For Focal Sake is the only book that celebrates ‘all’ of Ireland’s slang on a county-by-county basis. This book was written by people from around the 32 counties of Ireland who gave a focal (or two) about their county, and as the title suggests was compiled for the sake of our words (focal being the Gaelic for word). So whether you’re a BIFFO or a Blaa, a Langer or a Lilywhite, or anything else for that matter, and you have focal else to do then why not pick it up for an oul rayde. In October 2007 a competition was set up between the 32 counties of Ireland, in order to capture the various nuances of our mudder tongue. Within a matter of months there were literally thousands of entries added to it by people from all over d'Internet. The order of the counties in the book was determined by their placement on the leader-board on the 18th Feb 2008. Cork was the outright winner of the competition and as a result appears first in this book.Counties that appear earlier in this book have more entries, in proportion to the number of slang terms submitted over d'Internet. However, all counties are represented well.This book contains a general Irish slang section with a selection of choice words with 15 lessons on how we spake e. g. Lesson turteen: drunken focal Irish people have a huge variety of adjectives to describe the various stages of drunken intoxication.When they go on a ‘session’ the following words might describe the resultant state: blithero, blocked, blootered, blotto, bollock drunk, buckled, bunched, flamin’, flootered, full as a bingo bus, gallybandered, gee-eyed, in bits, in da (divine) horrors, in de baloobas, in de mowldies, in ribbons, in the gizoolies, in the rats, langered, langers, locked (out of me tree), mahawng drunk, merry, mowldy, ossified, paralatic, pissed as a fart, plastered, polluted, rat-arsed, schteamed, scuttered, sloshed, steamboats, sozzled, stotious, twisted, wasted, well-oiled and wrote off etc. and that’s just to get started! It also contains 32 chapters, one for each county, which includes a profile on the county detailing songs, nicknames, funny place names and a paragraph describing it. Following the profile is a selection of the slang submitted to slang, ie for each county (see below for examples).
