I am a midwestern farm girl who lived in Boston, where I ended up married to my assigned Irishman. For those of you who don’t know, if you’re a single woman in Boston, the FBI automatically assigns you one to three Irish guys. FBI in this case stands for Foreign Born Irish. They’re thick as thieves in Boston. Contrary to popular opinion, THIS is what’s commonly known as the “Irish Curse.” It’s actually not what you’ve been told.
Anyway, my assigned Irish man is very handsome and a very good husband. So my own personal Irish curse is faring pretty well.
However, he has a bad problem with dipthongs from an American point of view. That is, those vowels that for most of us have two sounds only have one for him. And in the case of hard “U” sounds, there’s always a two sound dipthong, even where we wouldn’t have one.
Some confusing examples: Whale and wheel, street and straight. These all have the same hard “E” sound coming from his mouth because he leaves off the “A” sound in the vowel. There are wheels on a car and wheels that swim in the ocean. There’s the street you live on and it may or may not run in a street line to your local pub.
However, you are not, in his opinion, “stoopid.” You’re “shteeupit.”
Oh, and one of my favorites, the sound in hair, wear, and bare. It took me awhile (or awheel, if you will) to figure out that the Star of the County Down does not have “tuber feet.” She has “two bare feet.” I thought it was some nod to the Irish potato thingie. Today got his herr cut.
The other day I was taking a bath (oh, possible TMI, sorry). He came into the bathroom to see what I was doing. Hey, we’ve only been married two and a half years so we still need to see the other in the bathtub now and then. I was running the water over the overflow and had opened the drain. I like the sound of running water and I’m a bad, bad person for ruining the environment.
So, being a plumber among other things, he starts shouting at me.
Mr. McKnitWit: Don’t do that! You’ll cause an Erlach!
Me: What? What are you talking about?
Mr. McKnitWit: Don’t run the water over the overflow, it causes Erlachs!
Me: Why are we talking about football players in the bathroom?
Mr. McKnitWit: Erlach! Erlach! Don’t be shteeupit!
Me: Wanker.
I know I shouldn’t be an ugly American and make fun of the way he talks. He keeps telling me that the Irish were speaking English thousands of years before we Americans showed up on the scene. And I keep shooting back that you’d think they’d have it right by now.
Mundane: check.
Pointless: extremely.
