Irish people make up a small portion of the 1.35 billion English speakers worldwide.
Yet like most of those who speak it as a first language, we have our own unique way of speaking it.
As we all know, English wasn’t supposed to be the language we predominantly spoke in our day-to-day lives, with Irish becoming a secondary language learned in school for the vast majority of our modern population. Yet even in the English we speak, we’ve carried over some linguistic rules from our native tongue.
Over time, Irish people have learned to speak English in a uniquely Irish way. And just as the Irish language is spoken differently in various parts of the country, so too is Hiberno-English.
Read more: Fascinating snapshots of Dublin life in the 1970s
Take, for example, our use of a plural ‘you’: where Irish has ‘sibh’, ‘you’ stays the same for both singular and plural use in English. We wanted to be able to differentiate between the two the way we did in our native language, so Hiberno-English versions of a plural ‘you’ became part of our everyday vocabulary.
For much of the country, this comes in the form of “ye” (pronounced “yee”). Yet for Dubs, there’s a couple to choose from: “yous”/“youse”, “yiz” and even “yizzer” for a plural possessive ‘your’.
There are plenty of words, phrases and pronunciations that might not make sense to anyone but those who grew up in Dublin. If you were raised listening to thick Dub accents, these make perfect sense to you - no matter who says they're wrong.
We put together a list of common pronunciations that would be considered grammatically incorrect to most English speakers, but are music to the ears of anyone who grew up in Dublin. Whether these were said by nannies and grandas, parents, neighbours or pals, or whether we still say them ourselves, this is the language Dubs were raised with.
And if you ask us, it only adds to our charm. Take a read below and see which ones you heard the most.
There’s a difference between the I in Italy and Italian
You can go on holiday to “Ih-ta-ly”, but the people from there are “Eye-tallyen”.
Double Os are emphasised
Too many cewks spoil the broth.
December with a Z
De-sem-ber? Never heard of her. ‘Round these parts, Santy comes to visit at the end of Dezember.
The phantom D that appears next to R
It’s not a hard D, just a very soft sound that somehow manifests itself in certain D-less words containing R. For example, “Shar’dn went to the chipper and got cur’dy chips”.
The phantom R that appears next to D
Apparently the letters R and D are inseparable to Dubs, because a random R sound sometimes appears alongside a D even when there actually is none. For example, “a hunderd” instead of “a hundred” and “afreard” instead of “afraid”.
SPs are complicated
Hostible, hopstible, hopsitle or hosbidul? Either way you’ll forget how “hospital” is actually pronounced if you think about it too much. And don’t confuse us when it comes to a “package of crips”...
Lorry with a U
He’s not a lorry driver, he’s a lurry driver.
Some one-syllable words actually take two syllables
You go to the cinema to see a fill-um. People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stow-wins.
T can become D, or just dropped entirely
Dis, dat, deese and dose. Are we righ’ or wha’?
B can substitute for P
As in, you put on “yer byjamas” before bed. Or your ma got you to peel “de bid-ay’oes” for Sunday dinner.
Espresso with an X
You drink it fast, so it’s an Expresso coffee, obviously.
“Us” = us or me, while “me” = me or my
As in, “Me and John are goin’ the cinema, come with us” vs. “Pass us me jacket, it’s freezin’ out”.
The J-sounding D
Who has time to enunciate “do you” or “did you”? Plenty of English speakers in a variety of countries shorten these phrases to “d’you”.
But because “you” sounds more like “yeh” in a thick Dublin accent, “d’you” has its own unique sound here: “jeh”. E.g: “Jeh see de’stay’eh’de roads after the weather last night?”
Shortened anything, something and nothing
Someone might ask you if you want “an’in” from the shop, and you’ll tell them if you want “suh’im” or “nuh’in”.
Additional letters
It’s like a game of Countdown: you can never have too many consonants. Take, for example, the T or D at the end of some Dubs’ bananas (“bananits”/“bananids”), the R added to the Windy City (“Chicargo”) or more recently, the extra N added to the Omicron Covid variant (“Om-nee-cron”).
Word swap
Similar-sounding words are often mistaken and substituted for each other. Like the “Specific Ocean” and “pacifically asking”. Or “should have”/“would have” being abbreviated to “should of”/“would of”. Or “for all intensive purposes” instead of “for all intents and purposes”. Or “tender hooks” instead of “tenterhooks”... you get the idea.
Are we missing any? Let us know in the comments what other words and sounds you either mispronounced or heard others mispronounce whilst growing up in Dublin.
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