Slang is Ireland's gift to the world
In addition to giving the world James Joyce, Daniel O'Donnell and the strap-on leprechaun beard, Ireland can now apparently take credit for a fair chunk of the English language as spoken today, including slang.
According to a (mildly controversial) new book, words such as 'gimmick', 'scam' and even 'dude' are all corruptions of the Irish used by the tens of thousands of migrants who arrived in the United States throughout the 19th century.
"Irish was a back-room language, whispered in kitchens and spoken in the saloons," says Daniel Cassidy, the New York-born author of How The Irish Invented Slang.
He was speaking shortly after his tome won the 2007 American Book Award for non-fiction.
The argument presented in How The Irish Invented Slang is that the language has had a far deeper influence on English, in particular American-English, than previously suspected.
Read entire article at http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk
According to a (mildly controversial) new book, words such as 'gimmick', 'scam' and even 'dude' are all corruptions of the Irish used by the tens of thousands of migrants who arrived in the United States throughout the 19th century.
"Irish was a back-room language, whispered in kitchens and spoken in the saloons," says Daniel Cassidy, the New York-born author of How The Irish Invented Slang.
He was speaking shortly after his tome won the 2007 American Book Award for non-fiction.
The argument presented in How The Irish Invented Slang is that the language has had a far deeper influence on English, in particular American-English, than previously suspected.