Cork TD's accent makes him an unexpected star of Jamaican social media

Thomas Gould is no stranger to online fame — his impassioned speeches on the Gaza genocide have regularly gone viral — but a Dáil exchange on the housing crisis has excited Jamaican social media.

Thomas Gould. File picture: Dan Linehan

Similarities between Caribbean and Irish accents noted in a widely shared reel has made a Cork TD an unexpected star of Jamaican social media.

Thomas Gould, Sinn Féin TD for Cork North Central, is no stranger to online fame — his impassioned speeches on the Gaza genocide have regularly gone viral — but a Dáil exchange on the housing crisis has excited Jamaican social media.

“Do yer job and build houses,” bellows Mr Gould at the Government as the clip begins, perhaps channelling his fellow northsider Roy Keane, even if it might seem churlish to point out that, technically, it is not the job of legislators to build houses.

The Knocknaheeny native unleashes a spectacular rant at the Government’s “new shiny booklet, it looks great, 140 pages, 140 pages, right”, and many Jamaicans marvelled at how local he sounded to them.

One commenter on X said: “I looked at the screen with intensity because I was certain I could hear Jamaican (I’m Jamaican) … but saw this white gentleman … soooooo confused”.

Another added: “I’ve seen a lot of videos surfacing that show similarities between the Cork accent and Jamaican accent. I didn’t realise how similar they sounded!” 

Linguists have long believed that the West Country accents of 17th and 18th century English soldiers and sailors mingled with those of Cork and Kerry people to produce the modern lilt.

Those same Devon and Cornwall dialects travelled to the Caribbean, too, where they mixed with the voices of West African slaves and Irish indentured servants, creating the Creole patois of Jamaica.

Despite the 2001 claims of Killavullen author Seán O’Callaghan in his book To Hell or Barbados, the Irish in the Caribbean were never slaves, but rather many were indentured servants, and some were the overseers and administrators of slave plantations.

The meme of the Irish slaves has been embraced in recent years by some of Donald Trump’s Irish American supporters, but indentured servants remained human in the eyes of the law, and on completion of their often brutal sentences, were free.

African slaves, however, were considered chattel, no better than animals, the ‘property’ of their ‘owners’ from birth until death.

Mr Gould told The Echo he was delighted to see people learning about history and the ties between countries through similar dialects.

“The Cork accent is the greatest in the world, probably followed closely by the Jamaican one,” he said.

“As a lover of Bob Marley, it’s great to be reminded of the close ties between our accents although he might beat me on the singing.

“The northside of Cork has a distinct accent and as a proud Norrie, I’m delighted to see it’s gone global.”