In the interests of world peace and harmony, and to help the tourists and the hoity-toity people, our readers have come up with this handy guide to various popular traditional Skang expressions, and their nearest equivalent in "modren" English.
Take our easy-to-follow guide and you will soon be able to converse in Skang, or at least understand it without the subtitles.
Lesson #1: "General Everyday Expressions"
"Story, bud?" = "Good afternoon, fellow skanger, and how are you this fine day?"
"Here, Anto, look at dah, it's a fookin' red sun!" = "What a lovely panorama, the rich reds of the sunset, mingling with the azure of the Atlantic Ocean, combining to form the entire beauty of all creation in one calm view!"
"What? Her? She's beat!" = "Pardon me? That aforementioned lady? Her aesthetic values are somewhat dubious"
"Where the fook's me smokes? Lads, which of yis fookin c***s stole me fookin' smokes?" = "Excuse me, chaps, I seem to have mislaid my cigarettes. Would you have any idea as to the location of the aforesaid items?"
"I do in me boll*x" = "I certainly do not"
"Gerr up ta fook ya boll*x ya" = "Sir, you jest!"
"Ask me arse" = "I will not comply with your request."
"Wot da fook?" = "I am terribly sorry, good sir, but I did not catch that. Please would you be so kind as to repeat your question? What exactly do you mean by 'ask my arse?" Furthermore, I do not understand your motivation in answering a simple yes or no question with such an elongated reply"
"Got any odds on ya bud?" = "Sir, might I be so bold as to request some spare coinage from you?"
"Gerrup da yard!" = "I have serious reservations as to the validity of your previous comment, I am afraid to say."
"Here bud, got a smoke?" = "Excuse me, my friend, but i have misplaced my cigar, and am suffering from withdrawal symptoms. Dare I ask you therefore, if you have a cigar (or other nicotine product) to spare?"
"Culchie fooker" = "You, sir, are a poor country boy who doesn't know the way of us sophisticated big city folk"
"Gizmo woz here" = "A gentleman with said moniker 'Gizmo' was in the vicinity of this wall, upon which his signature has been applied with great flourish to prove his attendance"
"Votin'? Are ya bleedin g4y?" = "No no no Raynard, my father told me the real issue is not that some States will not have a Commissioner from time to time, but what is the status of the Commission when there are several countries without representation on it at the same time? We should not risk that - to diminish the Commission in this way is unacceptable. It is bad for the EU to have a Commission from which several member States were not represented. It would be incapable of representing the interests of the EU as a whole, and I quite frankly believe him."
25/10/2002, 3:39 PM
Éanna
more or same
How to Speak Widda Dubelin Accident: Introductory notes.
Here follow some pointers to Dublin life for you culture vultures out there
who wish to "get to know" Ireland a bit better. This is an eclectic (I have
no idea what that means but it looks impressive) and highly personalised
guide to the verbal life of de cappitel city of Ireland.
It is divided into conveniently packaged parts for use on specific occasions
and will be an invaluable asset for brits, merkins, foreigners in general,
sundry culchies and posh people who wish to mingle. This is based on 4
earlier lessons which I posted a few years ago and which dejenews cannot
find so those of you who have been here for more than that may find them
familiar. The lessons are nothing like complete guides and are mere tasters;
my fellow Dubs may wish to add their own
contributions.
1)Surviving
Dublin is a tough city on the face of it.Most of the aggression is
ritualistic and it is essential to know how to deal with basic street
encounters.The streets are full of:
bowsies
hard chaws
hard men
hardos
gougers
and other miscellaneous tough types. These characters roam the streets
looking for excitement and throwing shapes.
It is essential not to stare at these gentlemen, especially if you have a
non-Dubbelin accent. You must cultivate a vacant intense stare (looking
straight ahead or at the ground) and a lumbering slouch and must respond
whah?
hoh?
nggggguh?
or any meaningless grunts that might imply mild intoxication and a
mean/non-educated disposition if they say ANYTHING to you. NEVER LOOK THESE
PEOPLE DIRECTLY IN THE EYE!!! (Unless you are a 7th dan hard man or
greater.) If you do, you will be assumed to want to challenge said
individuals. They will be forced to confront you with:
-You lookin at me pal?
The answer to this is ALWAYS:
-sorry
followed by a hasty exit. If you respond:
-no
the gouger will be forced to respond
-You callin me a liar?
And you are then in deep ****e (see later lesson for excretions and
secretions.) The only way out then is to pretend to be Danish. That will
leave them baffled long enough for you to run like the jayzis.
2) School (pronounced Skyoowel and usually followed by a spit to the
pavement)
Traditionally every male (female contributors may wish to add their own
experiences) in the country went to one of two types of school:
a) comprehensives and fee paying schools (where you do things like art and
learn languages and do exams and learn to be a better individual)
b) de brudders (also know as those ignorant ****ers or that crowd of
*******s or The Christian Brothers). Here you learned about Irish history
(Matthew Huntbach would not like it), Irish culture and how to avoid getting
the **** kicked out of you by big men (usually not from Dublin) in dresses.
Here are some important phrases:
Mala scoile (pronounced mawlah skully) a school bag
Sambos: sandwiches.
Ekker or ekkers:homework
Mitching:going on the hop, playing truant
Snared: caught smoking cigarettes behind the bicycle shed
Snared rapid: caught shooting heroin
Grush: throwing sweets (or later, packets of heroin) into the air to see the
mayhem as 30 kids dive on them all at once.
Beemer: a fast German car
Bleedin beemer: a very fast German car
De Hedder: school principal
Milla: fight
Loosies: loose cigarettes (most kids could not afford entire packets so we
would buy them loose from certain shops).
That is enough for now. I am too old to remember much more.
3) The pub
Dubliners are suspicious (of foreigners and culchies (see later) especially)
and are constantly on the look out for being set up in conversation in the
pub. They will constantly question the veracity of suspect statements with a
contemptuous negation such as in the following scene:
Person1: Manchester United are tremendous.
Person2: They are in me arse.
The ARSE above can be replaced by any of the following, more or less freely:
******
granny
brown
hole
e.g. they are in me granny etc.
This can be abbreviated to just
me arse
or
me granny
or
me ******
or
me brown
It must be said/spat out with the correct degree of contempt and disbelief.
Sobriety is a pityful affliction which will be remedied by copious
quantities of miscellaneous stouts and lagers. There are numerous names for
this, most of which are also used elsewhere in Ireland and even further
afield but it is important to be fluent in all of them:
The use of nouns for different categories of people is very regular and
simple.
Males are fellahs and wimmin are wans
Boys are then youngfellas and girls are youngwans
Older males become oulfellas, your father is THE oulfella
Older wimmin are oulwans and your mother is THE oulwan
It is essential to master the use of the 1st person post-indicative whereby
you can refer to a person without using their name as
yer man or
yer wan
being the person in question e.g.
Did you see your man the other day? (did you see the person in question on
that day that I will not repeat?)
Similarly,
The other
can be used to refer to the matter in question (perhaps of a sensitive
nature)
e.g. did you see yer man about the other?
4b) Bold parts of the body.
Arse, hole botty
****e see under botty above
Willy, micky, lad male naughty bit
****** attached to above
Gee female naughty bit
Jars more female bold parts
The rest of the body is named as per normal (e.g. elbows and fingers).
4c) People from different exotic places
Dublin has now expanded enormously but in olden days it was divided into two
parts by the River Liffey: The Nortside (where all true Dubbeliners live)
and De Soutside (full of homosexuals, foreigners, protestants, academics,
teetotallers and WORST OF ALL culchies (see below.)
This classification is no longer valid as half of Donegal and Limerick now
reside in Phibsboro and The Soutside has some very respectable places like
Tallaght, Ballyfermot and Clondalkin where real people live.
Traditionally it was not sufficient to live North of the Liffey to be a real
Dub; it was said that anyone born beyond The Five Lamps was a culchie or
from Northern Ireland. The 5 lamps is a famouslandmark situated about 500
yards North of the Liffey.
Brendan Behan, famously referred to one of the lots of people above (I
cannot remember which lot) as:
They ate their young out there.
Everyone else is foreign (i.e. Danish, British or American) or a CULCHIE.
Culchies are anyone from any part of the globe who is not foreign (see
above) and who does not speak with a pronounced Dubbelin Accident. They work
in the civil service and police, listen to Daniel O Donnell or Big Tom and
are also known as:
bog men
boggers
muckers
muck savages
culchies
mulchies
munchies
It is the worst possible insult to be called one of these names if you are
from Dublin. You must respond with immediate violence or emmigrate.
