This section of the website is somewhat different from the rest of it. It is not really about linguistics. What you can read here is the text of a book which I began writing (about a third of it, some 50 pages can be viewed here) while collecting data for A Sound Atlas of Irish English and the book on Dublin English. It is a (hopefully) humourous account of my travels around Ireland with a tape recorder, of the people I met and of the experiences I had. Interwoven into the text, in a light-hearted manner, are some general facts about English in Ireland.
The unfortunate part of this story is that I have not been able to find a publisher for this book. I have tried every publisher in Ireland who seems to have a range of books into which this would fit. But Irish publishers are a wary lot and not very supportive. So although a book about somebody going around Ireland with a fridge sold well, it is not possible to have one about the way we use language accepted by anybody. Quel dommage, mais c’est la vie!
Taping Ireland
