What language is spoken in Dublin?

Under Article 8 of the Constitution, Irish is the national and first official language, which is why every sign in Dublin is bilingual, usually with the Irish on top or in italics. This creates two traps for first-timers. When a Dublin Bus route heads into the city centre, its screen reads An Lár (on LAWR), and visitors at Dublin Airport regularly watch the right bus pull away because they were looking for the word 'Centre'. The second trap is on pub toilet doors: Fir means men and Mná (m-NAW) means women, and the Mná door has caught out tourists in Temple Bar for decades. You will rarely hear Irish spoken anywhere in the city. The Gaeltacht areas, where it is still an everyday community language, are in Galway, Kerry and Donegal, three hours or more from O'Connell Street. That said, a 'Go raibh maith agat' to a barman in Stoneybatter tends to earn a grin, sometimes a reply in Irish, so the five syllables are worth learning.

The real learning curve is the English. Dubliners talk quickly and often turn 'th' into 't', so 'thirty' comes out as 'tirty'. Dublin slang will confuse Americans more than Irish ever will. 'Grand' means fine, and 'You're grand' from a server at Bewley's on Grafton Street means 'no bother, don't worry about it'. 'What's the craic?' (crack) means 'what's new?', and anything 'deadly' is excellent. The jacks is the toilet, a yoke is any object whose name escapes the speaker, and 'giving out' means complaining, so a Dubliner giving out about the 46A bus is moaning, not handing anything over. 'Half seven' means 7:30, never 6:30, which matters when you've booked a table in Portobello. 'Thanks a million' is ordinary politeness, not gushing. Skip the Irish phrasebook in the Terminal 2 shop: ten slang words will do more for you on Grafton Street.

The last hurdle is placenames, and mispronouncing them on the DART marks you out quickly. Dún Laoghaire is 'dun LEERY', Ranelagh is 'RAN-uh-la', and in everyday speech Phibsborough shrinks to 'Phibsboro'. The Taoiseach (TEE-shuck) is the prime minister, whose parliament sits in Leinster House on Kildare Street, and the police are the Gardaí (GAR-dee). In the pub, the phrase that matters most is 'your round': Dubliners buy drinks in rounds, and accepting a cold, creamy pint of Guinness in Kehoe's on South Anne Street and never buying one back is the fastest way to lose a table's goodwill. The toast is 'Sláinte' (SLAWN-cha), said as the glasses clink over the bar noise. Locals call drizzly weather a 'soft day'. This morning would qualify, at 8°C under flat grey overcast, feeling closer to 6°C, with the pavements smelling of wet stone.