Word: gaelicism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...origins of Brooklynese are controversial. It has many characteristics, but its hallmark is the pronunciation of the diphthong er as if it were oi (like Joisey for Jersey) and vice versa. Some linguists believe that Brooklynese stems from German and Yiddish. Griffith argues forcefully that it is rooted in Gaelic. He notes that the dialect appeared after a wave of Irish immigrants settled in Brooklyn in the late 19th century. Moreover, Griffith finds that the trademark Brooklyn diphthong oi also appears in many Gaelic words; taoiseach (leader) and barbaroi (barbarians), for example. He also points out that the th sound...
These manglings of Gaelic were once the common language of Brooklyn cabbies, policemen and longshoremen -not to mention baseball fans. One linguistically memorable day at Ebbets Field in the 1930s, when Dodger Pitcher Waite Hoyt was hit by a ball, a spectator jumped up on the bleachers and shouted out, "Hurt is hoyt!" Over the years, as they grew more prosperous, New York's Irish scattered into the affluent suburbs. Blacks and Puerto Ricans have all but taken over such areas as Williamsburg (formerly Williamsboig) and Greenpoint (Greenpernt) in northern Brooklyn, where Brooklynese was born. At the same time...
...permeate his story of Don Juan? As the books' sales mount, the resistance multiplies. Three parodies of Castaneda have appeared in New York magazines and papers lately, and the critics seem to be preparing to skewer Don Juan as a kind of anthropological Ossian, the legendary third century Gaelic poet whose works James Macpherson foisted upon 18th century British readers...
...effect is right. Waiting for death, as the four characters in Endgame are, why not expire with a gag rather than a whimper? Gregory captures that aspect of Beckett that is too frequently scanted, his Gaelic gallows humor, his fascination with vaudeville turns, his boozy way with a monologue that is pure barroom oneupmanship...
...involved groups of two or three automobiles making hit-and-run attacks in areas that had been considered safe. A few days before the Protestant strike, for instance, a car stopped casually near a spot where a group of Catholics were engaged in a Sunday afternoon hurling match, the Gaelic version of hockey. Suddenly the men in the car sprayed the crowd with machine-gun fire, wounding a young goalkeeper, a teen-age boy and a 14-year-old girl...