...de Counter Punch:
“Cassidy unlocks the secret of a centuries-long infiltration of Irish into English, exactly where it would be most expected, amid the playfully subversive, syncretic, open-ended olio of slang. ‘We were not balbh (mute) in Irish,’ writes Cassidy:
‘The slang and accent of five generations and one hundred years in the tenements, working-class neighborhoods, and old breac-Ghaeltachta (Irish-English speaking districts) slums ('s lom, is a bleak exposed place) of Brooklyn and New York City held within it the hard--edged spiel (speal, cutting language) and vivid cant (caint, speech) of a hundred generations and a thousand years in Ireland: Gaeilge, the Irish language.’”
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