Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/38

CH. IV.]

this chapter I am obliged to quote the original Irish passages a good deal as a guarantee of authenticity for the satisfaction of Irish scholars: but for those who have no Irish the translations will answer equally well. Besides the examples I have brought together here, many others will be found all through the book. I have already remarked that the great majority of our idiomatic Hibernian-English sayings are derived from the Irish language.

When existence or modes of existence are predicated in Irish by the verb tá or atá (English is), the Irish preposition in (English in) in some of its forms is always used, often with a possessive pronoun, which gives rise to a very curious idiom. Thus, 'he is a mason' is in Irish tá sé 'n a shaor, which is literally he is in his mason: 'I am standing' is tá mé a m' sheasamh, lit. I am in my standing. This explains the common Anglo-Irish form of expression:—'He fell on the road out of his standing': for as he is 'in his standing' (according to the Irish) when he is standing up, he is 'out of his standing' when he falls. This idiom with in is constantly translated literally into English by the Irish people. Thus, instead of saying, 'I sent the wheat thrashed into corn to the mill, and it came home as flour,' they will rather say, 'I sent the wheat in corn to the mill, and it came home in flour.' Here the in denotes identity: 'Your