Northern Irish English

😊You may know the classification of a variety of English called World Englishes. It refers to the different English varieties in different countries or territories. Some students took the course of Language awareness last fall. They were asked to analyze a specific English variety by watching a given TV program. Among them, several students did excellent jobs.  C.L.I.C. will share their reports with you one by one.

The first report is about Northern Irish English. After having watched the first episode of the sitcom“Derry Girls”, Evelyne Potvin-Cloutier used phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics to delve into the details found in North Irish English which are different from North American English.

                                            Northern Irish English

Evelyne Potvin-Cloutier

Phonetics

In the Northern Irish English spoken in the first episode of the sitcom Derry Girls, I noted (2m10s, 8m46s, 11m54s) that the vowel /u/ as in ‘school’, is pronounced more in the upper front of the mouth, almost like the French /u/.

The diphthong /ou/, like in ‘about’ (0m54s, 21m57s), ‘pound’ (4m37s), ‘now’ (8m44s, 9m11s, 21m05s), ‘allowed’ (3m52s), or ‘down’ (17m49s) is pronounced /oy/ like in ‘oil’, and is very distinctive or the North Irish dialect. The same sound is used in the pronunciation of ‘Ireland’, as in ‘Oireland’ (0m35s)

The word ‘shit’ is pronounced by North Irish speakers as ‘shite’ (2m27s), using the same /I/ Americans use for ‘Ireland’.

In Northern Irish English, the ‘ing’ sound is almost never pronounced and is replaced by the sound ‘in’, like in ‘meltin’’ instead of ‘melting’ (6m06s), ‘Nothin’ interestin’’ instead of ‘Nothing interesting’ (7m31s) and ‘understandin’’ instead of ‘understanding’ (22m28s).

Phonology

One interesting phonological particularity of Northern Irish English is the monophthonging if diphthongs. Vowels like /i/ in ‘sometimes’ (0m55s) will be shortened to sound more like ‘sometames’. In Derry Girls, we can hear the same thing happening with the words ‘great’ (10m37s), ‘safe’, and ‘stable’ (12m10s), which are sounding more like ‘greet’, ‘seefe’, and ‘steeble’. The diphthong in the word ‘rain’ (15m47s) is shortened to a monophthong.

Middle /t/’s in front of the vowel /a/ like in ‘brutal’ (12m43s) or ‘mental’ (13m54s) are more emphasized than in American English as they aren’t flapping sounds but voiced fricatives. Final /t/’s in words like ‘alright’ (8m25s), are not pronounced as a stop, but as a voiced fricative that almost resembles an /s/. Final /d/’s like in ‘knackered’ (5m02s) are sometimes pronounced the same way as /t/’s. After the vowels /a/ like in ‘what’ (8m32s), final /t/’s are not pronounced at all.

Intonation is a big distinction of the Northern Irish English accent. The rising pitch at the end of sentences makes it as though people are asking questions, while they are making affirmations. It is very noticeable almost all the time, but very easy to hear at 6m25s in the phrases ‘But Erin, Murder She Wrote’s on tonight. You never miss Murder She Wrote.’ and at 16m58s in ‘I don’t accept it’.

Morphology

The morpheme ‘wee’ comes from Scottish influence and is extensively used in North Irish English. It is even more related to the region of Derry, where the sitcom is located. It means ‘small’ and is used to characterize things or people, per example ‘wee fella’ or ‘wee nun’. It can also serve to describe a situation like in: ‘Listen, I think there’s been a wee bit of a misunderstanding.’ (9m07s). The morpheme ‘wee’ is used to create the word ‘wean’, meaning a child (Dictionary of the Scots Language).

One morphological difference that North Irish English is known for is the pluralization of you when used to describe more than one person, as in ‘youse’ (Murillo, 2016). However, it was not heard in the first episode of Derry Girls.

Syntax

Northern Irish English’s syntax has influences from England, Scottish and Irish Gaelic. It differs in many ways from American English. The use of definite articles is one of them. The phrase ‘The husband caught her doing the dirt on him’ (7m34s) is a good example. In American English, the possessive pronoun ‘Her’ would be used instead of ‘The’. In this sentence, the use of ‘on him’ is archaic and means the action described is happening ‘to his detriment’ (Murillo, 2016). In the sentence ‘She’s a bit of a goer, is our Kathy, riding rings around him, so she was.’ (7m35s), ‘is our Kathy’ would be ‘our Kathy is’ and ‘so she was’ would probably be ‘so was she’, but this whole utterance mixes Irish idioms and structure that would be very unlikely to be heard in a North American setting.

‘Erin, have you got a light?’ (5m58s) is also a typical Northern Irish structure with the inversion of the place of the verb, coming from Celtic influence (Murillo, 2016). The order of the words would be different in American English and the phrase would sound more like ‘Erin, do you have a light?’.

Instead of using the possessive pronoun ‘my’, Irish English speakers will often use the dative pronoun ‘me’ (4m18s, 6m50s, 7m18s), like in the following ‘I’m sorry, I’m not wearing me blazer.’ (3m58s).

Semantics

The first episode of Derry Girls is rich in lexical items that carry different meaning to words than in North American English or that are simply not used in North America. Many expressions and words used in Northern Ireland are also known in Received Pronunciation but aren’t necessarily part of the standardized vocabulary. Here’s a list of words and expression noted with their meanings in American English and an example in which they occur:

-Wean(s) (pronounced wayne) (2m20s, 7m18s) means child(ren), as in ‘It’s only gonna give our weans ideas.’ (1m47s).

-Aye (9m39s) means yes, as in ‘Is it, aye? – It is, aye.’ (2m55s).

-Knickers (10m10s) means feminine underwear, as in ‘Don’t say ‘knickers’ in front of your father, he can’t cope.’ (1m20s).

-Knackered means exhausted, as in ‘Kamal is knackered.’ (5m02s).

-Slagging off means an insult or attack, as in ‘Stop slagging off Kamal.’ (5m05s).

-Lad(s) & Cracking are meaning respectively man (men) & cool, as in ‘…and it’s about these two lads and they wear these cracking suits and they rock about just shooting people and eating cheeseburgers.’ (6m52s).

-Fella means guy or man, as in ‘Who owns the fella?’(7m02s).

-The expression ‘catch yourself on’ (4m39s) means ‘wise up’.

-Goer means a sexually active woman, as in ‘She’s a bit of a goer, is our Kathy, riding rings around him, so she was.’ (7m35s).

-The expression ‘I’m not a grass’ means ‘I’m not a betrayer’ (16m08s). Grassing in Northern Ireland means to give away information and has nothing to do with plants and/or marijuana.

-Less of (’the knickers’ at 1m20s), means enough of, as in ‘Less of the cheek’ (22m05s), when Erin is asked to stop confronting authorities.

-Grand means good or great, as in ‘Grand! I’ll meet you after school and you can beat me up!’ (8m48s).

Pragmatics

In Derry Girls, we can see the characters evolve with their close family, friends and at school. Mostly when they interact between friends, they are prone to use vocabulary that would not be acceptable in front of figures of authority.

The girls from Derry that we are following speak a very fast vernacular dialect and the humor lies a lot in the pragmatics, for example with the lack of relevance and the use of flouting maxims. Per example, it is said that there are no men’s bathroom in the all-girl school and Michelle’s cousin James is mentioning the fact that he must go all through the episode. To the affirmation ‘I’m desperate now. This is agony.’, she replies ‘Can you please stop crying in my face for five fucking minutes James?’. We surely need to know the context prior to this statement from Michelle. Again, at 5m25s, after Clare convinced Erin to sponsor her for a 24-hour fast to support a young African boy named Kamal and explaining the distances he must walk everyday, the convenience store clerk asks: ‘Who the fuck is Kamal?’. While mixing some of the information that were given about the boy, Orla replies ‘He’s a wee Ethiopian fella from Ballybofey, Dennis.’, which makes one very funny joke with the combination of situational context, irrelevancy and pronunciation.

References

Ander Beristain Murillo (2016), Varieties of English around the World I; On Northern Irish English:  A Phonological and Morphosyntactic Description, For the University of the Basque Country, taken from : https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8bfa/03abc7655e43a5aa4025c0cbddcd9a6af4a6.pdf

Dictionary of the Scots Language, taken from: https://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/wean

Scottish word of the week: Weans and Bairns, taken from: https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/books/scottish-word-of-the-week-weans-and-bairns-1-3220599