With an 18 month old in the house our celebrations of the appropriate use of a word has rocketed. A 'pease' and a 'tank-oo' make the provider function of parenthood bearable; while any parroted sound brings delight all round.
I love that Miss O has developed her own 'word' to name anything for which the proper noun escapes or alludes her: "Te-pie." I've no idea of its root or origin but she's following in the great Irish tradition of the likes of the the word "Yoke" or "Yokeybuzzer" as it's often embellished by The Beloved.
Last month The Guardian newspaper invited leading writers to talk about the words they cherish. Eimear McBride chose "yoke'. I'll let her explain:
" Yoke is a great word so I think I’ll claim it for the west of
Ireland, although that may not be completely true. Rather than a wooden
bar used to hitch two, or more, oxen together for the purposes of
pulling a load or vehicle, the Irish yoke is a term of
indeterminate identification applicable to any and all objects or
people, which means it means “thing”, as in “Gimme that yoke, would ya?”
or “Leave your bike, we’ll take my yoke instead” or “What’s that weird
looking yoke on your chest?” Its showier cousins yokeymabob, yokeymajig and yokeybus can be applied in much the same fashion."
Other wonderfully rich words such as : nesh, gloaming, thrawn, whiffle-whaffle and widdershins, all get the author treatment in the deliciously titled "From plitter to drabbletail: the words we love" article. Some are dying words, ceasing to color our everyday chatter just as the aging characters who use them fade from sight.
Others are bound by cultural topography which confines their usability. One of the great challenges of moving to the US, and one of the great reliefs brought by the presence of fellow Ulster-folk, is being understood. It would appear we Northern Irish have quite the turn of phrase.
Nick Laird from Co Tyrone highlights our quirky colloquialisms:
"If you’re from elsewhere (in my case, County Tyrone) and move to the
south of England (as I did, to attend university), you might be
surprised to find – like Molière’s Monsieur Jourdain, who learns he has
been speaking prose his whole life – that what you talk is actually
“dialect”. It is an alienating process – certain locutions and words
that you’d always spoken naturally suddenly involve a sense of
performance, a self-consciousness, and either you choose to use them,
and become “characterful” to the English listener, like one of
Shakespeare’s comic turns, or you trim your spoken language accordingly
and revert to your first speech only with family and school friends.
One problem is “standard” English is dull in comparison: the Ulster dialect is very good at certain things; drunkenness (stocious, half-tore, half-cut, blootered, lashed), violence and threat (a leathering, a lacing, an oilin, shut your bake, keep your neb out), landscape (gullion, clabber, sheugh), insults (gype, mingin, cipher), insects (clegs, midges, moolies) … Off the top of my head, the words I’m saddest to lose from the tip of my tongue are thrawn (stubborn), thole (bear, put up with), fornenst (opposite), lock (some), cowp (tip over), foreby (besides, as well as), hoke (to rummage), scundered (fed up, disgusted), bap (head), boke (vomit) and hardy (tough,
able)... The word I use subconsciously all the time (as
does most of Ulster, and Scotland), and which the English call dialect,
is not quite a word but more an interjection halfway between language
and breath: och (from the Gaelic ochanaigh – sighing). It signifies anything from frustration to anger to grief. With that kind of range you can see why it’s handy."
I think this week as we head into the July 4th weekend celebrations of our adopted home, I shall honor my first (and always) home by hoking about for all the stickin out words that only my oul muckers will understand! Apologies in advance my American friends!
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