Declan Forde

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 607.

D) audiofile: BBC Voices_ulster-omagh.ram

Born:14 December 1955

Lives: Omagh, Country Tyrone

Time lived in area: More than 10 years

Occupation: Teacher

Declan talks about the influence of Irish on the Tyrone accent, and how it reflects the original local place names before they were anglicised.

Transcript

In this area, for instance, I, I eh, a few years go, tried to access information on my wife's grandfather who died when he was 94 and he was born at the tail end of the 19th century in a wee place called Fallaugh which would be about seven mile from here. And as I looked through the 1901 census, eh I saw that the first language of the older generation was predominantly Irish and that has carried through in the voices - when Eugene introduced himself, eh he said without any thought, I'm from Omee and what, he was talkin' in the pure Tyrone accent, Omee, the old Irish, and eh, that is very much a natural part of speech - for example, out where I live, eh, they will talk about Armach instead of Armagh, and they will, they will have that Gaelic or Irish in their voices, unbenownst to them, eh, the town of Mountfield, eh the locals there would call it Mountfull, people laugh and say no it's Mountfield but if you actually look at any historical document or the earliest historical document about that particular place, it is Mountfull, is its proper name. So the people there are actually callin' it, like Eugene did, by its proper name. We have changed it, we have anglicised it. Omagh and Mountfield but it's not that.