The vet was American, which made a nice change. I’m rubbish at accents. I can hardly understand Irish people, let alone anyone else. I think I’ve spent more time saying ‘pardon?’ here than I have saying anything else. And don’t think just because we speak the same language that we speak the same language, if you see what I mean. For example, there’s a place round by the airport called Baroimhe. Now we’ve been referring to this place as ‘ba-roy-ma-hee’ as it sort of seemed right. Recently though, one of Hubby’s colleagues (barely suppressing his silly grin) informed us that the word is pronounced ‘ba-ree-va’. Go figure eh? Another puzzling term is a ‘yoke’. Yoke seems to mean anything, as in ‘pass me that yoke would you?’, rough translation being a thingy or whotnot, but it can even stretch to ‘his yoke’ as in his girlfriend. Mostly though, when referring to someone’s partner the term seems to be ‘yer man’, or ‘yer wan’ even if it’s a woman. Although sometimes ‘yer wan’ seems to be when you refer to your child. With me so far? Ah, yes, but then ‘yer man’ can also refer to any number of people, even those you don’t know, for example: ‘yer man in the bank told me about it’. One of hubby’s colleagues said to him that he’d heard from his mate, my dentist, that I’d been ‘giving out’ about a night out we’d been on. I immediately worried that I’d said too much, but then realised I didn’t know anyone so hadn’t said anything and had to ask hubby if I’d upset someone. Apparently not - ‘giving out’ just means talking, whereas I’d taken it to mean ‘giving it large’ which is completely different, in a Jamie Oliver ‘cor blimey’ kind of way. Another favourite of mine is ‘I’m after getting me one of those’ instead of I’d like to get one of those. Confusing I’m sure you’ll agree. I’m heartened though that when I talk to people in shops, they look at me as if I’ve just asked them for one of their ribs, so they obviously can’t understand me either. The lady in the vet actually laughed because I said ‘gosh’. Apparently she’d never heard a real person say it before.

Swearing is a whole different matter as well. #1 and #2 stared open mouthed when the lovely J from the greyhound rescue charity said that she couldn’t fecking believe something. But as I told you before, everyone says feck - even people on the telly. J says gobshite isn’t swearing either, but then she could just be having a really good joke at my expense. Actually, swearing here is really enjoyable - people say things like ‘HolyMaryMotherofJesus’ altogether like it’s one word. Beats bugger for originality.

The slight lack of communication with the nice Chinese torture girl in the nail bar the other day reminded me of the nice Lithuanian lady in the sandwich shop who had me and hubby stumped by asking if we wanted ‘wettis’. We conferred about what ‘wettis’ might be and obviously looked so puzzled that the nice Lithuanian lady had to wave a wet bit of Iceberg at us before the lightbulb moment ensued: ‘oh - do we want lettuce? Yes please!’. Actually we thought wettis should become a new word in our language, because it kind of implies the meaning of wet and lettuce without needing to say two words. Brilliant.

No Comments »