• Nouns
  • the
• Verbs
  • consuetudinal do be
  • conditional
  • perfect ... after perfect ... literal perfect
  • unmarked infinite (loss of to)
  • amn't
• Pronouns
  • relative pronouns
  • yous
• Prepositions
  • Irish-Gaelic forms
  • on
  • on me ("dative of disadvantage")
  • in it

• usages
  • the way
  • and + pronoun
  • for to
  • yes and no, assertion
  • duplication
  • sentence tags "sure" "so" "but"
  • happen (not happen to)

the — in IE there are some idiosyncracies in the use of the definite article ("the"). For example, in SE you'd say "Let's get him to hospital", whereas in IE the tendency would be "Let's get him to the hospital", even though no hospital has been previously mentioned.

Particularly in regards to illnesses, body parts, appetites:

With languages, subjects:

With family members and relatives:

Emotions:

Days, occasions:

In cleft sentences beginning with "it is" or somesuch, the "the" seems to add emphasis or imply uniqueness:

on — names, conditions, appetites, emotional states – in IE these are often spoken of as being "on" a person:

Another idiom regarding "on" occurs in sentences like "I had my trousers on me" (SE = "I had my trousers on"). The redundancy stems from the "compounding" in IG of prepositions and pronouns (e.g. air = "on", but orm = "on me", ort = "on you", etc.) Moving to English, Irish people found it odd to leave the pronoun out. So it's often tucked in at the end of phrases:

on + pronoun — in SE the sentence "The waiter spilt my soup on me" would indicate that the waiter had spilt soup over me. In IE it tells nothing about where the soup landed, rather that it was spilt to my disadvantage. In other words, the complaint is not about my clothes being ruined, but about my soup being lost. As usual, the idiom is a transference from IG:

This "dative of disadvantage" is very frequent in IE:

P.W. Joyce gives a fine example:

perfect — the tenses supplied in English by the perfect ("I have done something") and the pluperfect ("I had done something") do not appear in Irish-Gaelic. Even the verb used as the auxiliary in English (have) is absent from Irish. Consequently, when Irish-speakers began shifting to English, they found difficulty in accommodating these tenses.

Two expedients that are used frequently in Irish-English are the after perfect and the literal perfect.

after perfect — Irish-Gaelic has no perfect or pluperfect tenses: the sense is supplied by constructions using prepositions meaning "after". IE borrows these constructions. Thus SE "I have done X" becomes IE "I'm after doing X"; and SE "I had done X" becomes IE "I was after doing X".

Sometimes, most often when used with the present tense ("I am after"), the sense is of a recent or immediate past. Thus IE "I am after doing X" > SE "I have just done X".

It's this usage (what has been called the "hot news" perfect) that is most often heard in current Irish speech. But the literature contains examples that stretch into the future, into the subjunctive, even into the passive mood:

literal perfect — IE will often take the auxiliary verb "have" in its literal sense of "possessing". Thus SE "I've done it" becomes IE "I have it done". Similarly in the pluperfect: "I had it done beforehand".

This is explained by the absence in Irish-Gaelic of the verb "to have":

yous — used in IE to form the "second person plural" pronoun. Technically, of course, "you" in English already forms the second person plural ("thou" being the singular). But "thou" had dropped out of use by the time the mass of Irish shifted to English.

In Irish-Gaelic the second person has both singular and plural forms. So:

So:

Slanguage gives "youse, youze, yous, yis, yiz" for IE. Confusingly, "ye", which is often heard in Ireland, as often as not marks the singular.

relatives — with relative pronouns, IE has a tendency to prefer "that" over "who" or "which" forms, even when the latter would seem essential:

Often there will occur what technically is known as a resumptive pronoun (required in IG, but unusual in SE) when a pronoun is inserted to refer back to the antecedent:

Sometimes the relatives go "missing" altogether, in constructions where SE would retain them. This occurs particularly in cleft sentences beginning with "it is"/"it was":

In more complicated sentences these "missing relatives" can seem bewildering:

This omission occurs in many dialects and varieties of English, not just in Irish-English. Examples can be found in Shakespeare:

the way — in SE "the way" has the meaning "the manner in which": e.g. "I love the way you talk". In IE it carries a further meaning of "so that", "with the result that". As uual, it's a carry-over from IG:

"You constantly hear this in Dublin, even among educated people" – PWJ 1910.

amn't — am not. IE "uses the inversion of 'I am' in negative first-person questions instead of SE 'aren't I?'" – DHE.

Not always in questions, sometimes – rarely – in statements:

in it — a carry-over of an IG usage into IE. The Irish ann (an adverbial preposition) has no exact equivalent in English. It literally means "in it" and it's used in statements of currency, presence, existence.

to (infinitive w/o "to") — sometimes in IE the "to" is ommitted from the infinitive when SE would require it. This "unmarked infinitive" seems to occur mostly with auxiliaries like "used" and "ought":

DHE notes this usage with "allowed":

yes and no — IG lacks words that directly translate as "yes" or "no": the convention is to repeat in the response the verb in the question. This convention was imported into IE. Thus: "Are you well? — I am." "It's a fine day — 'Tis." "Will it rain later? — It won't."

"Yes" and "no" are of course used in HE, but less frequently than in SE, and quite often in redundancy or amplification: "Are you going to church today? — No indeed I am not."

Assertions:
Indeed and I won't tell you a lie lever
Indeed and I did, then lever
indeed and I am, your honour shaw
"an illigant song he could sing, I'll go bail" – Lever, Charles O'Malley, 1841.
I wouldn't be long in his way, I'll engage". Griffin
She's a gamey mare and no mistake. Joyce
I feel for your situation, so I do - carleton
Oh, be gorra, it's well you ever seen me at all, so it is!" carleton
Cruelty to animals so it is to let that bloody povertystricken Breen out on grass Joyce
'tis enough to break the heart in a man, so it is. kickham
It's the queer world, so it is Stephens
you're a great rude man, so you are - carleton
about new Ireland he ought to go and get a new dog so he ought. Joyce

for to – in order to. In IE "for" is "constantly used before the infinitive: 'he bought cloth for to make a coat'" – PWJ 1910. The usage makes sense in transliterating from Irish, but it's probably a hold-over from older Standard English, vide any number of entries in Oxford English Verse, 1919 but e.g.:

do and do be — in SE "do" + infinite is used to indicate strong emphasis ("you did do it"), mild emphasis ("how they do go on") or assurance ("they do say it's cold here in winter"). In IE the formulation carries a notion of continuity, habitualness. So, there is a distinction between "I went to school" and "I did go to school". The former (ideally) carries the notion "I went to school once and hated it"; whereas the latter says something like "I did go to school every day of my childhood". This "consuetudinal" tense, is a carry-over from IG.

and + pronoun — in Hiberno-English often has the meaning of "while" or "as" or "because", thus "and it shaking" = "as it shook", "and I rambling" = "while I was rambling".

Properly in Irish the pronoun appears in the objective (accusative) case (thus é instead of sé, "him" instead of "he"). This also frequently crosses into Hiberno-English: "His boots were ruined and him walking in puddles the day long".

happen — in SE things usually happen to a person. In IE they can just happen a person:

The OED calls this usage obsolete or dialect; to this day it's very common in Ireland.