Nigerian email scam targets Irish speakers

Posted on Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 01:56 AM

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A so-called "Nigerian scam" is doing the round via email targeting native Irish speakers. The email promises an unlikely sum of money to the email recipient if they send on their personal banking details. The the scam is written in Irish.

According to the Irish Times the email's heading reads "An raibh Roghnaithe Comhghairdeas leat Seoladh R-phost a fháil £888,446.00 Ó Náisiún Aontaithe!”

Professor of translation studies at Dublin City University, Dr Michael Cronin says the fluency of the Irish is impressive but it's unlikely that the con-artists are actually Irish speaking.

He said "The funny thing about it is, it’s fairly good. There’s quite a lot of repeated mistakes in it, which means it reads like something fed into a machine translation package, but with a much higher standard than you’d normally get. It looks like somebody who speaks Irish had a look at it."

According to the e-mail, the United Nations is offering the lucky recipient £888,446 about €1 million – if they supply a bank account details.

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biggles008 | Dec 31, 2010, 10:28 AM EST

If you ever see the word " FREE ", call the police.

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Towngate | Dec 30, 2010, 05:14 PM EST

New inventions and developments are described in the LIVING Language of their inventors,etc.,where-ever in the world they occur. Only upstart nations with serious inferiority issues, feel the need to copycat terms and 'translate' them into their 'imagined - makey-uppie' language!

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sirpeter | Dec 26, 2010, 10:57 PM EST

Creakinggate...It's not even the new year yet and you're annoying me..Every word in every language is makey-uppie...is not Airport,Shop and Telephone makey-uppie?,so every language in the world should use Airport,Shop and Telephone to describe these things?.so you think English was the first language to use words to describe these?When new things need words to describe them,Irish is not allowed,but every other language is allowed to make up a word...Do you ever listen to yourself? Do i have to spend 2011 educating ya.It's like teaching remedial class,only harder..you're a kind of a mix between English and Irish...Kind of a hybrid sort of a creature...Wrong on both sides of the Irish sea.

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Towngate | Dec 23, 2010, 02:41 PM EST

An Scama Nigereacht? ......Surely not! Probably the same clown who invents all those ridiculous makey-uppie 'irish' words for things that didn't even exist when the language was being spoken, such as Aerphort, siopa, telephon, etc. where perfectly good words exist to describe them. No wonder the nigerian chap thinks the irish speakers are fair game for 'an schammanacht mor'.

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