So you speak English. Why not travel to the land of saints and scholars where English has been lyrically embellished since the dark ages; a week or two in Ireland and I won’t even need a translation dictionary!
A few weeks of hearing your language dancing gracefully and coherantly across the Irish tongue might be more challenging than you think! Ireland may be a predominately english-speaking nation, but the thing that tickled my ears the most when I first moved here and that tends to confuse our stateside guests is some of the slang. So, below is the 40th (!!) in a series I’m publishing on some common Irish slang that used to confuse us when we first arrived.
Shanks Mare - Your legs.
I just heard this one yesterday. I was at a business meeting and this fella asks where I parked. I told him I lived in town and he says, “The shanks mare, eh?”. Seeing my confused look he patted his legs - he was asking me if I had walked to the meeting i.e.: taken the shanks mare.
You learn something new every day, I’ll tell ya!
{ 2 comments }
Good one!
I particularly like the Irish curse:
“May you be get the itch and have no nails to scratch with!”
And next time you bike to your appointment instead of ’shanks mare’,you will probably hear
‘dick van dyke’.
Erin go bragh!
Mala Mukunda
Good curse, I’ll have to keep that one in mind.
Unless I’m up in Dublin I think I’ll be spared the rhyming slang in my business meetings : ) The cockney rhyme thing is a British slang import that has taken hold in Ireland’s capital but, thankfully, almost nowhere else.
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