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Jupath Posted 21 years ago
Vocabulary

A question about an old English conversation

0 Hi, 02br
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00Reading an Irish fairy tales collection I came across a highly interesting conversation. It drives me crazy because I don’t really understand the point of it althought it seems to be very simple. (The tales were collected in the 19 century.) 02br
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00This is the dialogue: 02br
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00"Have you ever seen a fairy or such like?" I asked the old man in County Sligo. 02br
00"Amn’t I annoyed with them" was the answer. 02br
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00I guess the old man’s answer is a declarative sentence, despite it he used inversion. Why? I can’t comprehense the meaning of his response either. He was not annoyed with the fairies so he had seen them or the fairies were not annoyed with him? Or maybe, does it mean anything else? I don’t know. And what about "Amn’t I"? It seems very strange to me. Isn’t it false? Or it was not false in old English? 02br
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00Thank you for yor help in advance! 0-
  

Top answer

0'Annoyed with' here means 'continually bothered by'. So he is answering that indeed he has seen a lot of them. ' 02br 02br 00'Amn't' is the contraction for 'Am I not', of course.

— Mister Micawber

  • 0'Annoyed with' here means 'continually bothered by'.
  • So he is answering that indeed he has seen a lot of them.
  • ' 02br 02br 00'Amn't' is the contraction for 'Am I not', of course.
  • Still current English, I believe, though perhaps used only in dialect.
  • 02br 02br 02br 00There may be further comments forthcoming, Jupath.
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9 Answers
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0'Annoyed with' here means 'continually bothered by'. So he is answering that indeed he has seen a lot of them. I think it is an exclamation rather than a question: 'I just won the lottery, and am I not delighted!' 02br
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00'Amn't' is the contraction for 'Am I not', of course. Still current English, I believe, though perhaps used only in dialect. 02br
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0 If I understand correctly, it means that he has seen a lot of them but they haven’t bothered him, doesn’t it? To see a fairy is all in the day's work. 0-
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0I don't read it that way-- 'annoyed' is 'bothered'-- they bother him, though perhaps no more than mosquitos. 0-
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0Oh, I think I already understand. I got confused by to see "not" in the sentence that’s why I thought he wasn’t bothered by them. 02br
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00Thank you Mister Micawber! 0-
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0 01blockquote
00"Have you ever seen a fairy or such like?" I asked the old man in County Sligo. 12br
10"Amn’t I annoyed with them" was the answer. 12blockquote
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00I've heard 'amn't' in an Irish context. 02br
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00"Have you ever seen a fairy, or anything like it?" 02br
00"(Indeed I have.) In fact, t
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0 My two cents. 02br
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00Have you ever seen a fairy or anything like it? 02br
00(Seen one? You must be joking.) (It should be obvious that) they bother me all the time. 02br
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00CJ 0-
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0Thank you for your explanations! This dialogue became clear to me. 050010id1
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am i not annoyed with them- i am annoyed with them. i want nothing to do with them.
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0It's interesting for me because I 've never heard such an answer before.0-
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