‘American’ native speaker, beginner at 'Northern Irish'

When foreigners ask me about the Serbo-Croatian successor languages (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and now, Montenegrin), my standards response is, ‘They are very similar, but there are differences in vocabulary, usage, and accent. It would be like calling what we speak in the US, “American” and what Australians speak “Australian,” not English.

And now, after spending my first significant (read: venturing outside the airport) period of time in a non-North American English-speaking environment, I have developed an appreciation for the differences between the differences in the ‘North American’ and ‘Northern Irish’ dialects of my native language.

Understanding every word of a phrase but still having no idea of what the phrase means is a not uncommon thing for me in Serbian, but I wasn’t expecting it to happen in a land of English speakers. In Northern Ireland, there were Sprite advertisements in the busses which read ‘obey your thirst for chancing your arm.’ I spent quite a while staring at it, unsuccessfully willing it to make sense. Later, one of my hosts sent me the link for this site, explaining it all.

Another of my favorite UK-isms is ‘The Troubles,’ the euphemism for the conflict between Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland. ‘The Troubles’ sounds like a child having difficulty learning multiplication tables, so small and manageable (just bribe her with pie!).

If only naming it that way made it so…