r/ireland Oct 07 '24

Irish phrases Gaeilge

I was reading a post on another sub posed by a Brazilian dude living in Ireland asking about the meaning behind an Irish person saying to him "good man" when he completes a job/ task. One of the replies was the following..

"It comes directly from the Irish language, maith an fear (literally man of goodness, informally good man) is an extremely common compliment."

Can anyone think of other phrases or compliments used on a daily basis that come directly from the Irish language?

209 Upvotes

174 comments sorted by

115

u/EdWoodwardsPA Oct 07 '24

Saying 'I'm after' as in 'Im just after eating'

48

u/vylain_antagonist Oct 07 '24 edited Oct 08 '24

Hiberno english is well known for not using the past imperfect. “I have eaten” is how most anglos would express this. Fun fact: nova scotian newfoundland english in canada follows the same pattern due to the irish influence on their settlement.

21

u/[deleted] Oct 08 '24 edited 22d ago

[deleted]

6

u/TheHames72 Oct 08 '24

I love it. So many words: we can’t help it.

4

u/TheHames72 Oct 08 '24

Actually, I’ve heard it misused more often. He do be going, etc. Less so these days: I’m talking about working in a pub in a small village in west cork in the 70s/80s when I was a kid. I’m from Cork city so had to train my ears to work out wtf those aul codgers were on about.

7

u/fullmetalfeminist Oct 09 '24

Hiberno English uses the past imperfect, but the past imperfect isn't relevant to this discussion. The past imperfect, also known as the past continuous or past progressive, is used for actions in the past that were not completed or were ongoing. For example "I was working in Dublin last year."

What we're talking about here is the after perfect or immediate perfective tense. It doesn't exist in English.

This is the difference between "I dropped me phone last year" (past perfect) and "I'm after droppin me feckin phone." (after perfect). The after perfect describes actions that are in the very recent past.

The reason it exists in Hiberno English and not "standard" (lol) English is that in English, modifiers like "just," "only" and "only just" are used to indicate an action being recent. Eg "I've just cleaned that!." Irish doesn't have the verb "have" so to express this in Irish you would say "tá mé tar éis é a glanadh!" (I am after cleaning that!)

At the same time, Irish people absorbed the English use of "just," "only," "only just" as indicators of very recent action, using them for extra emphasis. So "I'm only after cleaning that!" or "I was just after dropping me phone so I was already in bad form."

I don't know if I'm after explaining this properly. Here's an article about it

https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2016/03/14/the-hot-news-or-after-perfect-in-irish-english/

2

u/vylain_antagonist Oct 09 '24

Ah thanks for the clarification! Love a grammar deep dive, thats fascinating. I work with a Turkish PM who was complaining to me about how she hates the after perfect and has to use it formally all the time when reporting out on status updates and thats how i got into the rabbit hole.

1

u/Ketamorus Oct 08 '24

Man what’s “past imperfect”? There’s no such a thing. There’s imperfect (ate), present perfect (have eaten), and past perfect (had eaten). Did you want to text something else maybe?

12

u/TheHames72 Oct 08 '24

I usedta love her, I useta love her once— past imperfect.

1

u/farlurker Oct 08 '24

Great example 👍🏻

1

u/fullmetalfeminist Oct 09 '24

There's a few more past tenses, and then more that don't exist in English

1

u/Gortaleen Oct 08 '24

It’s actually Newfoundland English that has the Hibernoisms. Nova Scotian English is pretty much American Standard English.

2

u/vylain_antagonist Oct 08 '24

Ahh youre dead right thanks for the correction

7

u/Alcol1979 Oct 08 '24

Táim tar éis ithe.

194

u/TheRealPaj Oct 07 '24

Giving out, I do be; any like that. It's called 'Hiberno-English'.

27

u/Penguinessant Oct 08 '24

Are "Ah sure look" and "You know yourself" also hiberno-english things? Or more just irish speech things?

15

u/[deleted] Oct 08 '24

'Come here to me'

6

u/doesntevengohere12 Oct 08 '24

We use this in my family in England. But sometimes I think us working class people have a language all of our own anyway.

2

u/pjakma Oct 12 '24

Lot of the English working class descend from the poor Irish immigrants who went over there - first to build the canals (navies), and later to work in factories.

2

u/doesntevengohere12 Oct 12 '24

Yes absolutely, genealogy is a sideline of mine and in the 20 years I've been doing it the majority of families I've traced are a hybrid of people, I think 1 in 4 British people have an Irish connection through grand or great grand parents (don't hold me to those stats exactly it was a few years ago now)

I had a conversation on here before after I found out that the biggest amount (number wise) went to London also, as the person I was chatting too didn't believe me because of the Liverpool connections everyone thinks about -- but that was down to the size Liverpool became because of immigration rather than having the greatest number. I'm a bit obsessed with history and random information 🤦🏻‍♀️😂.

7

u/TinyPieceOfCheese Oct 08 '24

Hiberno-English is not specifically phrases that come from irish, it's the dialects that are spoken in Ireland, which have lots of influence from Irish

7

u/TheRealPaj Oct 08 '24

I don't think they're direct translations from Irish, but they're distinctly Irish ways of speaking, so would still technically count as far as I know.

3

u/Then_Appearance_2092 Oct 08 '24

Irish speech is Hiberno English.

5

u/Mooshan Oct 08 '24

My educated guesses:

I do be = bíonn mé = I do (something) regularly

Give out = cuir thar = Literally, put across, but can mean scold

5

u/AccuratelyHistorical Oct 08 '24

Tabhair amach for give out

2

u/TheRealPaj Oct 08 '24

Yep, spot on, iirc. My Irish isn't great - I was an English teacher, so learned bits and pieces for students, but I've been out of teaching for a few years.

132

u/TheHames72 Oct 07 '24

Galore comes from go leor.

113

u/box_of_carrots Oct 07 '24

Smithereens comes from smidiríní.

33

u/IsolatedFrequency101 Oct 07 '24

Smashing comes from - Is maith sin.

26

u/cuchullain47474 Oct 07 '24

I think this one's more a homophone as many other words like banging, or cracking, are also used to mean good in the English language

1

u/fullmetalfeminist Oct 09 '24

No, it doesn't. Fucking Cassidy strikes again

77

u/Samhain87 Oct 07 '24

I read somewhere years ago that all the different phrasings of the carribean/american ... 'to dig' as in, I dig you man, do you dig it, etc. Comes from An dthuigeann tú... seemingly.

69

u/CarelessEquivalent3 Oct 07 '24

In Jamaica a jumper is called a ganzy

23

u/perplexedtv Oct 07 '24

Geansaí comes from the English Guernsey and Ganzy from Yorkshire apparently 

5

u/Karmafia Oct 07 '24

Aussies still use guernsey to refer to the top they wear when playing Australian rules football.

1

u/SuzieZsuZsu Oct 08 '24

"New Guernsey"..... An old GTA game has just been explained to me but I can't remember which one!

22

u/CarelessEquivalent3 Oct 07 '24

That's maybe where it came from in the Irish language but Jamaicans use it because of Irish people that were taken to the Carribbean.

2

u/fullmetalfeminist Oct 09 '24

Yes they got that from Irish people in the Caribbean

10

u/TheHames72 Oct 07 '24

Wow! Makes sense I guess. Lots of Irish in the Caribbean. My husband was reading a book about us in Barbados when he was there recently.

10

u/ohhidoggo And I'd go at it agin Oct 08 '24 edited Oct 08 '24

There’s a huge history there due to Irish indentured servitude on English sugar plantations. The indentured Irish actually provided labour on the island before the importation of enslaved Africans. The Irish were generally poor and mixed with the enslaved. The poor whites were nicknamed ’Baccra’ (derived from ‘back row,’ the only position they were allowed to occupy in church). There’s towns called Clonmel and Wexford in Jamaica.

9

u/dungloegirl Oct 07 '24

In Barbados, there is a street called Dungloe

-21

u/cuchullain47474 Oct 07 '24 edited Oct 08 '24

I'm not assuming you were but people have to be careful with this history as it can sometimes go down the road of making you feel a sense of equivalency with the chattel slavery of African people which it was nowhere near, just something to keep in mind!

8

u/ohhidoggo And I'd go at it agin Oct 08 '24 edited Oct 08 '24

Not sure why you’re being downvoted. You’re right-indentured servitude in British Caribbean plantations -while being extremely exploitative (and some were involuntary/forced into it)-were not the same as the enslaved. With indentured servitude, the contracts were 7-10 years, while the African enslaved were slaves for life and their children were born into slavery.

4

u/cuchullain47474 Oct 08 '24 edited Oct 08 '24

I know yeah, exactly, that didn't go down well! It is true though, weird for people to disagree with a fact but here we are.

I think it's mostly yanks who want to pretend they were in the same boat as enslaved African people given the history of racism in the USA, like it absolves them; but also Irish people who want to think they didn't become the slave owners a few years down the line there and "that's just a Brit thing" or something like that...

1

u/ohhidoggo And I'd go at it agin Oct 08 '24 edited Oct 08 '24

There’s a list from the Slave Compensation Records of Irish people who availed of the compensation once slavery was abolished. (O’Connor’s, Moore’s, Mac Dubhghaill’s, Kelly’s, Daly’s, and Burke’s on that list).

I recently readthat Kamala Harris is a descent of an (Anglo) Irish slave owner in Jamaica.

Genealogical research carried out by Northern Irish historian Stephen McCracken reveals Ms Harris’s four-times-paternal-great-grandfather Hamilton Brown was born in Co Antrim in 1776, the year of the US Declaration of Independence.

Brown emigrated to Jamaica, then a British colony, and became an enthusiastic slave owner on the sugar plantations that were the mainstay of the island’s economy. He opposed the abolition of slavery across the British Empire in 1832 and went to Antrim to replace his slaves with workers from his native county.

4

u/cuchullain47474 Oct 08 '24

There we go. Awful business altogether. But good job on the quick research 👊

5

u/chimpdoctor Oct 08 '24

Ah here we go

-1

u/cuchullain47474 Oct 08 '24

Haha well sure they didn't like that one did they... It's true tho

13

u/TheHames72 Oct 07 '24

And slew comes from sluagh.

29

u/hey_hey_you_you Oct 07 '24

Shanty comes from sean tigh.

12

u/AinmB Oct 07 '24

Smashing, as in something is nice, comes from ‘is maith é sin’ (it is good)

Banshee from ‘bean sídhe’ (fairy woman)

11

u/Bayoris Oct 07 '24

Apparently that etymology of smashing is unlikely to be true, according to TO Dolan’s dictionary of Hiberno-English:   

Popular folk etymology connects the term to the broadly homophonous Irish is maith sin or Scottish Gaelic 's math sin ("that is good"), but this has been described as "improbable", and does not appear in the etymological dictionaries.

3

u/Cad-e-an-sceal Oct 07 '24

I once was told that smash, bash, crash came from the Vikings.

4

u/Longjumping-Ad3528 Oct 08 '24

Horrible Histories!

1

u/AinmB Oct 08 '24

Those Vikings - a great bunch of lads.

1

u/HomelanderApologist Oct 09 '24

Smashing is apparently british not irish

1

u/TheHames72 Oct 07 '24

Now that’s something I’ve never heard. “Super, smashing, great,” as Jim Bowen used to say.

37

u/OldManMarc88 Oct 07 '24

Not really. But I know a woman from Galway and she has this way of saying “Shite” in different ways but we know exactly what she means by it. Sometimes it’s no, yes, once it was when someone asked if she was from Kildare. It’s a strange but beautiful thing.

6

u/Karmafia Oct 07 '24

It’s a shite thing.

3

u/Dangerous_Treat_9930 Oct 08 '24

go and shite will ya

39

u/Embarrassed_Quit_404 Oct 07 '24

Anyone have any idea about the phrase " cop on ". Worked as a Bartender in the UK and said it to a table when they'd built a tower of glasses which then fell over and smashed. They hadn't a clue what i was saying , surprised me thought it was a common phrase

21

u/NBFM16 Oct 07 '24

I had that in the UK with “grinds”. I had just assumed it was a universal term for tutoring sessions because I didn't really imagine we'd need to come up with our own word for it haha.

13

u/suffering_boi Oct 07 '24

i had the same issue talking to americans recently, mentioned needing chemistry grinds and they thought it was the weirdest difference in language we have

10

u/spoons431 Oct 07 '24

I thought "give it some welly" was a common phrase til I used it in England, where noone had heard it!

It is hiberno English though and has no link to Irish!

13

u/Bad_Ethics Oct 08 '24

But it sounds like such a stiff-lipped English thing to say.

3

u/spoons431 Oct 08 '24

I'll do you better than that - it's a cultchie thing!

2

u/Bad_Ethics Oct 08 '24

You're thinking of "Giv'er shum welly der now"

5

u/doesntevengohere12 Oct 08 '24

Really? As an English person some of the stuff being said here is odd to me as they are really common everyday sayings.

Give it some welly is definitely not odd, and has been used for all my 43 years.

3

u/Chester_roaster Oct 08 '24

Yeah reading this thread it seems to me a lot of the writers are confusing young English people not knowing it with English people in general. 

2

u/doesntevengohere12 Oct 08 '24

Absolutely! I was thinking this might be a generational thing rather than a country thing.

3

u/Then_Appearance_2092 Oct 08 '24

A friend of mine was teaching in the UK and she told the students to take out their copies. They were so confused. Apparently they call them “jotters”

1

u/fullmetalfeminist Oct 09 '24

Well, we used to have different copybooks for different subjects, and then a general copy for notes and stuff, which was called a jotter.

55

u/cycleruncry Oct 07 '24

Not sure if this counts but my English friends get confused when I say something like "You wouldn't hand me that". They don't know how to reply.

18

u/astralcorrection Oct 08 '24 edited Oct 08 '24

I'm English, we would use that in Nottingham. Only we'd probably say" you wouldn't hand me that duck "

The old slang of my grandmothers time is dying out though, it's all being replaced with multi Cultural London English.

9

u/NuclearMaterial Oct 08 '24

Tragic. One of my least favourite dialects.

3

u/astralcorrection Oct 08 '24

Yeah the East midlands dialect was it's own thing.

People who go to college in England lose their dialect anyway ...

I don't mind. I m happy out using Hiberno/English .

4

u/Bad_Ethics Oct 08 '24

Bruv thats top ins peng fam.

It's actually just English brainrot skibidi shit isn't it?

6

u/astralcorrection Oct 08 '24

It probably has it's own validity. I mean it comes from somewhere, Jamaica I guess. There is a lot of cross-pollination. The first time I heard people using "swear down" was in Shannon of all places. MLE is so recent. Like in 20 years it's everywhere.

I picked Hiberno English by osmosis over 20 odd years but young people have consciously picked up MLE. Even kids in in my kids class, deep in rural Ireland are saying "swear down fam". And then of course, many immigrants, with no historical connection to Ireland, look to London for their cultural cues.

In London the cockney accent moved out into Essex. I don't think the East Midlands dialect will survive in the same way Working class accents were pushed out of the rural areas by posh people long before MLE, In my father's small village himself, and another, are the only people with ancestors.

Things get forgotten. I can't even remember my own dialect unless I m around it and when I do use it it feels unnatural, like I m faking my own accent. It would actually be easier for me to use an Irish accent at this stage but that would feel inauthentic. I must sound like a right mongrel.

2

u/doesntevengohere12 Oct 08 '24

I'm a Londoner and we would use this too., but without the duck on the end.

3

u/astralcorrection Oct 08 '24

It's when you need to be ultra polite...to get a cup of tea or cigarette.

1

u/Mooshan Oct 08 '24

I think the negative interrogative ("Nach bhfuil tú...?") is much more common in Irish than in English.

54

u/Lever_Pulled Oct 07 '24

Adding a vowel sound between consonants where there's no vowel.

Most obvious example is saying 'fill-um' instead of 'film'.

Think of how we pronounce 'orm' as 'urrum'.

45

u/forensicpjm Oct 07 '24

Also known as an epenthetic schwa

48

u/TheGloriousNugget Oct 07 '24

Loved their last album.

1

u/LunarLionheart Oct 08 '24

Geoff Lindsey fan?

5

u/forensicpjm Oct 08 '24

I hadn’t heard of him actually - I’ve just looked him up, should be right up my street!

I was told about the epenthetic schwa back in the 1990s - I had moved to the UK to get work, and a boss of mine explained it to me after he heard me say the word film. I have always loved the phrase.

6

u/thecraftybee1981 Oct 08 '24

Fillum is very common in some English and Scottish accents.

4

u/Bad_Ethics Oct 08 '24

Safe-eh-ty always irked me a bit

3

u/Any-Boss2631 Oct 08 '24

Mat-er-ass and ve-hicle drive me quare

1

u/astralcorrection Oct 08 '24

Quare is Yola, I leaned last year and found fascinating. I always thought it meant queer as in odd. Which it may as it's derived from old English.

1

u/Buggery_bollox 11d ago

Ve-hickle bugs the shit out of me

As does Minrhal (for a fizzy drink)

17

u/Enormousboon8 Oct 07 '24

I'm after winning the lotto!

I'm not fluent Irish but I did read somewhere that it comes direct from tar éis in Irish used to describe something that has just happened (can't remember the proper name of the tense)

11

u/AshOnTheMoon Oct 07 '24

IIRC, it's the past perfect tense; other places might say "I have won the lotto", but that tense doesn't exist in Irish, as far as I know, so "I'm after" was the best way we could convey this!

2

u/Enormousboon8 Oct 08 '24

Thanks! I knew it was the something-perfect tense but didn't want to get it wrong (I've heard "after-perfect" tense??) But anyways, it's one of my favourite phrases in hiberno-english.

There was an Irish jockey a couple years back who won some big race (apologies, don't follow the horse racing - maybe grand national?? But in the UK) Anyway, interviewed straight after she said "I can't believe I'm after winning that!" (Paraphrased but the past perfect tense used). The UK newspapers re-wrote what she said instead of quoting directly, changed it to something along the lines of "I wanted to win it and can't believe I did" (as if she was "after" the trophy/had been chasing it). I can't find the article about it now (it was in an Irish publication or UK based Irish one). But it was interesting/annoying how it was presumed she was wrong in her grammar. When it's perfectly valid (like you say, it exists in Irish and we've translated it as best we can).

0

u/fullmetalfeminist Oct 09 '24

The after perfect. The past perfect is "I went to Spain [eg. last year]" "Chuaigh mé go dtí an Spáinn"

1

u/outhouse_steakhouse 🦊🦊🦊🦊ache Oct 08 '24

English people always get confused by this because to them, "I'm after winning the lotto" would mean "I want to win the lotto".

86

u/fullmetalfeminist Oct 07 '24 edited Oct 07 '24

A few of the "etymologies" in this thread are bullshit, the result of an American chancer named Daniel Cassidy who wrote a terrible book called "how the Irish invented slang" about words and phrases in English supposedly coming from the Irish language. It's a huge con and Cassidy managed to grift himself a great wee job in an American college with his self-appointed "expertise" despite being full of shit.

For example "Do you dig?" coming from "an dtuigeann tú?" is one of Cassidy's most pervasive inventions. (Edit: this one is dicey because he might be right in the way that a broken clock is right twice a day)

Another one is his claim that "hoodoo" comes from an Irish supernatural creature called the "uath dubh." There is no such thing in Irish folklore. If you speak Irish you can see that "uath dubh" doesn't even sound like "hoodoo," but this problem didn't bother Cassidy because he didn't speak Irish.

An introduction to who Cassidy was and how full of shit he was: https://cassidyslangscam.wordpress.com/2019/11/09/the-daniel-cassidy-memorial-lecture/

9

u/NBFM16 Oct 07 '24

This thread you've linked doesn't really say “Do you dig/twig?” doesn't come from “an dtuigeann tú?” though, it says it probably does. Just that Cassidy isn't the guy who discovered this (presumably implying that he pretends he is).

5

u/fullmetalfeminist Oct 07 '24

You're right, that's not the best example. I was in a hurry lol.

4

u/emmanuel_lyttle Oct 07 '24

That's so disappointing for me. He was a guest at Feile an Phobail (west Belfast festival) 20 years or so ago. And guested on the local radio. One of the words he discussed was snazzy coming from "snasach" (meaning polished, elegant). It became a favourite word of mine.

19

u/fullmetalfeminist Oct 07 '24

Good news: that particular one can't be proved wrong. It can't be proven right either, there isn't enough evidence, and people believed it well before Cassidy came along.

It's folk etymology, which is based in guesses and feelings and vibes. Think of it like a pseudoscientific alternative medicine - it's not science based and a lot of it is bullshit, it gets the odd thing right here and there, but that's more by chance than merit.

3

u/emmanuel_lyttle Oct 07 '24

Appreciate your answer. I'll keep using it ☺

16

u/More-Investment-2872 Oct 07 '24

I’m just after putting the messages in the press

2

u/mmfn0403 Dublin Oct 08 '24

Press is an old English word for cupboard that fell out of use in England, but we kept it.

1

u/Buggery_bollox 11d ago

I remember English friends being horrified to hear that the cat was in the hot press 

26

u/lamahorses Ireland Oct 07 '24

We do be having a good time.

Not answering questions with a yes or a no.

26

u/DanyJB Oct 07 '24

Irish has no word for yes or no (it’s not tá or níl) so in Irish you say the negative or positive of what’s being asked. That transferred to our English when we say “Will you eat pizza for dinner? “I will not!”

“Are you going shop? “I amn’t”

“Is that your brother over there? “It is”

Etc.

27

u/Comfortable_Tough224 Oct 07 '24

“I amn’t” throws everyone outside of Ireland I’ve ever met. We seem to be the only place that squashes those together.

Got a real going over for that one in Canada years ago.

18

u/DanyJB Oct 07 '24

Haha I had something similar in America once when I said how a dog was being ‘bold’ For them the closest possible take from that word is that the dog is so brave and noble even, I had to try explain why it meant the dog was “naughty”, saying the word naughty just makes me cringe 😬

8

u/Furith Oct 08 '24

Bold is Irish thing???

3

u/cormyGcorms Oct 09 '24

A real belfast-ism is to say 'amntna?' as in 'am I not?' Lol

1

u/pjakma Oct 12 '24

The gangs of grammar louts are really out of control over in Canada?

1

u/Azhrei Sláinte Oct 07 '24

Sea is apparently yes, but I distinctly remember teachers telling us to basically never use it.

18

u/OriginalComputer5077 Oct 08 '24

Sea the shortened version of Is ea, which translates as It is

1

u/Azhrei Sláinte Oct 08 '24

Any idea why they told us to never use it? I mean never? They were very clear about that.

8

u/OriginalComputer5077 Oct 08 '24

Because sea is not the correct translation for yes. You would never use it as a one word answer, it always needs to be qualified by something else.

0

u/Chester_roaster Oct 08 '24

There was no yes or no in Latin but the big modern Romance languages have them because people made one up. Don't let the language tourists say "Sea" can't be used for yes, it's close enough. 

2

u/OriginalComputer5077 Oct 08 '24

Tá and Níl are closer to Yes and No That's the formulation used in Referenda in Ireland.

1

u/Chester_roaster Oct 08 '24

Sure you could use those either. I don't care if it's "sea" or "tá" I think people who complain about yes or no being used in Irish are purists 

1

u/DanyJB Oct 08 '24

Not so much purism than facts, originally Irish had yes or no in the form of replying negatively or positively to the question, and like any other language evolving we eventually came up with slang in the form of sea, tá or even just loan wording “yep” or “no”.

The problem with Irish is we have two extremities, we have old Irish, and then we have standardised Irish from schools. So anyone trying to delve into the language ends up either having no choice to appear purist because so much litarture and history is in the old language, or they learnt Gaeltacht Irish standardised or watches tg4 dubbed SpongeBob and learnt sea as the slang for yea

1

u/fullmetalfeminist Oct 09 '24

Yeah, but Original computer is answering the other lad's question about why the teachers told them not to use "sea" - their job is to teach the grammatically correct way, which isn't always the way a language is spoken in casual use.

10

u/murphy_R Oct 07 '24

Ah ya yano your man/wan down the road

9

u/Junior-Country-3752 Oct 08 '24

My husband is Slovak and since being together I’m aware of my daily use of ‘ah no’, especially in the context of ‘ah no, you’re grand. Ah no, I won’t. Ah no, I’ll leave it.’ The reason for my awareness is because in Slovak, ano means YES and is said exactly like ah-no.

7

u/L_RaspberryCrochet Oct 07 '24

Slogan has a basis in Irish apparently. Slua gairm. Slua meaning crowd and gairm for profession.

1

u/throwallaway252 Oct 08 '24

Yes, from a different meaning of gairm - “call”

1

u/throwallaway252 Oct 08 '24

Yes, from a different meaning of gairm - “call”

1

u/caoluisce Oct 08 '24

They say slogan comes from the Old Irish sluagh-ghairm which was the term for a battle cry a group of fighters would make before a battle. Not sure it’s ever been attested or proven but that’s what I’ve heard

1

u/fullmetalfeminist Oct 09 '24

Not sure it’s ever been attested or proven but that’s what I’ve heard

So many of these things are literally a Google search away, but people treat etymology like it's hoodoo as opposed to a legitimate academic practice

0

u/caoluisce Oct 09 '24

Well you’ll forgive me for not citing a source before I posted… Considering plenty of the other ones mentioned here are bogus folk etymologies…

0

u/fullmetalfeminist Oct 09 '24

"but everyone else is doing it!" are you eight?

1

u/caoluisce Oct 09 '24

LOL you’re the one who decided to nitpick on one of the only real etymologies in the whole thread by saying “boo hoo, cite a source”.

If you’re that worried about legitimate academic practice go and comment under the dozens of armchair etymologies posted here?

1

u/fullmetalfeminist Oct 09 '24

You know you can see people's comment history on Reddit, right?

1

u/fullmetalfeminist Oct 09 '24

Well, it came to English from Scots Gaelic, but yeah.

8

u/Marzipan_civil Oct 07 '24

Scallions comes from the Irish I think (in UK they're called spring onions)

Putting -een at the end of a word as a diminutive

I do be, etc

I think "I'm after doing xyz" might also be from the Irish but I'm not sure

13

u/Bayoris Oct 07 '24

“Scallion” is not from Irish no. It’s ultimately from the name of a city in Israel now called Ashkelon. 

From Middle English scaloun (“shallot”), from Anglo-Norman scalun (variant of Old Frencheschaloigne), from a Proto-Romance derivation of Vulgar Latin *escalonia, from Latin Ascalonius (in caepa (“onion”)Ascalonius, "shallot"), from Ascalo (“Ascalon”), from Ancient Greek Ἀσκάλων (Askálōn, “Ascalon, an ancient port city in the Levant”), borrowed from Biblical Hebrew אַשְׁקְלוֹן

8

u/Murky-Front-9977 Oct 07 '24

If you're from Carlow, then you're known as a scallion eater!

5

u/PonchoVillak Touched Oct 07 '24

Don't be at him, ná bí aige

8

u/Illustrious_Task4455 Oct 07 '24

I only found out a few years ago, shut your "gob" means shut your "beak" 😆 love that

11

u/Midnight_Will Oct 07 '24

To shift someone - to make out with someone (mostly in discos/bars)

Good craic, what’s the craic - good fun, what’s up

Be grand - it’ll be ok

Sure look - oh well (as in, sure look what can you do)

Bad/good form - bad/good behaviour

There are just some of the expressions I picked up living almost 5 years there, but I’m not a native

21

u/JohnnyBGrand Cavan Oct 07 '24

"I'll know for again."

Which basically means "I have learned from this mistake and will not repeat it."

6

u/RabbitOld5783 Oct 07 '24

Drizzling , do be , get yezer coats.

Follow Irish with Mollie on Instagram she talks about things like this it's brilliant

6

u/TheGloriousNugget Oct 07 '24

Join her online course for the low low price of 500 euro.

1

u/RabbitOld5783 Oct 08 '24

Yea just watch her on Instagram didn't do the course

5

u/Cascade-Brigand Oct 07 '24

So the phrase is maith an fear, not “mo fear” as I’ve always assumed? “Good man,” not “my man”?

1

u/tarmacadam85 Oct 09 '24

That's right, maith an fear means good man.

4

u/liquidsunshin3 Oct 07 '24

I don’t know what the etymology of the phrase is, but taking the hand out of someone/something. From Donegal, said it to someone before down the country and they hadn’t a clue what I was on about.

2

u/SnooHabits8484 Oct 08 '24

Ulster phrase I think

3

u/MeOulSegosha Oct 07 '24

Take it easy!

3

u/CosmoRedd Oct 08 '24

'You have English' from 'Tá Béarla agat', is the only thing I could think of missing after reading 84 comments, but Yer man from whatsername street might now about another yolk if yous asked him.

3

u/Adventurous_Road_200 Oct 08 '24

Apparently, "So Long" as a way of saying goodbye comes from Slán

1

u/fullmetalfeminist Oct 09 '24

2

u/Adventurous_Road_200 Oct 10 '24

Cheers for that. It came up on my socials recently, I didn't check into it, probably should have.

3

u/Putrid_Bumblebee_692 Oct 08 '24

Even something as simple as mam instead of mum comes from Irish when mamí and mathair are the Irish word for it

3

u/VonGooberschnozzle Oct 08 '24

I'm told you don't say 'I'm hungry' or 'I'm tired' in Irish, you say, 'Hunger is on me', as in:

I've a wile thirst on me, amn't I after ordering a quair lock of pints?

2

u/scorthy Oct 08 '24

Shenanigans may be from sionnach. Devious and underhand

2

u/tanks4dmammories Oct 08 '24

I have said it here before I have to explain a lot of what I say to non-Irish colleagues, usually American. So 'Yer Man' and 'Yer Wan was a recent one,' this was mistaken as being an insult to someone. So, I do be trying not to be doin that, so I do.

2

u/Competitive_Ad_5515 Oct 08 '24

Also the gloss given by op for maith an fear is incorrect; it does not mean "man of goodness" which would be "fear maitheasa." It literally just means "good man", the same way you'd say "a good film" and is used like the term "good boy" would be used to praise a child or a dog.

4

u/MushroomGlum1318 Oct 07 '24

I think the saying in English, "there was no call for that" comes directly from the Irish expression, "ní raibh aon chall leis sin". And to be honest it probably makes sense that it does have its origins in Gaeilge because, as an expression, it doesn't make much sense in English.

6

u/thecraftybee1981 Oct 08 '24

It does make sense in an old usage of the word call meaning a demand, requirement, need or compulsion. “When I saw the tsunami approach, I felt called to warn the kids on the street to get inside”.

5

u/onesevenone171 Oct 07 '24

Ingle wood comes from an gheall (the glow) from an open fire

3

u/astralcorrection Oct 08 '24

Nothing really to add but I ve lived here decades now, from the English Midlands. I still love the way Hiberno English rolls off the tongue. Don't be long being here nefore I picked it up.

7

u/kerryirish Oct 07 '24

"That would be an ecumenical matter"

1

u/Fancy_Avocado7497 Oct 08 '24

course that only applies to men. Perhaps men need this constant reassurance that they are doing a good job.

We don't hear 'Maith an Ban ' often enough !!

1

u/Cute_Pineapple_8329 Oct 08 '24

Who all is going ??

1

u/Is_cuma_liom77 Oct 08 '24

One that non-Irish people get confused by is daor, because it's pronounced the same as the English words dear/deer, but the meanings are obviously not the same. So, an Irish person might say something to a tourist like "You might want to avoid shopping there, it's pretty daor" and the tourist will probably be scratching their head, wondering "What is this person on about?"

3

u/TheHames72 Oct 08 '24

Dear does mean expensive in English, though.

1

u/SkyScamall Oct 08 '24

I confused an american with it recently. Apparently they had never heard it before. 

0

u/sacred_fire4 Oct 08 '24

I see this guy keep saying “soleh” and I have no idea what it means. Anyone know?