![\"james-joyce-james-augustine-aloysius-joyce-irish-novelist-and-poet-image-shot-1915-exact-date-unknown\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1793245573_781_.jpeg\")
\n James Joyce knew a thing or two about language. Alamy Stock Photo<\/p>\n
IN AUTHOR PAUL Howard\u2019s hugely enjoyable new novel A Nation Once Again, which is part-satire and part-blueprint for the reunification of Ireland, a cast of oddball characters on both sides of the border wrestle with a litany of head-wreckers to be tackled en route to attaining a 32-country nirvana.<\/p>\n
What class of new flag would be acceptable? What to do about an all-island national anthem? (This one is particularly urgent, in my opinion, for fear we\u2019ll be stuck with \u2018Ireland\u2019s Call\u2019). Do we build a neutrally-located parliament in the dead centre of Ireland, in order to ensure equal inconvenience for politicians of every party and persuasion?<\/p>\n
Vexed questions to be sure. O very vexed indeed. They could even usher in a new golden era for RT\u00c9\u2019s Liveline, it being the natural home of reasoned and rational debate.<\/p>\n
However \u2013 using the thoughtful philosophy which never leads to bad decisions and flashing blue sirens \u2013 we may as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb while we\u2019re at it.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s high time our native tongue takes its place among the nations of the earth.<\/p>\n
No, not Irish, our official first language which is beloved by many but fluently spoken by few.<\/p>\n
And no, not English either, which became our second official language thanks to the beneficence of our next-door neighbours a few centuries ago.\n<\/p>\n
Hiberno is what we now speak, all day, every day.<\/p>\n
And while it is of course recognisably the English language, it has evolved linguistically, grammatically, emotionally and intellectually into something way beyond a quirky collection of dialects expressed in a charming range of regional accents.<\/p>\n
Our own spin on things<\/p>\n
The notion that so-called Hiberno-English is an expression of our Irishness and a deliberate divergence from British-English isn\u2019t new. As in so many language-related things, James Joyce was way ahead of the rest of us, the auld wizard. In Ulysses, he took the spoken street vocabulary of the ordinary citizens of Ireland, muttered abracadabra over it, and conjured up a work of high literature which is hailed as a masterpiece of modernism. And no better buachaill to do it.<\/p>\n
\n James Joyce knew a thing or two about language. Alamy Stock Photo<\/p>\n
Alamy Stock Photo\n<\/p>\n
Brian O\u2019Nolan aka Flann O\u2019Brien\/Myles na gCopaleen wasn\u2019t far behind, being a writer of prodigious skill who moved effortlessly between B\u00e9arla and Gaeilge \u2013 sometimes within the same sentence. He celebrated Irish, while simultaneously puncturing the pomposity of Irish language purists, and was a genius at demonstrating how English becomes a different form of speech entirely when left to the mercy of his fellow countrymen and women. Even when satirising the lazy use of language via his recurring gag, the Catechism of Clich\u00e9, in his newspaper column, he was highlighting a form of everyday communication that was utterly familiar to his readers:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is it that a final drink will not do us?<\/p>\n
\u201cHarm.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is the condition which, by reason of the long time we will be subject to it, supports the theory that it would be safe to have one more?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe condition of being dead.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor what service maintained by the rating authority is it permissible to have still another final drink?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe road.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd upon what did a bird never fly?<\/p>\n
\u201cWan wing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Who among us hasn\u2019t cast this conversational stone?<\/p>\n
For years Irish authors have rewritten the English language to reflect the actual world they inhabit, proffering a blithe \u201cWe will yeah\u201d to suggestions they should play nice in the Anglo-sandbox. Nowadays, there\u2019s a hape of Hiberno writers, stretching far and wide from small town storytellers Donal Ryan and Kevin Barry to chroniclers of the capital such as Roddy Doyle and his Barrytown trilogy penned in pure Dublinese, and Paul Howard\u2019s Ross O\u2019Carroll-Kelly, a character fluent in the southside argot of Dortspeak. (In time we may pardon Americans for the sin of foisting Donald Trump on us, but we\u2019ll never forgive them for exporting vocal fryyyyyy to Ireland).<\/p>\n
The growing influence of Hiberno isn\u2019t to suggest that Gaeilge is deader than the Monty Python parrot and is kipping on its back whilst pining for the fjords. Not a bit of it. But while the top-line figure in the 2022 Census declared that an impressive 1,873,997 people (about 40% of the population aged three and older) in the Republic of Ireland declared that they can speak Irish, as usual the divil is in the detail. When questioned further, 55% have only the c\u00fapla focail and only 71,968 people speak Irish daily.<\/p>\n
![\"an-ghaeltacht-road-sign-explaining-that-here-starts-an-area-where-the-irish-language-is-spoken-translation-irish\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1793245573_19_.jpeg\")
\n The number of people who regularly speak Irish on a daily basis is a lot lower than those who count themselves in the c\u00fapla focail group. Alamy Stock Photo<\/p>\n
Alamy Stock Photo\n<\/p>\n
Therefore, returning Irish to its full pre-colonisation glory is a goal as unattainable as Dublin\u2019s MetroLink finishing under-budget and on-schedule. Furthermore, several generations of former schoolkids still break out in hives at the sight of a copy of \u2018Peig\u2019, whose account of life on the sunlit uplands of the Blaskets inspired a host of bands such as The Smiths, Joy Division and Nine Inch Nails.<\/p>\n
Instead of being taught Irish as the unfettered, expressive and earthy language that it is, most of us of a certain vintage were bludgeoned into bored submission by An Modh Coinn\u00edollach, and wanted no more truck with Gaeilge after exiting the school gates.<\/p>\n
But more recently, the teanga\u2019s a-changin.<\/p>\n
It does be everywhere<\/p>\n
Hiberno-English is in full blossom; our version of English has always been underpinned by Irish syntax and grammar and awash with Irish derivations and words borrowed from Irish, (think ab\u00fa, bockety, fooster, flaithi\u00falach, pl\u00e1m\u00e1s). We speak of doing the messages, acting the maggot, and slag off gurriers, gobdaws and goms. Yet no Dub would ever deploy the Cork word \u201clanger\u201d even in the heat of battle. And naturally the word \u201cride\u201d is approached with great caution. Moreover, everyone knows that the National Word of Ireland is \u201cgrand\u201d, an utterance of such nuanced complexity and sophisticated simplicity that even Joyce himself would\u2019ve thrown his hat at it.<\/p>\n
In fact, maybe \u201cGRAND\u201d should be printed across the new Irish flag.<\/p>\n
Irish is everywhere, not as a standalone language but woven into everyday English speech. Apparel companies abound offering clothes festooned with Hiberno slogans, such Cork\u2019s Hairy Baby tees (\u2018Shook As A Hand At Mass\u2019); Waterford Whispers (\u2018Sure You Know Yourself: [phrase] mystic riddle issued by Irish people to fill the void in conversation and confuse\u2019) and Fukil\u2019s collection (\u2018Sin \u00e9\u2019, \u2018t\u00edr gan teanga, t\u00edr gan anam\u2019).<\/p>\n
And then there is the recent explosion of music steeped in Irish, entwined with English. Hiberno Central, where Irish and English streams cross seamlessly: the Fontaines DC\u2019s Skinty Fia, CMAT\u2019s Euro-Country, bands such as Isp\u00edn\u00ed na h\u00c9ireann, Madra Salach, Lankum. And leading the current charge is Kneecap, the Belfast hip-hop trio who have tapped into the understanding that Irish is mutable and Hiberno isn\u2019t simply one evolving language but is an evolving identity which takes in politics, history, a sense of place. It\u2019s non-elitist and springs from the ground up. And anyone can join in.<\/p>\n
![\"worthy-farm-somerset-england-27th-june-2025-irish-singer-cmat-performs-at-glastonbury-2025-cristina-masseialamy-live-news\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1793245574_151_.jpeg\")
\n The music of CMAT and her contemporaries show how our language is evolving. Alamy Stock Photo<\/p>\n
Alamy Stock Photo\n<\/p>\n
There was a great man, lexicographer and former English professor, the late Terry Dolan, who compiled this living, thriving language into several editions of the Dictionary of Hiberno-English, a treasure-trove of our everyday words and phrases. Another sadly-missed collector of words, Manch\u00e1n Magan, similarly wrote books to remind us of the beauty of our native language and how it\u2019s woven into our landscape and our psyche.<\/p>\n
And now writer\/comedian Colm O\u2019Regan is publishing his second book on Hiberno-English, Tipping Away this week, which has a section devoted to \u201cfighting words\u201d, (including my own favourite, \u201cructions\u201d).<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a sense that the English spoken by dwellers on this island, all four provinces of it, is accelerating away from the linguistic mothership and that a linguistic \u2013 not so much reunification as reformation \u2013 is underway.<\/p>\n
About time. Now we\u2019re sucking diesel.<\/p>\n
Lise Hand is a journalist and writer. This column runs every Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IN AUTHOR PAUL Howard\u2019s hugely enjoyable new novel A Nation Once Again, which is part-satire and part-blueprint for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,283147,283148,61,60,64939,171164,34095,2733,387,283149],"class_list":["post-668471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-hiberno","tag-hiberno-english","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-culture","tag-irish-identity","tag-irish-language","tag-october","tag-opinion","tag-the-gift-of-the-gab"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}