‘Irish Can’t Verbalise Between Tree And Three’

at

Grahame-Morris-1615-newdailyGrahame Morris

True, in fairness.

Newstalk reports:

“An advisor to the Australian Liberal Party has launched an anti-Irish tirade, after members of the opposition called for a vote on gay marriage there. Speaking yesterday on Sky News Australia, Grahame Morris made several claims about Ireland and the Irish people.”

“‘The trigger was a vote in Ireland – I love the Irish and half the parliament’s full of Irishmen, but these are people who can’t grow potatoes, they’ve got a mutant lawn weed as their national symbol and they can’t verbalise the difference between a tree and the number three,’ he said.”

“Mr Morris was complaining after a member of the opposition, Tanya Plibersek, had said her party was going to put up a vote on same-sex marriage, following the vote here.”

Jaykers.

‘They can’t grow potatoes, and have a weed as their national symbol’ Australian advisor launches anti-Irish tirade (Newstalk)

Howard advisor slams same-sex marriage debate (The New Daily)

Previously: In The Middle Of A Chain Reaction

How Low Can Australia Go?

Pic: ABC

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127 thoughts on “‘Irish Can’t Verbalise Between Tree And Three’

    1. Annie

      Whatever about this Aussie luminary’s rant, I am quite concerned as to his genetic heritage. He doesn’t appear to have been blessed by Mother Nature herself but hey he does look the part. Swings and roundabouts I guess…

    1. John E. Bravo

      It did make me laugh to see Australian media wringing their hands that they’d appear less liberal than Ireland.

      1. Paolo

        Australia appears less liberal than most “western” countries, in fairness. They have lurched a few steps to the right in the last decade.

        1. John E. Bravo

          That’s what I mean. As long as I’ve been aware of it, Australia has had a public image of robust conservativism, xenophobia and excessive masculinity and its heart.

    1. Martin Heavy-Guy

      I hear they can’t even verbalise the difference between ‘beer’ and ‘coffee’.

  1. scottser

    patient in a sydney hospital: nurse, did i come here to die?
    nurse: no lovey, you came here yisterdie.

    *gets coat, knowing that humour today will be ‘tin’ on the ground

  2. dylad

    Note the inflection. Aussies always go down at the start of a sentence, which is appropriate.

      1. John E. Bravo

        Feck sake! I was trying to embed A Flight of the Conchords video – that’s the kind of up-to-the-minute, tech-savvy humour that’s become my stock in trade. Move over Spitting Image, Halls Pictorial Weekly, and Punch, there’s a new kid in town.

        If anyone knows how to embed, could they tell me.

  3. Rob_G

    Well, I suppose that makes you a descendant of criminals who couldn’t grow potatoes properly, then.

  4. ahyeah

    My favourite part when he was backing up his claim that the Australian electorate isn’t ready for same sex marriage – “if you run around the Bush and talk to people”…that fat cnut hasn’t run around anywhere in at least 20 years.

    1. Stephanenny

      Can’t believe this is the only comment pointing that out. Has anyone ever seen a shamrock on a government document that wasn’t related to aer lingus or Patricks day? Meanwhile the harp is feckin everywhere! It’s on the money lads!

  5. Mr. T.

    Australians are parliamentary cuckolded. A political bullock.

    Their parliament can and has been dissolved by a little old lady 12,000 miles away in England. They’re hen-pecked.

    To hear them slag off other nations, especially on anything cultural amuses me.

    1. Don Pidgeoni

      “Their parliament can and has been dissolved by a little old lady 12,000 miles away in England. They’re hen-pecked.”

      The Governor-General dissolves parliament, except one time when it was the PM who did it. The Queen has nothing to do with it,

        1. Mr. T.

          Might well be a rant but the facts are widely known among historians. The CIA ousted the Australian PM by using the British influence of the Governor-General, Kerr.

          It’s undisputed fact, just not reported by most commercial media.

          So again I say, they are political cuckolds.

      1. Mr. T.

        You do know that the Governor-General answers to the Queen don’t you. He is the British Royal’s representative in Australia. The same as the Lord Lieutenant in Ireland following the Act of Union.

        Read up on how the Australian Parliament in the 1970s was dissolved by Brits on behalf of the CIA.

        John Pilger…

        http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/23/gough-whitlam-1975-coup-ended-australian-independence

        General background on Wikipedia…

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gough_Whitlam

      2. Mr. T.

        The British and Americans conspired to subvert the Australian parliament in the 1970s and any Australian who bothers to read a book or two knows it.

        Read up on Gough Whitlam.

          1. Mr. T.

            Australia is not independent:

            “On 11 November – the day Whitlam was to inform parliament about the secret CIA presence in Australia – he was summoned by Kerr. Invoking archaic vice-regal “reserve powers”, Kerr sacked the democratically elected prime minister. The “Whitlam problem” was solved, and Australian politics never recovered, nor the nation its true independence.”

          2. Don Pidgeoni

            The Queen runs M15?! AND the CIA?!!! She has the best job!

            Best put down the John Pilger book for a while there T

          3. Mr. T.

            You know full well what I mean Don. You seem to be very upset that Australia is under the thumb of the UK.

          4. Don Pidgeoni

            Not upset, just laughing at you because you’ve have read a Noam Chomksy book and an article in the Guardian and are now an expert in Australian constitutional matters.

            And Oz, and Nz for that matter, are quite firmly under the control of America not the UK. It hasn’t been the UK for ages.

          5. Frilly Keane

            Imagine 007
            With an accent like Alf’s
            And M
            Sounding like Dame Ends

            Naaahh

        1. Odis

          Giving us the benefit of your broad based knowledge and equally wide intellect there m8?

          1. Formerly known as @ireland.com

            Malcolm Fraser, the Liberal PM who won the election after the ‘coup’, died recently. He spent recent years fighting against the policies of the current Liberal leadership. It tells you a lot about how far to the right the current mob has lurched.

  6. Frilly Keane

    He’s right

    We can’t grow spuds for shit

    A box of new Cyprus spuds here
    Crying ta’be boiled
    And drowned again
    In butter n’salt

    Skins n’all lads
    Skins n’all

    1. Joe the Lion

      Haha the horror the horror

      I’ve grown great spuds the last few years Frilly key is to only put them in the soil when it’s dry even if late in the year I think and lots of earthing up

      1. Frilly Keane

        Yeah

        Washing the pot out afterwards
        Is about as much manual labour I exert when it comes to my dinner

  7. John E. Bravo

    Actually, it’s worth challenging this tree/three business, because it’s often asserted, but rarely valid.

    Firstly, there are obvious etymological reasons involving transpositions and words from Irish to English. It’s a bit more widespread than, but has the same usage as “grab a tay”, for instance; and in both instances probably suggests a stronger connection to Latin languages than Anglo Saxon (Tres/Thé).

    Also, there’s massive variation in the way th is voiced even in countries where native speaking goes back further than a few generations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_English_%E2%9F%A8th%E2%9F%A9

    specifically

    “Old English

    Thus English inherited a phoneme /θ/ in positions where other West Germanic languages have /d/ and most other Indo-European languages have /t/: English three, German drei, Latin tres.

    In Old English, the phoneme /θ/, like all fricative phonemes in the language, had two allophones, one voiced and one voiceless, which were distributed regularly according to phonetic environment.

    [ð] (like [v] and [z]) was used between two voiced sounds (either vowels or voiced consonants).
    [θ] (like [f] and [s]) was spoken in initial and final position, and also medially if adjacent to another unvoiced consonant.

    Although Old English had two graphemes to represent these sounds, ⟨þ⟩ (thorn) and ⟨ð⟩ (eth), it used them interchangeably, unlike Old Icelandic, which used ⟨þ⟩ for /θ/ and ⟨ð⟩ for /ð/.”

    1. Ultach

      Ye thook de wurds right outa me mout.
      Also, could Grahame Morris be descended from the Tyrone Morris/Ó Muirgheasa connection? And can Australians not spell Graham?

  8. zer0

    I think its pretty big and clever how a lot of responses to this are just using the same level of lazy stereotyping as he did. Well done guys.

    1. Formerly known as @ireland.com

      @Zer0
      +1

      Just like Bono/Ronan Mullen/[Redacted] don’t represent all Irish people, Grahame Morris doesn’t represent all Aussies.

      Yes, many older Aussies were raised with racist views about the Irish, along with many other races, but more intelligent people have moved on. Let’s not fall to his level of ignorance.

      1. Paolo

        Yes, many older Aussies were raised with racist views about the Irish, along with many other races, but more intelligent people have moved on.

        That’s why they have thousands of migrants in concentration camps in the middle of the Pacific, they are ripping up huge areas of farmland for mining and they are the exporting vast amounts of carbon all over the world.

        1. Formerly known as @ireland.com

          @Paolo

          Unfortunately, you are correct. The racism has moved on from the Irish to other people. We have a nutty government, that uses fear of terrorism and the Murdoch press to poison the minds of some of the people.

    1. Lindyloola

      Can you throw a cupla Sheila’s on the Barbie there love? I’ve no ideaR how ta cook dese Potato things…
      I’m hungover tree

  9. Karen

    I disagree, as an Irishwoman I feel he is very very wrong. Firstly, it is below the belt to use the Irish Famine as a joke. That was a dark period in our history when over a million people died in our small country. As a national symbol, the shamrock is no better or worse than many national symbols, and to be honest, if you judge a people, in this day and age on something like that then you display your own ignorance. As far as the pronunciation of three, that’s dependent on local accents, I have no difficulty saying it correctly, nor have most of the people I speak to daily, however, once again, that’s hardly a valid measurement of a nation’s capabilities. If I stooped to this politician’s level, I could make comments about the Australian accent, but I know better than to use that as judgement of a people’s sensibility and compassion for fellow humans. I am incredibly proud of what our nation did for equality in this referendum and of the example we have shown to the world.

  10. Grouse

    Does he think a shamrock is a four-leafed clover? A variation that may be caused by a recessive gene in some clovers. That’s the only way I can make sense of the “mutant” thing.

    1. Stephanenny

      Also worth noting that clover isn’t a weed, it’s deliberately included in some grass seed (mostly agricultural) for its nitrogen fixing qualities which help other plants to grow. (knew I’d use that A2 in ages Science one day)

    2. Anne

      Four leaf clovers are rare due to the fibonacci sequence.

      Here ya go –
      http://www.nauticus.org/exhibits/fibonacci-forecourt
      4 is not a Fibonacci number.

      The Fibonacci sequence is found nearly everywhere in nature. We will explore the Golden Ratio (1.618003398875…), a number derived by dividing two consecutive Fibonacci numbers and explore its role in nature.

  11. Formerly known as @ireland.com

    Wow. I don’t see this story on any of the mainstream media sites I have checked. Graeme Morris is a tool (you can see that). He is showing his true colours here – a bigot. It shows where Tony Abbott gets lots of his ideas from.

    Unfortunately, Tony Abbott is PM, even though many Aussies think he is a fool. The Aussie Labor party were divided, ripping themselves apart over who should be leader – Gillard or Rudd.

    The Australian recession is coming, because these fools are in charge.

    I have seen plenty of positive references to Ireland’s referendum in the media. Yes, some references were of a priest ridden conservative country. But the referendum has proved that these images are out of date.

    Yes, Abbott and Howard have held Australia back. With a bit of luck, the next government will allow Australia to catch up.

  12. Formerly known as @ireland.com

    I have emailed my local MP, who happens to be a member of Morris’ Liberal Party, asking for his response to the statement, and asking which Government department I should be complaining to.

  13. Quint

    He’s actually right about the mutant weed and the tree/three thing. We’re not bad at the potatoes, though.

  14. JunkFace

    Australians have worse disabled mouths than the Irish, when it comes to pronunciation of English words. They mangle up way more words. Almost sounds like Northern Irish accents sometimes, which is the lowest of them all. Ha ha ha!

    I’ve had to practice separating three from tree when speaking, after working in the USA and getting stick over it. Its not that difficult.

  15. Continuity Jay-Z

    Ironic considering he is descended from the worst scum we had to export up here in the Northern Hemisphere.

    Australia is a cultural vacuum; devoid of any learning.

    1. Mikeyfex

      Hi Continuity Jay-Z, I got the contract for the painting of the Great Wall and I could really do with a brush that size, where did you get it?

  16. Laguna

    I don’t believe there is a “th” sound in Irish (Irish Gaelic). I’ve heard the singer, Enya, who is a native Irish speaker , and whose first language is Irish, say “tru” for “through.”

    1. P. Healy

      The closest in Gaeilge is the ‘th’ sound in “tá” which is pronounced “thaw”; it’s the Anglo types who insist on pronouncing it “taw”. They’d be the same people, of course, who say teeshock. Actually, now that I think of it there’s a certain interdental fricative action going on with ‘d’ sounds as well, as in “dorcha”, 7rl.

      1. Sinabhfuil

        But the ‘th’ in ‘tá’ is not correctly pronounced in the same way as the soft English ‘thaw’, with the tongue flattened against the front teeth, but with a plosive ‘th’ made by detaching the tongue from the ridge behind the front teeth and the back of the front teeth. It’s not the same as the ‘t’ sound in ‘taw’ either, which is made by an explosion of breath with the tongue *between* that ridge and the front teeth.
        The typically Irish tree trough tought dese dere and dose heard in the speeches of many beloved politicians is the English ‘t’ and ‘d’, not the ‘th’ and ‘d’ sounds of the Irish language as spoken by native speakers.

  17. TheBeef

    I particularly like how he starts with ‘I love the Irish….but….’ which is akin to ‘I’m not racist but..’

  18. dereviled

    You guys.
    It’s pronounced ‘chree’.
    And we do go on about shamrocks quite a bit, a lot more than harps in fairness.
    So in the spirit of transglobal inter communication I sent Graham an e-mail with a picture of a freckle ar mo thóin that looks like Ireland.
    Yizzer welcome.

  19. Douger

    I love the Australians and half of Australia is full of mutant Irishmen and they can’t verbalise the difference between a mate and a mite

  20. Owen

    Potatoes have always been best suited for hotter climates. I gather he is taking a punch at the famine, which we all know had nothing to do with growing potatoes and more stealing them. Tree and Three are hard in many European accents (give them a go..). And the Shamrock is not our national symbol. Just cause the yanks think it is does not make it so. We have a coat of arms. The harp.

    So, as if we needed proof….. he is an idiot.

  21. ricky connolly

    And yet even we, barbarians who cannot distinguish between voiceless alveolar stop and voiceless dental fricative, even we recognise basic civil rights and vote for their incorporation into our constitution

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