https://www.expatify.com/ireland/english-in-ireland-irish-accents-and-slang.html Travel & Expat Lifestyle Magazine Thu, 22 Nov 2018 18:07:29 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.9.9 https://www.expatify.com/ireland/english-in-ireland-irish-accents-and-slang.html/comment-page-1#comment-8371 Fri, 25 Mar 2011 13:43:40 +0000 https://www.expatify.com/?p=2625#comment-8371 “The Pale” refers to an area surrounded by a defensive wooden palisade (aka “pale”) in which colonisers lived, cf any wild west fort. So the term refers to a place not a people. The (main) Pale was basically the greater Dublin area but there was another further south, in County Wexford.
The ethnic Irish resisted the imposition of English until the mid-19th century, when the Famine convinced them emigration was the only way to survive.
The middle class would be “scarlet” to be told they speak with a “knacker” accent – “knacker”, a violently abusive term for Traveller, basically means “the lowest of the low”.
“Inner city” , also known as “flat Dublin”, is a less judgemental term for working class dialect. Upper middleclass Dublinese is known as a “Dort accent” (from the Dart, local train that serves well-to-do suburbs).
Bleedin’ deadly!

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