Oct. 10th, 2014 12:55 pm
The Mighty Newsons
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muckefuckI'm relieved how little fuss it took to get our do-nothing condo association to agree to have the drainpipe outside our unit replaced--particularly since this meant overcoming the initial objections of Scooter, who thought he could fix the damn thing with some chewing gum and duct tape. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
monshu talked up the handyman to me, a stocky Irish bloke with a thick accent, and I decided I had to see and hear him for myself when he showed up this morning to start the prelim work.
I'd never met anyone from that far north (Buncrana) before and it banjaxed my attempts to play Higgins. He didn't sound Irish at all to me, not even Northern Irish, and I ended up asking him if he'd lived a time in Glasgow. It was some combination of vowel length, lack of diphthongisation, and fronting of /uw/ that did me in, I think. I didn't think any place in the Republic had all of those! There was nothing in his accent which struck me as particularly "Irish" except perhaps the intonation.
He says he came over here seven years ago intending to head back after a couple of years but stayed on account of the soccer. (Apparently, SkyTV's offerings are less extensive and more expensive.) I could've listened to that brogue all day. I also was curious whether he spoke any Irish, but I was already distracting him too much from the task at hand. Plus I probably wouldn't've been able to understand him anyway, given that I find Ulster Irish basically a different language from Munster.
I also would've liked to have commented on his surname. A couple evenings before, Scooter made reference to how "weird" it was and Woulfe does label it "extremely rare". I was tickled to find that translates as "son of Nuada" and warned both him andmonshu that we'd better be damned careful not to do anything to upset the descendent of an ancient warrior god.
monshu talked up the handyman to me, a stocky Irish bloke with a thick accent, and I decided I had to see and hear him for myself when he showed up this morning to start the prelim work.I'd never met anyone from that far north (Buncrana) before and it banjaxed my attempts to play Higgins. He didn't sound Irish at all to me, not even Northern Irish, and I ended up asking him if he'd lived a time in Glasgow. It was some combination of vowel length, lack of diphthongisation, and fronting of /uw/ that did me in, I think. I didn't think any place in the Republic had all of those! There was nothing in his accent which struck me as particularly "Irish" except perhaps the intonation.
He says he came over here seven years ago intending to head back after a couple of years but stayed on account of the soccer. (Apparently, SkyTV's offerings are less extensive and more expensive.) I could've listened to that brogue all day. I also was curious whether he spoke any Irish, but I was already distracting him too much from the task at hand. Plus I probably wouldn't've been able to understand him anyway, given that I find Ulster Irish basically a different language from Munster.
I also would've liked to have commented on his surname. A couple evenings before, Scooter made reference to how "weird" it was and Woulfe does label it "extremely rare". I was tickled to find that translates as "son of Nuada" and warned both him and
monshu that we'd better be damned careful not to do anything to upset the descendent of an ancient warrior god.