Hiberno-English

Grammar derived from Irish

1.      Hiberno-English uses "yes" and "no" less frequently than other English dialects.

§                     "Are you coming home soon?" – "I am."

§                     "Is your mobile charged?" – "It's not."

2.      Some Irish speakers of English, especially in rural areas, use the verb "to be" using a "does be/do be" (or "bees", although less frequently) construction to indicate this latter continuous present:

§                     "He does be working every day." 

§                     "They do be talking on their mobiles a lot." 

§                     "He does be doing a lot of work at school." 

§                     "It's him I do be thinking of." 

3.      Irish has separate forms for the second person singular (tú) and the second person plural (sibh). The plural you is also distinguished from the singular in Hiberno-English, normally by use of the otherwise archaic English word ye [ji]; the word yous (sometimes written as youse) .. In addition, in some areas the hybrid word ye-s, pronounced "yis", may be used.

§                     "Did ye all go to see it?" 

§                     "None of youse have a clue!" 

§                     "Are ye not finished yet?" 

§                     "Yis are after destroying it!" 

4.      Conditionals have a greater presence in Hiberno-English due to the tendency to replace the simple present tense with the conditional (would) and the simple past tense with the conditional perfect (would have).

§                     "John asked me would I buy a loaf of bread." (John asked me to buy a loaf of bread.)

§                     "How do you know him? We would have been in school together." (We went to school together.)

5.      The verb mitch is very common in Ireland, indicating being truant from school.

6.      Amn't is used as an abbreviation of "am not", by analogy with isn't and aren't. This can be used as a tag question ("I'm making a mistake, amn't I?"), or as an alternative to I'm not ("I amn't joking"),

7.      Arra is used also and may be translated as "alright, yes/no". The word yerra is also used.

8.      It is common to add the word Hey onto the end of sentences for emphasis-for example a person could say "Are you going into town, hey?"

9.      So is often used for emphasis ("I can speak Irish, so I can"), or it may be tacked on to the end of a sentence to indicate agreement, where "then" would often be used in Standard English ("Bye so", "Let's go so", "That's fine so", "We'll do that so"). The word is also used to contradict a negative statement ("You're not pushing hard enough" – "I am so!"). (This contradiction of a negative is also seen in American English, though not as often as "I am too", or "Yes, I am".)

10.  Yer man (your man) and Yer wan/one (your one,female) are used in referring to an individual other than the speaker and the person spoken to.