Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/45

30 ‘Of you’ (where of is not intended for off) is very frequently used in the sense of from you: ‘I'll take the stick of you whether you like it or not.’ ‘Of you’ is here simply a translation of the Irish díot, which is always used in this connexion in Irish: bainfead díot é, ‘I will take it of you.’ In Irish phrases like this the Irish uait (‘from you’) is not used; if it were the people would say ‘I'll take it from you,’ not of you. (Russell.)

‘Oh that news was on the paper yesterday.’ ‘I went on the train to Kingstown.’ Both these are often heard in Dublin and elsewhere. Correct speakers generally use in in such cases. (Father Higgins and Kinahan.)

In some parts of Ulster they use the preposition on after to be married:—‘After Peggy M‘Cue had been married on Long Micky Diver‘ (Sheumas MacManus).

‘To make a speech takes a good deal out of me,‘ i.e. tires me, exhausts me, an expression heard very often among all classes. The phrase in italics is merely the translation of a very common Irish expression, baineann sé rud éigin asam, it takes something out of me.

‘I am afraid of her,‘ ‘I am frightened at her,‘ are both correct English, meaning ‘she has frightened me’: and both are expressed in Donegal by ‘I am afeard for her,’ ‘I am frightened for her,’ where in both cases for is used in the sense of ‘on account of.’

In Irish any sickness, such as fever, is said to be on a person, and this idiom is imported into English. If a person wishes to ask ‘What ails you?’ he often