In Ireland, most of the natives here do speak English. However, the way that they use it for their daily conversations may differ slightly from general usage. If you’re a Thai national, the English you’ve been learning is more towards the American way of speaking. So certain typical Irish phrases that you hear after moving over might confuse you a little bit. To tackle this problem, we’ve compiled 6 of the most typical phrases you might encounter from your day to day life routines:
“A whale of a time”
Usually you might hear something like “I was enjoying myself so much that I don’t think we were aware when the club announced it was closing for the night, we sure had a whale of a time!” There you have it, it’s a casual expression of how awesome a period of time someone has had – it’s usually used during or after a night out.
“Who all’s there?”
This isn’t used much everywhere in Ireland, but only in certain parts like Ulster , that you’ll hear it without fail. Natives use this phrase to enquire over the phone when either party is wondering how many people are in a particular place or location.
“Sounds a little rowdy here, doesn’t it?” “Oh, really? Who all’s there?”
“The jacks”
If you’re used to saying “Excuse me, where’s the restroom?”, chances are that the Irish locals won’t be able to understand your request. Try saying “the toilet” instead or if you want to add in that local flavour, you can replace “restroom” with “the jacks” instead.
“Was it any use?”
The word ‘use’ in the phrase above doesn’t really mean as a form of ‘practical’ use, but more towards the inclination of the word ‘good’. For example, you headed out to a performance or an outdoor sound event, the organizer or host will most likely as you this phrase to see if the whole event was good enough and if you managed to enjoy it.
“Donkey’s years”
We believe you might have heard of this phrase at some point of your life. It simply means an extensive period of time, like you never had a ice cream for a very, very long time and today’s the day you finally ate it again.
“Happy out”
It is used to mean just ‘happy’, but Irish people usually add in the word ‘out’. You might hear something like “Oh wow, you must be very glad this happened, look at you just happy out, leaping about with joy!”
It’s fun to know that every country has their own variations of using a particular ‘universal’ language, making it colloquial. Hopefully, you will be better equipped with a more detail understanding on certain Irish phrases, just by reading this article!