .... ?

Hmmmm ....

(jo wanders off to put it the word 'inn't' into and out of the passage, weighing options obsessively.).

JB_Finesse · Sep 15, 2007

What about "ent"? I think Phillip Pullman used it in The Golden Compass as an "ain't" substitute for a couple of his British characters. It's much less jarring to read than "inn't". I've talked to people from England and Ireland and I've never heard "int", but I think I have heard "ent". Maybe I'm hearing it differently. It's sort of like how the Irish pronounciation of the F-word sounds something like "fook" (rhymes with book).

job · Sep 16, 2007

JB_Finesse said:
It's sort of like how the Irish pronounciation of the F-word sounds something like "fook" (rhymes with book).

I will never get this one out of my head. Thanks. Sort of.

BlueBadger · Sep 16, 2007

My grandparents are Irish and their accents have washed out over time ... though my grandfather's is still quite strong on some words.

Don't forget, different locales in Ireland have different dialects!

My realtives from Belfast sound quite different from those in Dublin, etc. Irish writers like Frank McCourt focus less on how a word sounds and more on the choice of words themselves. It makes for easy and very colourful reading.

Stylo · Sep 17, 2007

'Tis not the job we were hired for' sounds more authentic to me (I'm British with Irish friends), but if you want a really good insight into Irish dialect from the 19th Century I would recommend 'A Star Called Henry' by Roddy Doyle - not only is it set in that time and area, it's also a cracking good read (one of my favourite novels of all time).

The luck of the Irish to ya!

job · Sep 17, 2007

Stylo said:
'Tis not the job we were hired for' sounds more authentic to me (I'm British with Irish friends), but if you want a really good insight into Irish dialect from the 19th Century I would recommend 'A Star Called Henry' by Roddy Doyle - not only is it set in that time and area, it's also a cracking good read (one of my favourite novels of all time).

The luck of the Irish to ya!

Lots of Irish dialect? ... I will look it up.

I also need Cockney and Yorkshire for the first two decades of C19 (Yes. Wuthering Heights. Yes.) for the one after this.

rosebud1981 · Sep 18, 2007

job said:
-- 'Isn't' feels too formal.

Still looking at 'inn't' and 'in't' ...

There'd be only the one instance of it.
Is it too much? Would it be comprehensible .... ?

Isn't isn't formal at all

In fact it's used a lot more than inn't or in't. I wouldn't recommend those - I actually think that ain't is better than either of them, but isn't sounds the most authentic to these Irish ears

job · Sep 18, 2007

rosebud1981 said:
Isn't isn't formal at all

In fact it's used a lot more than inn't or in't. I wouldn't recommend those - I actually think that ain't is better than either of them, but isn't sounds the most authentic to these Irish ears

I may well end up using 'ain't' -- just on the grounds that it'll cause the poor reader the least confusion.

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