Since moving to London from Belfast, I have learnt a lot more about how I speak, as now I speak differently to everyone else. In Belfast we speak an English dialect called ‘Hiberno English’.
Hiberno English is a dialect that began when Gaelic speakers began making the shift to English in the 18th century. This shift was catalysed by a set of penal laws enacted by the British, which prohibited any expression of Irish National Identity amongst other things.
Some linguistic characteristics of Hiberno English include:
-Rhoticity: Hiberno-English is generally rhotic, meaning the “r” sound is pronounced in words like “car” and “hard.”
-Vowel sounds: There are notable differences in vowel pronunciation compared to British and American English. For example, the vowel in “goat” might be pronounced more like [oː].
-Th sounds: The “th” sounds in “thin” and “this” might be pronounced as [t] and [d] respectively in some dialects.
In terms of vocabulary, there are hundreds of different words borrowed from the Irish language, probably the most well known of these being ‘craic’, from the irish for ‘fun’.