I have always been curious about language ever since I discovered that cowboys in the first movies I ever saw seemed to use the same strange words as my uncles in Donegal. Just as Hopalong Cassidy hopped aboard his ‘hoss’, so did my uncles talk about hooking up their ‘hoss’ to the cart. Seemed that a ‘hoss’ in Donegal was also a ‘hoss’ in Texas. Trouble was, a ‘hoss’ was a ‘horse’ in England.

Also my uncles used other Hopalong Cassidy words such as ‘crittur, ’varmints’ and ‘vittles’. How come, thought the puzzled and untutored child? Not until I was much older did I realise that many of the cowboys and cavalry who wiped out the Plains Indians were from Donegal and Mayo.

Their language travelled with them and became Gringo American Lingo. I also remember thinking at the time how insensitive it was to have been forced to flee Ireland because of the potato famine and then immediately set about cheerfully clearing out the buffalo and the native American Red Indians without so much as a pang of guilt or a moment of retrospection. Ah, well. We Irish are nothing if not adaptable.

Then I cottoned on to the fact that the words we use tell us where our fathers have been before us. We Northern Irelanders – may we be Calicks or Prosans – sound more Scottish than we do Irish. Whether we like it or not is a different matter. What matters is that we all sound like Ulster-Scots. It’s the way things are. We reputedly speak English but some of us speak what has recently become known as Ulster-Scots.

Those who speak Ulster- Scots are immediately identifiable by their tendency to, for instance, refer to a person born out of wedlock as a ‘chap-bae-chance’. Well, that’s according to an Ulster-Scots dictionary called ‘The Hamely Tongue’. Using the same source, we discover that Ulster-Scots habitually refer to women’s tights as ‘stockings-wea-an- erse-in-them.’ Only the more sheltered will have trouble working that one out.

However, I am bound to concede that one rarely hears this expression in our clubs and discos. But we all speak a heady mixture of Elizabethan English and Ulster-Scots to some degree. My mother was from darkest famine- ravaged Donegal and always prefaced interrupting a tiresome conversation between two people by stating that she hoped she was not ‘brekkin their discoorse’. And who has not stood ‘fornenst’ a roaring fire? Shakespeare and Rob Roy are far from dead in Ulster.

Perhaps, now that we all speak bits of it, Ulster-Scots should be moved into the area of slang. A new book called ‘Slanguage: A Dictionary of Irish Slang’, by Bernard Share, certainly has its share of Ulster-Scots words in it. My personal and most expressive of all the words contained within is the term ‘yup-yeh-boy-yeh!’ Most sons of Ulster require no explanation or definition here.

The author, however, feels the need to explain, and suggests than one of the characteristics of ‘yup-yeh- boy-yeh!’ is that it is harmless enough when uttered by a lone person but alarming when encountered in large numbers. Any man who has been chased by a crowd of men wielding hurley sticks or wearing bowler hats will have no trouble muttering ‘amen’ to that one.

How many of you young mothers are aware that, in Ulster-Scots, a midwife is a ‘howdy-woman?’ So, using the cowboy analogy, maybe we can also then assume that the child-bearing woman’s husband is the ‘howdy-partner!’ And, staying with the theme of child-birth, did you know that ‘Irish twins’ are two children born of the same mother, in the same calendar year, ten or eleven months apart. Thought not. These are the things you don’t hear about on ‘Kilroy’.

Some Ulster-Scots words have long since passed their sell-by date but they’re in the book anyway. What awkward or stupid, obstinate person can these days truly be called a ‘glunterpake’. There’ll be more on this subject next week. I can’t write any more. And why not? Because I’m pancrocked.

Originally published in The Belfast Telegraph