September 28th, 2006

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Travel
6 Comments »

Dublin Taxi Drivers and Thick Accents

Taxi drivers seem to suffer nearly as much scorn as lawyers in our culture. Everybody, whether they live in London, Toronto or Nipising, seems to think that their taxi drivers are the worst. Check out Joe’s recent post about trying to get a taxi with booster seats in Ireland:

When I arrived at the rank the first taxi driver refused to take us because he didn’t have booster seats for my children (aged 3 and 5, no that he asked or cared). The rest of the rank then proceeded to refuse in the same way with mutterings of “2000 euro fines”. In the end we abandoned the rank and got my sister to drive in and pick us up.

That just became reason #35 on the con side of parenting.

Regardless, it reminded me of a story about taxis and living in Dublin. Most taxi drivers are from the north side of the city centre, and have a remarkably thick accent (and plenty of slang). Multiply the accents in The Commitments by five, and you’ll get a sense of what I’m talking about. Of course, over time, you get accustomed to these accents, and can more or less understand them.

We didn’t have a car in Ireland, but we’d often have visitors coming over from Canada. We’d usually go out and meet them at the airport, and take the taxi back into town together. I’d usually sit in the front seat while our guests would sit in the back. I’d have a chat with the driver about football or traffic or the EU or whatever he wanted to complain about that day.

The Canadians in the back seat would eventually stop their own conversation and listen intently to our chat. Eventually, one of them would always turn to Julie and say something like, “wow, Darren learned to understand a new language”. In their defence, to the unintroduced ear, the most intense accents can sound nearly
unintelligible.

Comments: 6 Responses so far

Meg
September 28th, 2006
10:14 am

I don’t know what it is, but Irish and Scottish accents never throw me, no matter how thick and fudgy they might be. I always hear the words quite precisely.

But I think that has something to do with having a heavily Anglophile household and being only second-gen Canadians out of Belfast.

[Reply]

John
September 28th, 2006
10:58 pm

Ah yes the Dublin brogue! It is becoming rarer these days as we have a very large immigrant population now, as well as always attracting other Irish people from around the country to the capital. I’m third (maybe fourth?) generation Dub which is becoming rare these days. Next time you are in Dublin Darren, your taxi driver is as likely to have an African or Eastern European accent as he is to have a Dublin one ;-)

[Reply]

bobby
September 28th, 2006
11:30 pm

Very very condescending Darren…

[Reply]

darren
September 29th, 2006
6:37 am

Bobby: Condescending to who, exactly? And why?

[Reply]

Rayne
September 29th, 2006
8:39 pm

When I was straight out of high school I worked in high end china sales in Sydney Reynolds for awhile. One day in the shop an older woman approached me and appeared to be asking me something that I didn’t understand.. I first thought she was a little bit gone (alzheimers or something), and was asking me something in her native tongue not realising we spoke english in Victoria.

The first time I asked her to repeat herself, I might have got away with pretending to have not heard clearly. The second time I asked we might have both laughed it off…. but it took a third time of me asking her to repeat her question for my ear to finally adjust, and my brain to realise that she was indeed speaking English…

After answering her question I stammered out an apology and felt obliged to add that I had never heard a Scottish accent quite as strong as hers was. She had a little laugh, and told me that she was visiting from some small isolated town that I’ve long since forgotten the name of.

Growing up in Victoria I thought I had heard a Scottish accent but this experience was a startling revelation of the strength of a rural brogue.

[Reply]

Dublin Taxi Drivers and Thick Accents (Taxi Blog)
January 19th, 2007
2:20 pm

[...] The Canadians in the back seat would eventually stop their own conversation and listen intently to our chat. Eventually, one of them would always turn to Julie and say something like, “wow, Darren learned to understand a new language”. In their defence, to the unintroduced ear, the most intense accents can sound nearly unintelligible. http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archives/2006/09/dublin-taxi-drivers-and-thick-accents.html [...]

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