Some of the conversations I had in Belfast were by no means as simply heard as they may read - although generally people made allowances for me and saved the poetry for each other. But the accent alone could be no end of a mystery. It's simply enough to come to terms with feg and geg for cigarette and joke, but some of the pronunciation foxed me for months, and even then I couldn't get a foothold on some accents. People speak differently, I was told, even in this part of Belfast or that. Nothing to do with Protestants and Catholics, who talk alike despite little opportunity to hear each other.
Film is fillum and flowers are flahrs without regard to tribe.
But Catholics from the Falls swore they could tell a Catholic from the Short Strand, a mile away, by the accent. Poor is pure. Many Cockneys think that Northern Irish is the ugliest English to be heard, but that may be to draw attention away from their own. I found Belfast English lilting and lyrical, inventive and funny - and optimistic, because of the upward inflexion, suggesting doubt or paradox, at the end of most sentences. There is no direct translation, which is what makes it such a good word.