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Seriously, Lads!

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“Ah come on Lads!”

So declared my 9 year old daughter to the other kids in the local playground this weekend – the bigger one that has the cool sandpit construction setup. “Lads”, she says, “let’s have the water flow a bit first and then see if it’s stuck.”

I smiled when I heard that: there’s my girl.

She’s not addressing the group as “guys” – the word I’ve been hearing all the time in Ireland since we moved back last year – as in, “guys let’s work on this together and then smash it up”. As a handy word guys is fine (and dandy) to use in Canada and the US. But I have to say I don’t like how this G-word seems to have taken over speech in Ireland, at least big chunks of the country. I get annoyed every time I hear a parent/coach/teacher shout “hey guys can you all come over here?” We had our own words before – since when did a cute fella become a cute guy?

Guys is not a strong word: even in North America it’s considered slang and not advised for professional use and has also been experiencing a gender-focussed backlash (see this Salon article) and in my own experience there it was considered a male word (unlike, say, folks, the charming y’all or even the unsubtle peeps).

The word for addressing a group of people in Ireland is lads. It’s not perfect, to be honest, it doesn’t really cover the girls but does anyone say “lads and lassies”? It’s fine, let’s just leave it.

Ah Lads!

Living abroad for most of her life, this same sandpit-managing daughter of mine had to learn a lot of her everyday English from me. All of her daytime and weekend-socialising hours were spent with other kids in a different language. So at age 4 she would be shouting “dere!” to her Norwegian playmates and by age 7 “ragazzi!” to the Italian classmates. I wouldn’t have told her to say “lads” when she was with other English-speaking kids, most of whom would be American or English anyway (and mostly girls, not boys) but she must have picked it up somehow.

If I had been a hard-core Irish-parent-abroad, I might have insisted on the family using “yous” or “yis” or “ye” when addressing a group. But I have my limits.

Sorry if I’m being a language curmudgeon, I know it’s supposed to grow and adapt. But here’s something we Irish should think about – the use of “guy” actually comes from Guy Fawkes. The very one who gets bonfired every year in the UK in that weird English (and anti-Catholic) tradition. Seriously lads!

An Old Dictionary

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Our 9 year old needs an Irish dictionary for school. She’s been in school in Dublin for a year now and has managed to catch up really well with learning Irish. All the other kids started when they were about 5. Even if you speak another language, which she does (Italian), Irish is not necessarily a no-brainer. It’s about as un-phonetic as you can get which makes it hard to pronounce, has a complex grammar, and it’s not like you hear it spoken on the streets every day.

We were out at the weekend and wandered into a charity shop in Dun Laoghaire. They had a few dictionaries in their books section and two of them were basic Irish pocket dictionaries like this. They’re meant for school use – sure where else would you be using it? This edition was dated 1993 but I figured that was recent enough, it couldn’t have changed too much since then.

I bring it to the man behind the counter, taking care not to let her start rummaging in the little baskets of plastic jewellery on the countertop. He hands the book back to me, saying there’s no charge. “I always give dictionaries to the kids for free”, he says. “You know, they need them for school, so why should they pay?”

I should have asked him if he knows what ever happened to Sean and Melissa. I wondered what happened there.

 

The Irish for Brexit

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“Brexit” is now a universally-known word and it is used as is, with no local translation.  Brexit is Brexit in every language. Every language, but one – Irish.

The word Brexit was first coined in 2012, eight months before David Cameron announced he would be holding a referendum on the UK’s exit from the EU. The word was a natural successor to the word “Grexit” – the suitably-classical sounding name used to describe one solution to Greece’s massive debt issues. It’s not a technical term:   but it’s a nickname – or actually a portmanteau – that has stuck, referring to the whole process of the UK leaving the EU.

“Brexit” won out over some weaker, and unpronounceable, alternatives, like “Ukexit” and the biscuity-flavoured “Brixit”. It was added to the OED in 2016 by which stage offshoot words were appearing: brexiteer, to brexit as well as Bregret, Bremain and remoaners. A child in Germany was even christened with it, according to the Express anyway.

Take note that the term Brexit is not fully accurate – it is not just Britain that plans to leave, but the entire UK (which consists of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), though some of those individual elements voted to stay. I won’t get into the politics here. Really I won’t.

Names for possible EU-exits by other countries have thrown out some fun word-play. Here are some of my favourites:

  • Nullgaria
  • Fraurevoir
  • Full (for Hungary)
  • Quitaly
  • Luxgettouttahere
  • Forsakia
  • Byerland (for Ireland)

So why haven’t other languages decided to adapt a local version of Brexit? Why didn’t, say, the French come up with their own word , as they usually do? What about languages that don’t typically use an X or where “exit” doesn’t work?

Could it be because Brexit was not meant to be a long-term thing? That it would be done and dusted quickly and easily? Or because only one country is likely to want to really pull out of the EU (even if they are still figuring out how, when, and even why)?

So how about the Irish – why did we bother to translate Brexit? First, some background:

The Irish language is spoken across the island of Ireland, north and south, and the Republic of Ireland is officially a bilingual country. I am far from being a fluent speaker, but I paid my dues and did the 14-odd years of it at school, (and yes I did do honours for the Leaving, to my credit).

As a race, we’re known to be contrary – and as our own language was suppressed for several centuries by the English invader it’s no surprise that we like to adapt concepts to our own linguistic viewpoint. (You could say it’s making a statement, but who would actually notice, except us?)

So in the Irish language, there are in fact two words in use for Brexit.

The main media outlets in Ireland (which are English-speaking) of course use Brexit – and you should be aware that it’s probably more in the news in this country than even Britain, and more Irish people know what’s going on with the latest negotiations (or lack of) than many people in Britain. Why? Because no other country, even the UK itself, will be as directly affected by the exit when/if it happens. (A quick recap: trade, citizens’ rights, education, banking services, and the small matter of the Northern Irish border.)

As a bilingual country, Ireland has a thriving Irish-language media: one dedicated TV station, several radio stations, plenty of print and online publications.

And the Irish-language media chose not to use Brexit but came up with their own word: Breatimeacht.

“Breatimeacht” is the official Irish word used on the Nuacht (News). It’s a clever portmanteau that works well:

“na Breataine” = Britain

“imeacht” = leaving.

Irish-language guru Darach Ó Séaghdha, author of Motherfocloir and founder of the podcast, has written:

“some critics have pointed out that translation offers the opportunity for correction – it’s the UK that’s leaving, not the geographical entity of Britain. This has led to Sasamach being more popular in some quarters (Sasana, England, amach, out).”

This secondary word – Sasamach – is now being used (first coined by @tuigim) and I think it’s quite brilliant. Sasana (which stems from the word Saxon) refers to England, not Britain.

If you’re getting confused at this stage about UK/England/Britain/British Isles, here’s a handy quick guide:

Source: Wikipedia/Terminology of the British Isles

The Irish word for an English person is “sasanach” and it’s a word that has appeared in many songs and poems over hundreds of years, often referring to how said Englishmen should best be booted out of Ireland.

Songs that evoke this kind of carry-on:

So – Sasamach is now doing the rounds to mean Brexit, as “amach” means out, so roughly speaking it’s a more forceful “Brits out”.

(Now, technically speaking “amach” means the process of moving out. Once you’re outside the word is “amuigh”. Maybe the word will need to change, in English too, but at this rate there’s no sign that they ever will be fully out.)

Language problems have started to plague other elements of Brexit in the last couple of weeks: the White Paper published in July was translated by the Foreign Office into 23 languages (including Irish) and the quality of translations was widely criticised, causing more British bemoaning about their level of language learning.

And for the Irish? Does our deliberate transliteration of Brexit mean we want it to happen, or not? Or are we just continuing our centuries-old habit of pushing around the confines of language?

With Love for the Women of Ireland

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Mná

That’s the Irish word for women (pronounced with a long awww sound). Women, plural.

When you’re one woman, you’re a bean (pronounced ban). With another bean, you become mná. You become something new, part of a group, and granted a totally different word.

If you’re a tourist in a pub you’ll quickly learn it’s the sign you’re looking for. The Ladies: a word women only use nowadays for the loo.

As a sidenote: the men’s loo is Fir. That’s the plural of man (fear), pronounced “far”, as in “far better off”.

Mná

Ireland to me is about the women. The last place I lived was Italy, where it’s all about the mother, where a woman is still often defined by her relationship to her children, her man (and where about 150 women are murdered every year).

You see the Madonna everywhere in Italy, she’s always beautiful.

But you don’t have to go far in Ireland either, like on a stamp, or as a plaster statue in a grotto of a church,

Like the grotto where 14-year-old Ann Lovett died in childbirth 34 years ago, a story that was recently brought out of the shadows again by a brave female journalist.

Mná na hEireann

The Women of Ireland. This is a thing, a type of rallying cry popular during Mary Robinson’s presidency: who was, FYI, the first of our two women presidents. Some snicker at the phrase, but there’s a lovely song of it (sung here by Kate Bush whose mother was Irish) and it’s a handy moniker:

 

Martin Turner, Irish Times cartoon May 20 2018

Mná na hEireann

Irish women have always seemed strong to me. From the women who reared me, to the ancient queen we named our daughter after.

But it’s astonishing how much Irish women have had to put up with, for so long. And it’s frightening to see just how much we still do, in 2018. Two women murdered in Dublin in the last week, a health system that has been failing to look after us with no sign of being fixed, and of course the abortion issue. Women’s bodies are on full display for everyone to discuss these days.

Art by Lucy Moore (lucymoore93)

Mná na hEireann

But these Irish women are fighting for change, and they will not let up. I’ve been truly amazed by them, saying what they think is true, and fair, on Twitter, on the telly, holding hand-painted posters on street corners, discussing, sharing their stories, showing and asking for compassion.

We’re not going to stay quiet, not with the strength in our numbers. Not a single bean, but mná.

Tá

The word for Yes. It rhymes perfectly with Mná.

Tá for Mná

“Yes for Women”. The Irish version of the Yes that will hopefully, in this week’s abortion referendum, cause a sea change for women’s health.

“If we valued women as full human beings, we would not be having the debate you’re having in Ireland.”

So said the fabulous Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in Dublin last week.

Grá

The word for love – how beautifully that fits.

Tá for Grá for Mná

Love for the women, not just the Irish ones. Love among the women for all the women.

I’m just one woman, one bean, but when my daughters grow up the three of us together will be Mná. Among all the other Mná.

Here’s a good overview on the BBC of the Irish abortion debate of the last 30 years.

Ireland’s time of reckoning

Getting back my vote

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Sometimes I have felt like a citizen of the world. But at the end of the day, I am an Irish citizen. That doesn’t mean I’ve been able to vote there over the last 20-odd years I’ve been away as I’ve simply been gone too long. I have tried to take advantage of any rights I’ve been given to vote in the other places I have lived.

There’s a very important referendum coming up here on May 25th and I’m very happy that I just sent off my form to be added again to the electoral register. My vote is my voice, and it’s only a few years until my children will be able to do the same.

You can read the full story here, in my latest piece for the Irish Times.

 

Dear Saint Patrick, it’s complicated

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Ah glorious Saint Patrick! Once a year I’ve thought about him, or ignored him, or celebrated his feast day to the hilt, around the world from Hawaii to London, Warsaw to Montreal, Rome to Oslo. And now we’re here as a family in Dublin, and imagining what it’ll be like.

Read the full story – the “before”- in the Irish Times of March 16th. The next post will be the “after”.


 

Like many Irish living abroad I’ve had an on-off relationship with our national holiday. It’s the one day of the year when you can dip into that pool of Irish identity that you always know is there, but which you might choose to disconnect from for the rest of the year.

When I lived in New York, more than 20 years ago, I chose not to dip into the Irish scene. I never went to the St Patrick’s Day parade, perhaps seeing it as a local Irish-American event and somewhat removed from the country I had deliberately left only a few years before. I was actually more curious to watch the others nationalities – like the Poles or Haitians – when they paraded down 5th Avenue and lit up the Empire State Building with their colours…..

Read on

The pipes, the pipes are frozen

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Last week Ireland was hit by a winter storm called Emma. Imagine sharing your name with a storm system, or “severe weather event” as it was strangely referred to in the news.

In all my (six, long) winters in Canada or (seven) winters in Norway I never came across a couple of windy, snowy days that had a name. Sure why would anyone bother? It’s snowing and blowing and freezing all the time in both countries, for months on end. There was no fancy name for the Oslo blizzard that blew while my younger daughter was born one February, or any cute moniker  to describe the Christmas we spent dog-sitting (and dog walking) at a friends’ house located on Toronto’s minus 20 lakefront. Nor is there any way to train your leg muscles to forget the thigh-high piles of snow to be climbed over to get into your downtown office… for days or weeks at a time. Or the snow shovelling, or walking on ice, or keeping pipes unfrozen.

Those long-born habits of mine all faded into one big blur last week when I started picking up on the slightly-panicked warnings about the impending “Beast from the East” and Storm Emma last week. We were warned of “minus 7” degree temperatures, that we should stock up on food because by Wednesday the country was being told to all stay indoors for a couple of days. The entire country. Oh but especially Dublin, because round here we’re not so used to really bad weather. That’s for the folks down the country, the ones who have to deal more regularly with the lambing and the narrow local roads and more likely downing of electricity and Netflix for a few days.

No, all my hard-earned familiarity with snow and ice conditions went out the window. Transport would stop, shops would close. There were red warnings, yellow warnings, the emergency people on the telly were telling us – in plain English and equally clear sign language – that we had to be prepared: we must stay inside. Would we need to await their approval to build a snowman?

I found myself reverting back to the nervous Irish woman who found herself in the thick of a real Canadian prairie winter back in 1998, when her boyfriend first brought her home to his family for Christmas. From my first breath outside Calgary airport – which made my lungs freeze – to the “good sport” who joined in the minus-18 sledding fest after Christmas lunch (see photo) and to the subsequently-invaluable experience of finding my car not stopping properly at a red light, I learned to respect and love the snow. Jump forward several years and I have two kids who grew up in Norway – one of whom spent two winters in a forest kindergarten (they even built their own latrine) – and who go far beyond me in terms of understanding the nature of snow.

By Wednesday the schools were closed. Fair enough, the wind was picking up a bit but I don’t remember many (ahem) snow days in Norway and Canada. The day before, some of us school mums were getting into a bit of a tizz about the shelves emptying out at SuperValu. The bread and milk were, naturally, nearly all gone but also dwindling were the loo paper, the firewood and… the potatoes.

On the radio news the Taoiseach (prime minister) was bombarded with more than the usual questions: “Can you tell us Taoiseach when the snow will be gone?” It hadn’t arrived at that stage.

That night I went outside to look at the snow that had started falling. There was something wrong with it – it was all plasticky, like mushed-up styrofoam. It didn’t melt in my hand.

On Thursday morning we knew this was S-day. I was actually feeling a bit panicky. What if someone needed to get to a doctor? What if the snow didn’t come after all? And then we realised we had no running water in the house. The pipes had frozen during the night. Well even minus 2 is below zero and the pipes are on the roof.

Very luckily for us we could move up the road to my Dad’s house, where we ended up having a cosy few days that were like Christmas without the Christmas part. Stronger together, we’d be snowed in, with sausages and veggies for soup in the fridge and flour in the press.

The weekend was a blur of ipad time, tea and chats, fresh scones, tackling some boxes of old photos, short walks and a couple of hacking coughs. Shovelling snow out on the footpath – a mostly useless job as the car was going nowhere – we met neighbours we’d never gotten around to meeting before.

The kids weren’t too pushed about getting outside and it took us a while to dig out from the attic any of our old Norwegian snow gear (oh, how weeks of my life had centred around drying, mending, finding, swapping, buttoning up that stuff). But for most Irish kids this was clearly a huge event they’ll remember for the rest of their lives, and it was lovely to watch them with their homemade sleds made out of trays and rope, plastic bags, or some super-fancy wooden sleds you might see hanging on the wall of a Norwegian cabin

And by the time about 40cm of snow had fallen, the country had shut down. You couldn’t drive or take a bus, or walk to the pub, which was probably closed and you might slip anyway. The island cut itself off as flights were stopped, nurses and doctors slept at hospitals, major events were cancelled. A friend of a friend had been heading from Oslo to the Corofin trad festival and the message went around – “anyone know of any sessions near Heuston station in Dublin?”

There were some nasty stories of looting and stupid behaviour but many, many more stories of communities coming together to help each other out and because there’s never this much snow people went mad for the snowmen – of nuns and tea parties and presidents and also igloos.

And there was the sledding grandmother down in Cork:

I ventured out for a walk to the now-open SuperValu on Saturday. One woman navigating through the slush coming towards us shouted out to the air, “Try Lidl for milk!” As the local supermarket, the place had never seen so much foot traffic: from fancy ski boots more used to Saint Mortiz, to the woman with two rubber bands around her boots: a brilliant idea I’d never seen before.

The news on the telly was fun to watch. So was Twitter and Instagram, where the hashtags were proudly in Irish – #sneachta and #sneachtageddon – presumably to claim this wing of #StormEmma as separate to the bit that must have hit the UK. We didn’t hear much about that. There was far too much to enjoy about this one.

As the country started coming back into operation – first buses were tentatively on the road by Saturday – my kids watched in bewilderment as the news told us that the red line of the Luas (Dublin’s tram) would just be running “from Red Cow to The Point”. They’re real places, I explained. Word went around the internet (no papers were to be had) that the bishops had granted dispensation from Sunday mass.

By Sunday we went out and about, for a change of scene, to the refuge of a museum along with many weary-looking tourists.

School opened, with no big fanfare, on Monday morning. You could see the green grass glowing again. Water shortages were put in place around the country though our own water returned as silently as it had left us. We still have a wonky gutter to fix.

And one thing I really noticed, which I always missed especially in Norway, were the birds. They were everywhere, those Irish robins and thrushes and blackbirds, picking away at the ground, happy to see Spring was there all along.

Dreams of an Irish Dog

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That’s the original title I gave this piece which was just published in today’s Irish Times online. I’m delighted to be getting lots of positive responses to it – I think my thoughts on moving home to Ireland after 23 years abroad hits a nerve with anyone living away from home (and there are a lot of us).

And I’ll be writing a story every few weeks for the Irish Times about how we’re adjusting to life here. A bit like this Turf story I already posted after Christmas.

Here’s a link to today’s Irish Times story.

And here’s how it starts:

“Will there be a school play I can be in? Do they have scouts in Ireland? Can I have my own room? Does this mean we can finally get a dog?”

Our kids were very excited when we told them last spring that we would be leaving Italy and moving to Dublin in the summer. They had visited Irelandmany times, for Christmas, birthdays, funerals; they knew the parks and libraries, and they felt like they could really live there. And when we knew my husband’s contract in Florence was due to end, it seemed like the right time for us to decide to give Ireland a go. Finally.

I left Ireland 23 years ago and I have lived abroad for longer than I lived there. I grew up in Dublin, but I’ve been a “grown up” in other places. Having met my Canadian husband after college in London we moved around with his career (US, Canada, Norway, Italy). So, out of the four of us, I was the only one qualified to know about what life in Ireland would be like. Or thought I was.

“Cause you gotta have turf”

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The turf arrives at our door one Saturday afternoon. By turf, I mean the rough-cut sods of peat that burn pungently and cosily in an Irish hearth – the stuff of dreams for any Irish person far from home. Turf in Ireland does, naturally, also refer to the ground smashed by the hooves of heavy horses, another important trope of the Irish psyche.

We live in semi-suburban Dublin, not in a housing estate but in a little workman’s cottage that is old enough (or at least its chimney is) to be suited, indeed it should be crying out, to have turf burning in it.

(Not actually our house, but similar)

We won the turf in the raffle at the school Christmas fair. We were late getting to the prizes table and I passed over the other option available – a couple of bottles of expensive-looking wine – for this black stuff. We have enough Italian wine at home, I insisted to a surprised husband. Clearly I was subconsciously looking for the chance to indoctrinate my family of foreigners to a very real, pungent Irish experience.

Real Irish Turf

I grew up in Dublin but I’m secretly a bit of a “culchie”, as are many of my generation – our parents moving from the country to Dublin, with various levels of cousins lingering in Monaghan or Clare. Summer holidays in Connemara come back in an instant with the smell of seawater and a smoky turf fire. Sods of peat are still hand-cut out of the bog in some parts of the country, this is serious land-connection stuff here and very Irish.

It’s the smell of turf that does it. Mention a turf fire to anyone and their eyes will drift off. Combine that with a hot whiskey, an uncomfortable seat, a good chat and maybe a slow tune played on a fiddle (well maybe that’s more for the visitors), and that’s the closest you’ll get to Irish hygge.

So our 5 bags of the loose, crumbly black stuff arrive at the door from the school dad, and I let the foreigners in the family deal with the transaction. I keep myself in the kitchen working on the dishes, where the mother of the cottage should be. And then I realise we haven’t told the kids.

– Who’s at the door? – asks the younger daughter

– It’s the people delivering our turf.

– What’s turf?

– It’s for the fire.

– It’s for a fire? I thought we weren’t going to use the fireplace – says the elder child nervously.

– Well your mother won it in the school raffle, it’s here now.

The polite Canadian husband greets the dad with his delivery.

– This is great, thanks a lot. So how do you actually light it, how do you use it? Does it smell a lot?

This stuff is very rough-cut, not the kind you easily find in the… shops, or wherever it comes from in Dublin. We don’t actually find out where he got it from, his peat bog in the back garden? The husband hauls it bag by bag through the narrow hallway out to the back yard and finds space for it in the plastic fuel shed usually used for coal.

– Did you fit it all in? I ask.

– I did, he says. (He’s learning)

And that’s where it stays. Later, I go out alone to have a look and a whiff. It’s ragged stuff alright, very natural, organic even, and untidy looking, guaranteed to stink out the neighbours. Oh but it’ll be worth it.

Photo collection of Maggie Land Blanck

The slight air of contraband that hung over the door-step transaction reappears when we mention the turf delivery to our friend the landlady.

– Oh but you can’t burn real turf in Dublin, she says. Not these days. It’s only supposed to be smokeless coal or briquettes.

This being Ireland we investigate the rules and then the ways in which they are usually interpreted. This little cottage is crying out for an old-fashioned smell and we don’t know the neighbours so well, in fact there’s noone on one side (though a Christmas wreath appeared for a few weeks on the door down the otherwise overgrown path). So where’s the harm?

We call in a chimney sweep called Tim – a surprisingly young man, no cockney accent. He has a look at the fireplace, it’s actually a stove, and he says he can’t get in to clean it fully, it’s not his type of chimney. But he still manages to knock a load of dirt out and doesn’t charge. And he says we can burn the turf, no problem.

Now we just have to give it a go and use it.

There’s no hurry though. Spring is soon here but this being Ireland you can’t beat an old turf fire in the middle of summer.

My Morning Cuppa

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It was lovely to see the Irish Times publish my story last weekend about daily habit of drinking Irish tea. The exact same brand of tea, for over 20 years.

Photo taken in Dublin and sent to me via WhatsApp before being treated in Instagram

The story started as a way to work out why I still drink the same tea, carrying it back with me in my suitcase or having my Dad post it on from Dublin. In whatever foreign country I’ve been living in.

Order it online and you get it nicely bubble-wrapped

Tea is a big drink in Ireland, with a history that’s similar but a bit different to that of England. There was an interesting article about it in the Times a few years ago – how the Second World War changed habits and routes.

This tattered, old tea-cosy was knitted about 20 years ago by my auntie Meldy. My mum also attempted to make one from the same pattern but it took her 2 years (and would probably take me about 5). The cosy rang a bell with an Irish friend who saw the picture, she also has one made by her Aunt, also a Loreto nun. So we figure this is a Loreto pattern and probably adorns teapots around the world. Anyway, it keeps the tea warm.

I have a few other tea cosies – maybe their history deserves its own blog post. Stay tuned!