She is not an Irish town
And she is not English,
Historic with guns and vermin
And the cold renown
Of a fragment of Church latin,
Of an oratorical phrase.
- Louis MacNiece

Dublin, like any city has its own language. Now, I’m not referring to the schizophrenic communion of the bilingual street signs, where the Irish (Gaelic) and English names often reveal an older history. (For example, the street linking Ballybough and Fairview on the north side is called Fairview Strand in English but Ballybough Strand in Irish.) It is hardly surprising that a city that takes its Irish and English names (Baile Átha Cliath, the town of the ford of hurdles, and Dublin, or Linn Dubh, the Black Pool) from two different settlements on the river is likely to be a bit fláthúileach* with the state’s first language.

No, Dublin has long been an English city, albeit of her own peculiar definition of Englishness (“appropriating all the alien brought . . .” – MacNiece again), and Irish has for some time been the reserve of scholars and patriots, so a tourist wishing to practice their cúpla focal** may find themselves sharing the plight of the eponymous character in Yu Ming Is Ainm Dom. (You can see this wonderful 13-minute film here. Fr Ted enthusiasts will want to spot the mysterious gaelgoir in the penultimate scene.) At any rate, Dublin street signage, and particularly that on the Luas lines, is hardly the perfect primer for the student of Gaelic.

The only signs you won’t see translated are those for “Fír” and “Mná” (pronounced “feer” and “min-awe”), but as these are usually accompanied by illustrations of men and women in improbably Victorian costume you should be able to work out which room is yours. (Incidentally, the singulars of these are fear – pron. “far” – and bean – pron. “ban” – respectively.) The other Irish word you hopefully won’t need is Garda, short for Garda Síochána, or Guardians Of The Peace – the Polis to you.

Otherwise, Dublin English is a hotch-potch of Irish words (as in the preceding paragraphs), rhyming slang and the curiously archaic dialect known as Hiberno-English, which draws on older English constructs and vocabulary (e.g. jakes) as well as Irish idiom and Scots, all spoken at a speed which can confound even a native English speaker. From bowlers to young wans, from the Five Lamps to Mickey Marbh, the average Jo Maxi will entertain your ears for hours, leaving you wondering how Shaw could ever have claimed that “The best English is spoken in Ireland”.

But despite her citizens’ refusal to completely eschew Irish constructions, as in the literal translations of “I’ve a great thirst on me” or “Have you that done yet?”, or espouse progress, as in the archaic “I would have loven . . .”, Dublin has done her bit for the language. Here’s a few words and phrases which have travelled beyond her walls.

Beyond the pale

When the Normans established themselves in the East of Ireland in the 13th and 14th centuries, they built a defensive line of ditches and fences to keep the wild Irish out. This line included all of what is now Dublin and parts of the neighbouring counties of Kildare, Meath and Louth. The area within was known as the Pale (from the Latin pallium, a fence), and those wild Irish without were considered to be beyond it. Nowadays we use the phrase to describe anything that is beyond acceptable behaviour. The uncultured folk outside were, and still are, known as Culchies, while they responded by calling us Dubs Jackeens, after our habit of waving Union Jacks whenever royalty came to town.

Yahoo

You may know this today as "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle", but the origin of this word can be traced to a famous Dubliner. The irascible Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, of whom it was said “No man ever deserved better of his country, than Swift did of his”, peopled one of the lands in Gulliver’s Travels with the race of Yahoos. For almost three centuries afterwards it was a common term for an ignorant, loutish person. Until, that is, David Filo and Jerry Yang created "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web".

Bunburying and Malapropisms

Nor was Swift unique in his ability to coin a phrase. Oscar Wilde, in The Importance Of Being Earnest, gave us “bunburying”, the art of hiding behind an imaginary person or lying outrageously to escape an undesirable task. It is said that he may have had in mind Sir Charles Bunbury, who lost a bet to his friend Edward Smith-Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby, to have the famous horse race at Epsom named after the winner. So it could just as easily been Derbying.

Likewise, the common Dublin trait of searching for the mot juste and missing it by a mile (a woman I knew once referred to someone as being VHI positive***) is commemorated by Richard Brinsley Sheridan's character Mrs Malaprop, from his great play The Rivals. Of course O’Casey also used the device when Joxer Daly said "The world is in a state of chassis", but there’s been no better exponent of the malapropism than our own erstwhile prime minister (Taoiseach) and true Dub, Bertie Ahern, who once accused his opposition of “playing smoke and daggers” with an issue.

Quiz

Dubliners like to tell a story that in 1791 a theatre manager called James Daly made a bet that he could introduce a new word into the English language. He employed a number of young lads to paint the word “Quiz” on walls all around the city, so that soon everyone was talking about it and saying “What is it?”. Generally held to be apocryphal (there is evidence of the word in use before 1791) there used nevertheless to be a site (I think it was on Crane Lane) where the bet was said to have been placed, and which was a place of pilgrimage for pub quiz teams from all over. If he didn’t invent the word, the question remains: who invented the story?

Chancing your arm

Another possibly apocryphal tale tells of the feud between the Butlers and the FitzGeralds in the 15th century. When a group of the former, led by Sir James Butler, the Earl of Ormond, took refuge in St Patrick’s Cathedral the Earl of Kildare, Gerald Fitzgerald, came to try to make peace. To prove to the Butlers that he came without malice, he cut a hole in the door between them and thrust his arm through, risking having it cut off in the process. Thankfully, this temptation was resisted by those inside and it all ended happily. You can still see the door, now known as the Door of Reconciliation, if you visit the cathedral today.

Mansion House

A Mansion House is, of course, the residence of The Lord Mayor. That in the Philippines was built as the official summer residence for the U.S. Governors-General and now fulfils the same function for the President. The first Mansion House however, was that built by Joshua Dawson in 1710 on the street that bears his name. Since 1715 it has been the official residence of the Lord Mayor of Dublin and the present incumbent lives there still. Drop in and have a chat.

London’s Mansion House was built between 1739 and 1752 and is only a puppy by comparison.

I have of course ignored here the effects of James Joyce on the language. Are there any other Dublinisms I’ve forgotten about? Please let me know below.

*carefree, extravagant
** a couple of words
*** VHI is the Irish private health insurance scheme