Holy Moly (Holy Moladh)! Thanks to Daniel Cassidy for a great read!

books:


	• How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads (Counterpunch) Daniel Cassidy CounterPunch Books and AK Press, 2007 - 303 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Mencken lovers, beware

Mr. D. Norder from Knoxville certainly doesn't like this book. He claims to have done a lot of work on the phrase, "Say Uncle" for some unspecified linguist yet fails to cite his 'American' phrases by date or use or any logical connection. Mr. Norder accuses Cassidy of being no scholar and wraps his vitriol in a claim that Cassidy is all BUNKUM, another word Cassidy finds Irish origins for. But Mr. Norder proceeds to give that word the folk etymology started by none other than H. L. Mencken, the Bard of Baltimore.
Well, first thing's first: Cry Uncle was identified as a 'loan word'phrase from the Old Irish in no less a scholarly publication than American Speech >Vol. 51, No. 3/4 (Autumn, 1976), pp. 281-282.
Secondly, Mr. Mencken, his rapacious wit notwithstanding, was a brilliant rhetorician as well as a vehement racist, anti-semite and anti-Catholic. I'm sure Mencken would, like Mr. Norder, prefer to believe that the Irish culture couldn't come up with a language of such beauty and nuance that its near destruction by the English overlords could never be brought about.
In other words, get this book; it's fun and makes one wonder all the more about the brilliance of our spoken language.

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Fascinating read.

Eye-opening research, although, in all fairness Mr. Cassidy over-reaches, as in his explanation of the term "86". Still, the writing is personal, lively and fascinating. It's a good read and I recommend it to anyone interested in linguistics. Put this next to your copy of David Maurer's The Big Con.

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Great to learn, but...

Until I heard about this book in the New York Times I thought that the only Irish words to make it into the English language were galore and lug. It is truly amazing to see how many words came from the Irish. I also never realized how many Irish came to this country not speaking English.

I highly recommend this book, however it is so repetitious it feels like I'm reading the same page over and over again. The author definitely should have hired an editor.

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The Irish finally get their due and may I say it's about time.

I'm a librarian, not a linguist. In fact I didn't even buy this book. My uncle did. But once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down. I grew up in the Bronx, among a lot of Irish and Irish Americans (my own family among them--and believe me, they're not always the easiest people to live with!). What struck me about this book is what it says about how pieces of the Irish language found their way into American slang. It's funny but my best friend's grandmother, who worked for years as a waitress at Schrafft's, was a native Irish speaker who grew up in Donegal. Whenever she was with her three sisters, they would invariably resort at some point to Irish, which could be annoying because it was hard to avoid the feeling that they were talking about the rest of us! When I once brought this up, she said it was their "secret language." Another time I asked her if she read books in Irish. She laughed and said that Irish was a language that "LIVED ON THE TONGUE, NOT THE PAGE." I thought about her answer when I read this book. It seems to me that this book says pretty much the same thing, and I certainly recognized many slang words that were a part of growing up in New York City. Although I usually don't read books of this type (I prefer novels--especially Alice McDermott!), I really enjoyed this one.

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Holy Moly (Holy Moladh)! Thanks to Daniel Cassidy for a great read!

I'm no expert here so I won't join the fray on whether or not every suggestion Daniel Cassidy makes is accurate, but there are many things that make this book a terrific read. From his moving story on how the idea of the book came to him in the first place, to the riveting historical information in the opening pages -- including Peter Quinn's fascinating introduction -- to the great list of slang-from-Irish possibilities and the stories behind Cassidy's thinking, this book is what my Irish mother would call the "bees knees" (see page 88!). And if you have the chance to attend a reading by Cassidy, don't miss it! His passion is infectious and he sings a great Irish "secret song."

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

In a series of lively essays, this pioneering book proves that US slang has its strongest wellsprings in nineteenth-century Irish America. "Jazz" and "poker," "sucker" and "scam" all derive from Irish. While demonstrating this, Daniel Cassidy simultaneously traces the hidden history of how Ireland fashioned America, not just linguistically, but through the Irish gambling underworld, urban street gangs, and the powerful political machines that grew out of them. Cassidy uncovers a secret national heritage, long discounted by our WASP-dominated culture.

Daniel Cassidy is the founder and co-director of the Irish Studies Program at New College in San Francisco.

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