Definition:
An informal term for a distinctive regional pronunciation, especially an Irish or Scottish accent. The term sometimes refers more specifically to the exaggerated speech patterns of the stage Irishman.
See also:
Etymology:
From the Gaelic, "shoe, legging"Examples and Observations:
- In The Irishman in London (1793), Mr. Connoolly, an inveterate snob, . . . genteely despises his Irishness and foppishly emulates the London bon ton even to the point of . . . hypercorrecting his brogue into a sillier anti-brogue. His silly pretence is constantly exploded by his blunt, honest, Irish servant:
Mr. Connoolly: Why, you scoundrel, do you want to bring a mob about us? hold your tongue about Ireland, I say--Go wait at home for me, and don't be exposing--
(J.T. Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fíor-Ghael. John Benjamins, 1986)
Murtagh Delaney: Exposing to talk of Ireland! Faith, Sir, begging your pardon, I think a man does not desarve to belong to any country, that's ashamed to own it. - "[T]here is a clear dividing line: when [Irvine] Welsh writes in his Scots brogue, his ear is unparalleled; when he writes ordinary third-person English prose, things get problematic."
(Kevin Power, "Welsh Best With an Ear to His Home Ground." The Irish Times, July 29, 2009) - "No literature, indeed, was ever so taken up with matters of speech as ours was. 'Dialect,' which attracted even our serious writers, was the accepted common ground of [American] popular humorous writing. Nothing in social life seemed so remarkable as the different forms which speech could take--the brogue of the immigrant Irish or the mispronunciation of the German, the 'affectation' of the English, the reputed precision of the Bostonian, the legendary twang of the Yankee farmer, and the drawl of the Pike County man."
(Lionel Trilling, "Mark Twain's Colloquial Prose Style," 1950)
Pronunciation: BROG
