A wee trouble

Everyone’s birthday seems to be in March, so a weekend in the old place is an annual event. While out for dinner, the waitress asks us to wait a wee minute while she takes our wee order. This is a pet hate of both my aunt and my wife, and we enjoy a session of collective eye-rolling in response. To top that, a few days later comes another sublime episode of Derry Girls, in which the wee English fella James …

Read more…

Our son of a bitch

The headline of Doug Beattie’s article in the Belfast Telegraph yesterday illustrates how sloppy language and sloppy logic hinder rather than help the process of understanding. Leave aside the article itself for now; one sentence in the headline alone (“Republicans weren’t victims, they were victim-makers”) contains a prime example of both. Firstly, the sloppy language of “Republicans” fails to distinguish between the Provisional IRA and those people who never picked up a gun but would still regard themselves as Republican. …

Read more…

This Island’s Godwin: Teorann’s Law

Godwin’s Law: The longer and more heated a debate or discussion becomes, the more likely it is that Hitler or Nazism will be used as a comparison. Teorann’s Law: No matter the original subject area, it is possible to make any argument become about the partition/division of Ireland. I’ve noticed over the years that there is no predicting a discussion about anything in Slugger’s below-the-line comments. The most tenuous links can bring a discussion right around to who took what from …

Read more…

A parent’s love of language: “you have to take your inspiration from where you find it…”

Back in the 80s, I remember an elderly aunt in Beechmount telling me about the day her mother told her to fetch my grandad from the Donegal shore of their small farm, and her remarking that ‘she spoke us, as she always did, in Irish, and we replied in English’. It was only then it struck just how immersed my own father must have been in a language I sweated tears to get my head round as a kid and …

Read more…

Bored with the blather…

IF you’ve ever sighed with exasperation or clenched your teeth with frustration every time you heard someone say “we are all to blame” for the Troubles, you may find Malachi O’Doherty’s latest column somewhat cathartic. The peace process patter that has evolved in our political discourse may be natural and second nature to those who wish to absolve themselves, but for the vast majority who got on with life and our neighbours, it can be uncomfortably Orwellian. For the majority …

Read more…