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IN DECEMBER 2000, I WAS GIVEN MY FIRST IRISH DICTIONARY. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
IN DECEMBER 2000, I WAS GIVEN MY FIRST IRISH DICTIONARY. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A new book claims the Irish language gave America such slang words as dude, dork and jazz, writes Kate Holmquist, Irish Times, July, 28, 2007
How the Irish language became American slanguage has become a passion for Daniel Cassidy, who grew up in Brooklyn, New York speaking "Irish" without even realising it. The words and phrases he'd learned as a kid in New York in the 1940s and 1950s - such as "snazzy" and "dude" - were lighting up in his mind as he learned Irish words.
OF ALL THE hundreds of American slang words that he has traced back to the Irish language, his favourite is jazz. Ironically, the name is associated with African-American music, though the earliest performers of "jazz" didn't like the word. Jazz comes from "teas", a noun for heat, passion and excitement. He's traced the use of "jazz" as a synonym for sex as far back as 1899. Musician Richard Holbrooke wrote in 1974: "I shall be glad to swear on oath before a notary public that 'jazz' as a sex word was not only used in San Francisco before the earthquake and fire, but that it was of such common use that it was a localism."
ACCORDING TO CASSIDY, "Jazz was so full of jasm and gism ('teas ioma' - an abundance of heat and passion; figuratively semen) that no one could, or would, write it down. In 1913, it was a word you learned by ear - like jazz music."
One hundred years later, there are 80,000 Irish speakers in the US. At the college where he teaches, Cassidy has students from all ethnic groups, all of them claiming enough Irish blood to make them want to know the language.
How the Irish language became American slanguage has become a passion for Daniel Cassidy, who grew up in Brooklyn, New York speaking "Irish" without even realising it. The words and phrases he'd learned as a kid in New York in the 1940s and 1950s - such as "snazzy" and "dude" - were lighting up in his mind as he learned Irish words.
OF ALL THE hundreds of American slang words that he has traced back to the Irish language, his favourite is jazz. Ironically, the name is associated with African-American music, though the earliest performers of "jazz" didn't like the word. Jazz comes from "teas", a noun for heat, passion and excitement. He's traced the use of "jazz" as a synonym for sex as far back as 1899. Musician Richard Holbrooke wrote in 1974: "I shall be glad to swear on oath before a notary public that 'jazz' as a sex word was not only used in San Francisco before the earthquake and fire, but that it was of such common use that it was a localism."
ACCORDING TO CASSIDY, "Jazz was so full of jasm and gism ('teas ioma' - an abundance of heat and passion; figuratively semen) that no one could, or would, write it down. In 1913, it was a word you learned by ear - like jazz music."
One hundred years later, there are 80,000 Irish speakers in the US. At the college where he teaches, Cassidy has students from all ethnic groups, all of them claiming enough Irish blood to make them want to know the language.
Format:Paperback
This book was very well received by the critics at first then later "the experts" rubbished Cassidy's work and said he stretched the limits of language too far. Those of us that actually speak Irish disagree argue that he was very much closer to the truth in most cases than a bevy of experts.
The book itself is great fun to read and if one as a smattering of Irish there are quite a few phrases that will immediately make sense i.e. Jazz from the two words; te (hot) and deas (nice or sweet). Irish speakers use the word constantly (speaking as Gaeilge) Sin deas! that's great/nice - but pronounced with the 'hard d' rather like in Dutch. Other words and phrases made me go - aahh so that's where that came from - I think one has to have spoken Irish (Gaeilge) to appreciate the book fully.
The book itself isn't one to read cover to cover and there is a lot of repetition that a good editor should have omitted - that said I've had to buy several copies as friends and family delight in it.
The book itself is great fun to read and if one as a smattering of Irish there are quite a few phrases that will immediately make sense i.e. Jazz from the two words; te (hot) and deas (nice or sweet). Irish speakers use the word constantly (speaking as Gaeilge) Sin deas! that's great/nice - but pronounced with the 'hard d' rather like in Dutch. Other words and phrases made me go - aahh so that's where that came from - I think one has to have spoken Irish (Gaeilge) to appreciate the book fully.
The book itself isn't one to read cover to cover and there is a lot of repetition that a good editor should have omitted - that said I've had to buy several copies as friends and family delight in it.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is what we call codology. There is no doubt that the Irish did make a contribution to the slang of America. Policemen traditionally called their truncheons shills in America (from shillelagh, an anglicised form of sail éille), and the Irish origins of snazzy (from snas which means polish; snasta means polished or snazzy) and the possible Irish origins of dude were in the public domain a long time before Cassidy came along. But their contribution was far more limited than Cassidy suggests. While his explanations seem convincing at first glance, the supposed Irish phrases or words he gives are often nonsense, the result of plundering dictionaries for slight similarities of sound rather than any deep knowledge of the language. Teas does mean heat, and can occasionally suggest sex, as in the 17th century priest's poem - tig ón teas an toil (from heat comes desire). However, heat and semen are quite different things, and ioma can't be used like this. You can't say obair ioma for too much work, or airgead ioma for too much money. Is lom é might just mean at a pinch "it's bleak" (though lom has lots of different meanings - it could just as easily mean "he's naked"), but is it likely that this phrase would change its function completely and become a noun meaning slum? Hardly. It originally meant a cheap room, so surely some connection with slumber is a better bet? And sometimes the book sails very close to outright dishonesty. For example, he suggests that loingseoir, which he claims means "maritime worker" is the origin of longshoreman. Now, not only does longshoreman have a perfectly respectable and convincing origin (that the longshoremen were the along-shore men, the people working on the dock), but no Irish dictionary would define loingseoir as maritime worker. A loingseoir is a sailor. The difference is subtle but all-important. Longshoremen aren't sailors, but they could clearly be called "maritime workers". As for bocaí rua for buckaroo (which EVERYONE except Cassidy accepts comes from vaquero, a cowboy in Spanish), why rua? What the Hell does being red-haired have to do with being a cowboy?? (Because that's what rua means, not gory or bloody). Unfortunately, this welter of fake etymologies will prevent scholars from looking for possible Irish derivations for words for fear of being lumped together with Cassidy. And that's a pity, because there are genuine Irish derivations which have been ignored by the world of scholarship, like the word conk, which the OED suggests is linked to conch. The Irish cainc meaning a big nose is a more likely contender.
The weirdest thing about all this is not that Cassidy produced such a tissue of bizarre nonsense, but that so few people have had the sense to realise what it is.
The weirdest thing about all this is not that Cassidy produced such a tissue of bizarre nonsense, but that so few people have had the sense to realise what it is.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A Brilliant Book!
This book should be on every Irish person's bookshelf. With even the most rudimentary knowledge of the Irish language the enjoyment this book provides is astonishing. Read more
Published on 17 July 2008 by Rosemary Lim
One for the academics to argue about.
It would be safe to say that most people use slang words to add flavour to their speech and American slang has become widely used in all English speaking countries but where these... Read more
Published on 19 Feb 2008 by plobaire
A treasure of revelations
Professor Dan Cassidy has gone to no little effort in this volume to extract the true (Irish) origins of many 'origin unknown', or mis-sourced words of common currency in the... Read more
Published on 5 Oct 2007 by SeánMacGC
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