Is there cultural differences between the 4 countries of the UK?

I’m impressed that you can remember how. I don’t think that I could remember a step though I’m dyspraxia so I was particularly dreadful at it and we did it from Primary 1 or 2 up until Primary 6 I think.

British here.

😂

I’m Welsh, but do have to laugh at posters romanticising it as a country of culture and art, where everyone sings and loves poetry. Where I am the majority have no interest in this at all. Our education system is of a far lower standard than in England, as is our health. We do have beautiful countryside and coast. I agree with PPs, the only place that is vastly different to the rest of the UK is London.

We do this in Wales too.

Yes social dancing at the end of primary school, loathed at the time but comes into its own at weddings and ceilidhs.

I can’t speak for everyone but it certainly wasn’t voluntarily for me. We did Scottish country dancing in Primary, not High School but I think just about all of my classmates detested it. Though at that age the boy/girl thing, and yes we paired with the opposite sex, wasn’t really the issue. It was the dancing itself that we detested.

I was surprised to learn recently that Scottish children/teenagers (?) learn Scottish dancing in girl/boy pairs. My friend said you wouldn’t get single sex pairs (is she right?) I can’t imagine in England year 6 or older children dancing with another child voluntarily!

Happy to be corrected on all of the above!

The Welsh and Scottish were very involved in the transatlantic slave trade, including keeping slaves, and colonised countries.

www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/article/section/history-of-slavery/scotland-and-slavery/

The Northern Irish are about as different as you can get from the English!! More in common with the Scots perhaps but MUCH less so with the Welsh.
So yes, all very different.
Great Britain is essentially Scotland &’Wales & England - the mainland- while U.K. is all 4 nations - at least for now…

or your actions in Northern Ireland which are not 100s of years ago???
That’s the problem when there are no apologies or acceptance of responsibly- makes it hard for anyone to forgive or move on.

I am Northern English and have Irish and Scottish grandparents. It is blurred lines.

I don't feel culturally linked to London, the monarchy is a mild source of anachronistic annoyance and Radio Four leaves me cold - it is much further away culturally and geographically than say Glasgow. However I think this is more related to being brought up working class in the North during the 80s and hearing stories of (Southern) English perceived persecution of Northern cities.

Welsh not British. If someone thought I was English, I'd be highly offended. Thankfully things are different here, and we won't have GCSEs either, as of next year.

Wales has a wonderful, rich history and culture. Shame about the English trying to eradicate it.

There are loads of born & raised Londoners in London but people seem to not realise this for whatever reason.

I think England is more outwardly class obsessed & controversially people are more uptight & less funny than the other nations.

I’m Welsh. Moved to England at 15 and Scotland at 23 (never been to NI). I’ve not noticed any particular differences. I did live briefly in London and would say that feels like a different world to the rest of the UK, however.

Just ask what the name of a small single portion of bread baked in a round formation is called and you will see just how different all areas of the UK and regions within are.

But we have much much more that unites us than divides us, one of them being we in the UK like to massively focus on our divsions. Like a lot of dysfunctional families who gripe widely about each other, when an outsider tries to join in, they are definitely not allowed.

As for the single portion of bread, it's a cob.

Hmmm can't agree with most of this

Yes it varies by area but you could say the same about anywhere else - the culture of Tower hamlets is going to be pretty different to the culture of Oxford or Brighton.

You could break "different lifestyles and experinces" down to different neighbourhoods only streets away from each other in pontcanna vs Riverside but that wasn't what the op was asking - they were talking on a national level/ the countries as wholes and it is undisputable fact- there are NO grammar schools in the whole of Wales and, while YOU might know a number of people who went/go to private school but statistically,, in the country as a whole, that's unusual - according to This there are only 19 private schools in the whole of Wales- and those are concentrated in certain areas (mainly Monmouth and cardiff) so there are whole counties in Wales without any private schools at all. The same article says that 5 counties in Wales didn't have any children educated privately.

So instead of 7-10% of kids going to private school and another 10-15% going to grammar, 99-100% of kids in many many areas will go to the local state school regardless of their family background. That is going to have a huge impact on the way people interact and grow up.

As for the rest - that's your experience -I can only report my own and say that, despite of course understanding growing up that some families were richer/poorer than others and some parents did different jobs, I didn't have anything like the concept of defined social "class" that ALL the new English friends/acquaintances I met at uni seemed to have an inherent understanding of, and even now that I "get" it, it's not something that figures in my daily life or I ever discuss and think about - whereas the extent to which the topic is discussed on here (not to mention all the newspaper articles, books etc) on it suggests there are a lot of people in England who are still very interested in it.

Just one example -it's weird to me that riding/keeping horses is seen as a middle or upper class activity when every single person I know who rides regularly is very much not posh or well off at all, just live in the countryside!

There are many Londoners who are London born and bred and have family from London, it didn't used to be a global city and the people who are not originally from London just added to the population, I don't think that means it's devoid of Londoners who are not global citizens! Also, DH and I are born and bred Londoners but have a very diverse heritage between us. I am British, English but have recent Danish family and still visit extended family, I also have Irish heritage as does DH and he has an ethnic heritage that it s not really found in many parts of the UK. We therefore don't see ourselves as these English oppressors as our families were pretty much not English, in London that isn't really particularly uncommon!

they're probably English tbf 😁

This is a huge generalisation. It very much depends where you live in Wales. I know plenty of people who have been to and who send their children to private school, and plenty more who use private health care.

It's also completely untrue that there's less focus on class - there's plenty of focus on the differences between the working classes and areas of deprivation of the valleys and certain areas of Cardiff compared to the middle and professional classes of other areas of Cardiff and parts of the vale of Glamorgan for example, and this is played out all over south wales.

ffs 🤦‍♀️

Of course there are cultural differences. That's like asking if there are cultural differences between Texas and California, Greece and Denmark, America and Canada, or Russia and Ukraine.
Sometimes they are small and subtle, like scones and jam, sometimes they are so big people die for them- get the fuck out of Ukraine Russia.

We are a melting pot of historic cultures here in the UK, a shared and often bloody history that unites us and divides us at the same time. Devon and Cornwall take their scones differently, but if anyone told them they had to eat them without jam, they would join together very quickly to put a stop to that nonsense. And that's just a small region, of one country within the UK- imagine the rest of the countries.

In a Scot living in London. It's so different ! Scotland is much more egalitarian. I think that is I part to do with the shear amount of wealth down here. It just doesn't exist where I come from so there isn't the same schism between rich and not. Plus there is not as obvious a class system. Everyone down here think I'm from a council estate. I'm not. I am horridly middle class but have. Scottish accent.

I'd say there are actually five counties though. England Scotland, wales , n.i and London. London is a world of its own. Go beyond the m25 and you are in an alien environment. I don't think of living in England here as it's a world city . Few people here 'come ' from London. Just outside of it I feel very Scottish! I feel like an outsider in a country that is foreign to me. Attitudes are very conservative and every is so polite. Back home we are blunt and took the point. Gets me into trouble sometimes.