Vladimir Lenin, the Russian revolutionary, spoke with a Dublin accent. Well, according to Roddy Connolly, son of James, who said in a 1976 Irish Times feature that Lenin, more specifically, had a “Rathmines accent”. This was due to the fact apparently that Leinin was taught English in London (c. 1902) by an “Irish tutor, who had lived in Leinster Road”. [1]
After this was repeated in An Irishman’s Diary by Frank McNally early last year, a letter was sent into the paper by Dalton O’Ceallaigh. In it he discussed attending, in the late 1970s, a Dublin meeting organised by the Ireland-USSR Society at which Roddy Connolly spoke about his visit to the infant Soviet Union in the early 1920s. After the speech, there was a short silent film in which Roddy was shown walking across the square in front of the Winter Palace in what was then Petrograd and conversing with Lenin.
O’Ceallaigh made the point in his letter that “there was no interpreter, so they were obviously speaking in a mutually comprehensible language”. After the film, Roddy himself stated that
After Lenin’s death, the Russians, on researching his life, believed that when he was in London (he) had placed an advertisement in the London Times to the effect of “if you help teach me English, I’ll help teach you Russian”, the person who replied being a “Mac” somebody or other was thus a Scot. But Roddy said that, on the contrary, it must have been an Irishman. [2]
The memoirs of Lenin’s wife Nadezhda Krupskaya offer some indirect support for Connolly’s claim:
“When we arrived in London we found we could not understand a thing, nor could anybody understand us […] It amused Vladimir Ilyich, but at the same time put him on his mettle. He tackled English in earnest. We started going to all kinds of meetings, getting as close as we could to the speaker and carefully watching his mouth. We went fairly often to Hyde Park at the beginning. Speakers there harangue the strolling crowds on all kinds of subjects […] We particularly liked one such speaker – he had an Irish accent, which we were better able to understand.” [3]
On a side note, what exactly is a Rathmines accent?
Frank McNally suggests it was forerunner to the Dart accent which came to public attention first in the early 1990s. The earliest reference to such a thing that I could find is 1908. D.J. O’Donoghue, in a recollection piece about George Bernard Shaw, spoke about how Shaw had “possessed a ‘Rathmines accent’ which he never entirely lost”. [4]
A jokes corner from The Irish Press in 1936 had this to say:
The Radio Correspondent of The Irish Times in 1946 suggested that the “broad or moderately broad ‘a’ sound (is) a defect characterestic of that mincing, effeminate speech known in Dublin as the Rathmines accent and in Belfast as the Malone Road accent”. [5]
Two years later, another explanation on the accent was given:
Many of the Radio Eireann announcers are guilty of frequent lapses into the genteel, mincing manner of speaking known as the Rathmines accent. One announcer keeps referring to Pakistan as ‘Pawkistan’, several of them talk about ‘fawther’, [for ‘father’] ‘curless’ for ‘careless’, and worst of all ‘infearm’ for ‘infirm'”. [6]
It would seem people tried to use the ‘Rathmines accent’ to get into pubs. As illustrated by this 1942 news story:
Finally, John O’Doherty in a letter to The Irish Times early last year said that the “genteel Rathmines accent was still common when I lived there in the 1960s […] it was also known as an “ORE and ORE” accent, as it was widely spoken in both Rathmines and Rathgar”. [7]
–
[1] Michael McInerney, Roddy Connolly – 60 years of political activity, The Irish Times, 08 Sep 1976.
[2] Dalton O’Ceallaigh, Letter to Editor, The Irish Times, Feb 15, 2011
[3] Nadezhda Krupskaya, Memories of Lenin (London, 1930), 65
[4] D.J. O’Donoghue, George Bernard Shaw – Some Recollections, The Irish Independent, 17 Feb 1908
[5] Radio Correspondent, Irritating mispronunciation on Radio Eireann, The Irish Times, 24 Jan 1946
[6] Anon, An Irishman’s Diary, The Irish Times, 13 Apr 1949
[7] John O’Doherty, Letter to Editor, The Irish Times, Feb 14, 2011
[…] a few seconds of starting a conversation. But what if you were talking to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin? This article, which comes from the brilliant Come Here To Me blog, and was spotted by my friend Naomi, raises […]
This made my day. I threw up one other story about Rathmines and the Russian revolution here: http://earlymodernjohn.wordpress.com/
Is Ross O’Carroll Kelly not the monstrous offspring of this accent? I think we should be told, Oar soart of, like, infoarmed, roysh?
Early 20th centary known as a Rathmines accent then finishing last centary as a DOIRT accent. Now I hear people calling it a DunDrummy Mummy accent.
My fave is when it’s applied to The D’Olier Street Gospel and the name comes out as The Oirish Thames.
The funniest for me was when many years ago while living abroad an Englishman who was in our crowd in the pub came over to me and suggest I go over + chat w the 2 young ones who where sitting near the pool tables. As they were nice looking I quickly took up the suggestion. After chatting for a few minutes I asked where in Britan they were from.
“Daawwlgany” I was informed.
“Where?”
“Daawwlgany”.
“Oh Delgany” I said, “we’ve one of them near Dublin too”.
“Uughh that’s where we’re, from Nowrth Wicklow”.
It was actually funny but in a sad way. To each their own I suppose.
Russian and Irish (gaelic) both – mildly unusually – have two distinct forms of consonants (russian “soft/hard”, irish “slender/broad”). The pattern is not identical between the two languages, but it’s not completely dissimilar either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_phonology#Consonants
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_phonology#Consonants
This may help explain how russians could find hiberno-english easier: When the irish were forced by history to adopt english, they tended to keep their two consonantal forms, applying them in the existing regular irish consonant-vowel agreement pattern to english words. This tends to be a very difficult part of real irish english-speaking accents / the hiberno-english dialect to fake.
Those terrible fake hollywood russian english accents probably sound as bad to russians as those terrible fake hollywood irish english ones do to irish people.
Fun fact: James Joyce and Vladimir Lenin were both in Zurich in 1917, as detailed in Tom Stoppard’s play, Travesties. So you’re telling me that had Joyce and Lenin met, they would have not only been mutually understandable in English–but that they would have both had Dublin accents?!
Bad job, Lenin, aping the Dublin bourgeoisie…
I lived in Orwell Gardens in Rathgar from 1950 to 1954. We lived with my granny in that estate which was build in 1936 and was at the lower end of the purchase house scale. The estate was in a hollow and subject to regular flooding from the Dodder. In recent times it has become gentrified. I always have great difficulty these days trying to explain the difference between Ratgar and Rawhthgawr. In my day this difference was epitomised by that between Orwell Gardens (in the former) and Orwell Park (very much in the latter). I’m sure a quick look at rateable valuations of the time would support my point. I must look it up sometime in the Gilbert. Incidentally, my granny never lost her James’s St. accent and that was never held against her, in the Gardens, at least.
This DART accent shite is getting on my nerves. It is a conceit employed by non-DART travellers and relies heavily on the Southside traffic. I have been a suburban train traveller since 1954, first on the Southside and then on the Northside. I have travelled on the DART since its inception, from Raheny into town. It is a polyclass and polyaccented means of transport, at least on the Northside.
As far as RTÉ is concerned, I well remember the mid-Atlantic accents of the team of continuity girls going back as far as the Irish television’s inauguration in 1961/2, though Lorraine Keane’s rindabites have taken this to new heights in more recent times. The latest affectation seems to be calling the real capital KOIK.
May the Good Lord preserve us from any more of this rubbish.
It’s generally accepted that the aforementioned Ross OCarroll Kelly and his ilk speak wirh a DOIRT accent. It originates from where the DART originally ran thro the coastal belt on the south side only. This was dispite the fact that there were plenty of well maintaind axis road from these areas to the city centre. Non of this should bother u as it related to southeast side far from your DNS or Orwell Grds.
V little flooding in Orwell Grds these days. This winters deluge only flooded a couple of garages + sheds at the lane end – Roddy’s place .
It originates from where the DART originally ran thro the coastal belt on the south side only.
Not sure if this is a reference to the Dublin Kingstown Railway (1834). I thought the DART ran from Howth to Bray from the beginning.
Anyway, those ilks should never be let near the DART. They should be confined to the Booterstown sloblands.
V little flooding in Orwell Grds these days.
I’m glad to hear that the gentrification has gotten rid of the flooding.
.
Nah not the gentrification (not that I’d agree there is any). The flood wall was built decades ago. Since then the street has hardly ever (prob never) been flooded. Next to the lane, where they used repair cars, floods because the drains can’t expell into the flooded river.
Gentrification….more like prices in these old, tiny houses also got caught up in the Celtic Tiger Bubble. They’re still tiny houses w a box room the size of a wardrobe in a true gentrified house (poss on Orwell Pk). Their only exceptional positive is v large gardens.
Orwell Pk has astounding houses but the road is fooked w heavy traffic. Its history is also sullied by neighbour William Martin Murphy from 1913 Lockout and 0rangeman North and his factory/dyeworks.
This DART running thro the stereo typical southside areas of Clontraf and Howth !?! No difference in personalities there from D4, just ask BOD or Gaybo/CCOB..
Castleknock is the West Berlin and likewise Ringsend / Irishtown is the Short Strand.
There’s not a north-south divide in Dublin people; it’s east-west.
I was joking about the gentrification getting rid of the flooding. It surely was the wall and the bridge was a very acceptable replacement for the stepping stones of yore. Came after my day though.
I know all about the box room. One of them was my bedroom for a few years.
Never been in a house in Orwell Park but have met one very well-off inhabitant in my day.
As far as the DART is concerned, Howth and Sutting would be exceptional. I was thinking more of Barrystown. Though I’d have to say that Malahide has gone upmarket since the DART began.
I agree the main class divide in Dublin is East West rather than North South but there is still a perception of a North South class divide, particularly among Southsiders. It was Michael Noonan (TD Limerick) who woke me up to the East West angle many years ago.
Wonderful stuff.
I’ve just spotted this as well.
http://www.drb.ie/book_news/12-02-04/The_Rathmines_Accent.aspx
Thanks. Nice spot!
More Irish revolutionary credentials. So Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov better known to history as Lenin spoke English with a “Rathmines Accent.” Well, I never! Next you’ll be telling me Freddy Engels lived with an Irish factory girl and then when she died lived with her sister!
http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2011/08/internationale.html
I think the Rathmines accent defence in 1942 was being used to claim to be a bona fide traveller, rather than any kind of secret code: it wouldn’t have worked trying one on in a pub in Donnybrook 🙂 Valid up until 1960, it appears: http://www.rossespointshanty.com/Shanty%202011/Heritage/bonafide.htm
If my memory serves me right, Séan O’Casey’s Plough and the Stars features an odd scene where a bourgeois woman is wandering through the tenements during the rising, trying to find her way back to ‘Wrathmines’. This would suggest another element of the accent stereotype, no? The replacement of the ‘r’ sound with a ‘w’. I can’t find the text online, but if someone has a copy of the play lying about, maybe you’d share the exact quote?
It’s quoted in the link I posted above, TQ.
[…] Nothing wrong with that. Just unexpected. Following his long exile in Switzerland I would have expected his English to be German accented if anything. However the idea of Lenin speaking with a Dublin accent has clearly intrigued others as this excellent and well researched post shows. […]
[…] post-Celtic Tiger, the Dublin cinema manager who was imprisoned in Dachau during WW2, Vladimir Lenin’s apparent Rathmines accent, Dublin’s first gay bar, figuring out what the shortest street was in the city, another […]
[…] https://comeheretome.com/2012/02/03/vladimir-lenin-and-the-rathmines-accent/ […]
In the Russia context although slightly off key, I would like to pose a question. In the 1950’s I was at one point a twelve year old schoolboy. As an only child, I sought entertainment in my small Bush radio. On the shortwave frequency, I took delight in scanning the foreign radio stations. One of those was called Radio Moscow. It was almost a cardinal sin in those days to fraternize with countries from behind the Iron Curtain. However, I was an avid stamp collector. I wrote and told them that I was interested in Soviet culture and I would love to add Russian stamps to my collection. For at least three years, I was bombarded with letters from Russia containing literature, stamps and postcards. The postman would say ‘another letter from Uncle Joe (Stalin)’ when he handed me the large white envelope. My teacher got ‘wind of it’ and reported it to the local Sergeant. In fairness he treated the matter with humour when questioned me. I know some of those letters were opened by the state. Does anyone know if some Government Archive may contain a trace of those long ago investigations? I would dearly wish to know.
Kitty C.
I lived in Rathmines until I was 13. We had elocution lessons at the Convent.
To this day I still say Fawther, Wrathmines, and Pawkistan.
Happy day.
[…] leader petting cats do at least give him a foothold in the latest Internet trends. Irish people delight in the claim that he spoke English with a posh Dublin accent, supposedly acquired from a tutor in […]
We lived in a rented flat in Orwell Rd and would play football till dark in Orwell Park till after dark.
I was just telling my wife today how we used to jump our bikes in Orwell Park.
This would be late 50s to early 60s.
My first wear was on a bench in Orwell Park.
The most extraordinary accent has to be Rachel Allen’s. It sounds as if it was cut up and reassembled.