Ulster is one of the most linguistically rich places in the world.
Let's start at the beginning.
You've got Irish, Think about your own surnames, your own townland names. That's part of who we are.
And then there's the Scots element.
Ulster -Scots is a fascinating linguistic
importation from Scotland into Ireland.
And then of course what's often forgotten in all
of this is you can talk about your Irish, you can talk about your Ulster -Scots, but
what do most of us do? We speak our Mid Ulster English.
This hybrid, which is what Ulster has today, is really Scottish, Irish, Northern Hiberno English,
this lovely blend which makes our language so unique
John Braidwood, he was a Queen's lecturer, a Queen's researcher, and he was fascinated
by dialect. And he said, Ulster dialect begins like a bad joke, there was an English man,
an Irishman and a Scots man - and he was quite right, of course.
Warren Maguire is a lecturer in English language at the University of Edinburgh.
He’s originally from County Tyrone in Northern Ireland,
an area with a rich and diverse linguistic heritage.
I think it's deeply rooted in my life. I grew up in the rural Tyrone countryside. I lived
there till I was 18, and I don't know, I don't think I could have lived there and not been
interested in language, it was all around me all the time. From the townland names that
are so characteristic of Ireland, the dialect of my father, my grandfather, my grandmother,
the farmers around about us, the dialect words, the way people spoke in towns being different
from the way we spoke in the countryside. And the fact that in Northern Ireland everything
to do with language is kind of interesting and political. You can't get away from it.
For the past 15 years Warren has been recording the way people speak in his home townland
in Mid- Ulster
This is the townland of reciaranbeg in County of Tyrone between Finton and Dromore where
I develop my love of the country side and of the dialect. Anytime I’m home I bring
my recording equipment with me and I try to make an effort to record somebody when I’m
here – Whether it be a relative or a neighbour or somebody through a connection or something
Or sometimes I just get in the car and go around and land on the street and say,
Hi I’m so and so son, I’m Jacks son. You wouldn’t be able to help me, would you?
and they’d say what are you doing anyway? I say well I’m doing this dialect project.
I’m trying to gather up a bit of the way people speak in this part of the world, you
know and some of the memories of the place a bit of history of the place. You know what
Irish people are like. Once you get them talking you’ve no bother.
The Mid Ulster dialect is kind of a unique and interesting form of English for the following
reasons. First of all, it's only about 400 years old so it's a new ish dialect of English,
it's not a very new dialect of English, but it's a new ish dialect of English. How did
this dialect develop? Well, we all know how it developed, it developed through the settlement
of the planters from England and Scotland coming to Ireland, interacting with each other
and interacting with Irish speakers in Tyrone, and you get the development of a new dialect
coming about through contact between those different groups of speakers. So, you have
17th century English, 17th century Scots, 17th century Irish all in contact with each other.
‘So, this house you are living in tell me a wee bit about it?
This is a quarter house this was originally you know what is called a quarter house here
belonging to the farm up there. Yeah, usually a person living in the quarter house would
have to be working for the farmer, you know. The people (inaudible ) one time lived there
and then the women’s husband I believed died. Then she was put out of the house, because
she’s no longer of use to the farm because she wasn’t you see …. She had no husband
working for them. And then she was heartbroken she used to come to the head of that hill
and look over at that house and cry, I don’t know where she was living then, but she used
to everyday come over and look over at the house
Hard times?
That might be going back about 100 years.
I just ran in to my uncle there, he noticed me out and about the road and he thought he
pop his head out. And that’s the way it goes in Tyrone, you bump into somebody and
they love to see you and have a chat and its nice wee illustration really of what it’s
all about, it’s about the dialect – yes and you can hear that but it’s about more
than that its about connecting with the people and hearing their stories and finding out
a bit about the area. I mean that’s something I never heard before in my life about the
relationship between that house and the larger farm house. So, it just shows what you can
find in the country roads of Tyrone.
Right Dad we’ve done this before. so this is nothing new to us and I’m going to rig
you up with a microphone here… and do a wee bit of a session and record some stuff.
Things are changing rapidly in Tyrone, as they are everywhere in the English-speaking
world and elsewhere. Dialect is changing, and it's not just change in the way it's changed
for centuries, it's changing rapidly, it's levelling, if you like, with more exposure
to other varieties, more education and so on.
Many a time in your life Im sure you must have been involved in the cutting in turf
or spade can you maybe give me a wee run down about how that works?
I used to be kept at home from school for a week to fill turf. You see you had the bog
bank and ah then there was the bog hole from the year before and the bog bank was paired
to about 3 to 4 foot wide and the and pairs were thrown down into the bog hole, and then
there were so many flowers you see, and there was a turf spade and it had like an ordinary
spade but had a flange on it and it cut the turf in to the shape, but there….
It's all right being interested in it, but unless you record it how can you say anything
about it? So, I set myself this mission, and I have been at it now for almost 15 years,
of going into the Tyrone countryside, speaking to older people in the countryside, recording them.
If the weather wasn’t to good you footin them
What’s Footin now?
That was, you get 2 or 3 turfs and prop them up against each other, kind of standing up
and then the air got through them and then if that didn’t work they were Rickled
What’s Ricklen then?
Ricklen is you put two turf this road and a two turf that road, two turf the other road
and one turf on the top
Oh, so just a wee structure like that?
Aye then whenever they were in the Rickles for a while, then they were clamped, kinda
like made into big rickles about 3 foot… 2 and half foot wide at the bottom and went
up to, and it got narrow up to the top.
Gathering up these recordings, and you know, it's not just about the dialect, it's also
about the stories, about the people. Some of the things that people have told me about,
you know, stories from the past, story about things that are happening in their farms,
are amazing and it's a wonderful thing to have recorded.
And there’s another word, Hirplin. What was that?
I’m kinda Hirplin myself at the minute. If you’re lame now and your walking in kinda
hop that’s hirplin and then if you’re telling people hoagin that’s a kinda walloping
along, you know and then there is slithering and that’s trailing your feet on the ground.
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