One of the things, among many, that drew me to spending a year in Ireland was that it is English speaking. There is no way I could spend this much time in a place where I had no idea what everyone was saying. The funny thing is, I didn’t realize that there would still be a language barrier at first…
“Sam do you have your boots?”
“Well, uh..yes, but they are back in my room.” I can see they are a bit confused. “Like booties you mean?”
Laughing at me, “noooo like basketball boots.. sneakers!” Since when are basketball sneakers referred to as boots?! When I think of boots, I think of cute boots that I will wear with a pair of jeans and a fall sweater, and those certainly would not do in an athletic setting. Apparently they are all considered boots!
Boots were the least of my troubles. Suddenly in stories, people are always referring to someone as my man. “I asked your man…,” “when I talked to your man…” “well, your man on the Killester team…” While confusing and slightly concerning at first, considering I do have ‘a man’ back at home, this one always cracks me up. I find myself repeating what people say and giggling when they say it. “Your man” is pretty much just a slang way of saying whoever the specific person is that they are referring to.
Another simple one that threw me off in passing was “How are ya’ gettin’ on?” This is otherwise known as “How are you?” Of course I got flustered and halfway answered the question before saying “wait, like how am I?” By that point, we were walking by each other and a quick, nice greeting turned into an awkward sort of jumble of words and gestures. This is similar to being asked “What’s the story?” I leaned in, intrigued, because in my mind, that’s like asking what the gossip is. I waited for the other person with me to answer because I wanted to know the story! Of course I was wrong, and it’s really just another way to say “What’s up?”
More laughable moments generated by yours truly!
There are plenty more stories I could tell, but I will end with the biggest struggle of all of them, which is the different accents. This might come as a shock and really blow some minds, but it’s not only in the States that accents change from place to place…yup, you’re reading correctly! They have different accents here as well!
Okay, I’m being a little facetious, but I honestly always pigeon-holed Irish speakers as having the same classic accent and saying “Top of the mornin’ to ya’!” But come on, I’m definitely not alone in that! In reality, they don’t all sound the same… and they definitely do not use that phrase!
The Northern Irish accent is absolutely the hardest for me to hear. I have a classmate in my group for the semester that can’t get through a sentence without me saying “sorry, what?” Luckily, she is beyond nice and thinks it is funny, and our whole group has a laugh about it. But basically, they talk super fast and slur everything together. I hear about one word per every five words. I like to think I’m getting much better now though as I get used to it! My group would probably disagree 😉
Although I’ve had my moments and mishaps, I’m very grateful that they are considerably minor, and I’m loving every second of messing up the phrases!
~Cheers lads!
