Deer

For the first two weeks that I was in L'Derry, I thought the Irish were obsessed with deer. Everyone around me was saying, "that grocery store has many deer," and "France has too many deer." When I got to the grocery store, I wandered around the meat department, puzzled by the lack of deer. I wasn't actually gonna buy any, I just wanted to see if they had it. It turns out that "dear" is an Irish slang word. It means "expensive." People were actually saying, "oh, that grocery store is very dear," "France is too dear," etc.

It was my brain's way of making sense of it all. Derry folk talk fast and use a lot of slang, so for the first couple of weeks I just kind of let everything run through my head and tried to smile and nod. Of course, now that I've been in Derry for a while, it occurs to me that Derry people talk normally and Americans talk excessively slowly. Hmm...thinking about this leads me to wonder what else I misunderstood during my first couple of weeks. Do you think maybe that guy wasn't asking me if I wanted to buy some crack? (Another piece of Irish slang is "what's the craic?" It means "what's up?" They pronounce it: "what's the crack?")