Differences (rep Ireland) Irish V UK

Do they live rurally? I can't imagine anyone i know referring to a gay couple as flatmates. I live in Dublin though, (waves to fellow south Dubliners). I agree with most of what the op says but I would add asking someone to remove their shoes on entering your house, everyone i know would consider it extremely rude to ask this, we would rather give the floors a good scrub after they left, swearing profusely all the while.

No, I was responding to @Dappy777’s somewhat condescending post about important moments in English history and how they are reflected in English literature. I’m not suggesting English people in general should have read vast amounts of Irish literature if they’re aren’t readers, but if you’re a reader, in England, who reads in English, there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be extremely well-informed about, say, the war of independence, the civil war, the Troubles (to stick to 20thc Irish history only, for argument’s sake) by reading the major Irish fiction writers and poets. If I’ve read Sassoon, Brooke, Rosenberg, Owen, as an Irish person, then Yeats is hardly a stretch for an English reader.

@turkeyboots
I know Cork city has three second-level fee paying schools, all Catholic. I also know that’s far fewer than Dublin, but the population is much smaller too. So a similar sort of vibe maybe? That’s what I’m asking pp really. What else makes SoCo Dublin different to, say, Cork?

I’m from neither city for what it’s worth, but closer to Cork. And my question was off the point of the thread, sorry.

@Scentofgeranium
Here's a list of fee paying schools, Dublin has by far the most. Outside Dublin the fee paying sector is mostly the old CoI or Quaker schools which usually offer a free fee scheme to Protestants. SoCo Dublin is a world of its own.
List of fee-charging schools in Ireland - Wikipedia share.google/KSrgL8Nm8G7Y0f7E2

I agree on the weddings and death and GAA points. Getting married older was always a thibg, my grannies were both in their late 20s when they married. Children play sports at all levels to way older than in the UK, and Irish kids rarely leave school before 18 anymore, as PP pointed out our 3rd level education rate is very high. My English sil son is leaving school for an apprenticeship aged 16 and my Irish family are horrified at the thought.
There is loads of other subtle cultural differences which trip up foreigners, but you have to live here to really feel them. Class in Ireland has much more variation too but being sound outweighs almost anything!

That’s interesting. Would you have some examples of the SoCo Dublin divide @GentlemenPreferBuzzcuts?

I know there are urban/rural differences in Ireland, but as you grew up in another city I’d have thought the lifestyle differences wouldn’t be as marked. For example, I know sending children to private schools is big in SoCo Dublin, but there are private schools in cities like Cork too.

I agree with much of what OP says.

None of my friends/ acquaintances/ even work colleagues have had children to more than one partner. Even if they’re separated and with someone new, they haven’t gone on to have another set of kids with them.

Wedding gifts- yes, money, but it’s really bad form for the couple to share who gave what. Thank you cards aren’t as much as a thing- from our (big) family, only us and another cousin bothered with them.

People are noticeably older when they get married- I’m mid 30s, but got married at 27 and my sisters in law called me a child bride. People tend to get married a bit younger in the north in the more religious Protestant denominations. Smaller weddings are more unusual- there’s definitely more of an expectation of the big, 150+ people church + nice hotel do.

I do think we think we’re friendlier than we are. Irish friendliness is very superficial- we’ll be lovely to strangers in quick interactions on public transport, in a queue or at a bar, but it’s harder to get beyond that. I remember working with Spanish and Italian colleagues who said it was actually very difficult to become “proper” friends with an Irish person as friendliness which would naturally progress to becoming friends back home didn’t follow the same rules here.

I’ve also noticed that there’s an acceptance of ripping the English which wouldn’t be accepted for literally any other nationality (except maybe Americans). I’ve heard a few younger Irish who have made the decision to move to England and upon meeting an English partner and buying a house, they give out that their children will be English and have English accents, as if this was a situation they were somehow press ganged into.

That’ll be the class thing again.
Some (higher class) UK nationals DO know about Irish history. The majority don’t though.

Yeah, we had a colleague’s brother pass away at the weekend and a lot of us went to the funeral. One of the longest funerals and the biggest funeral I’ve ever seen. We left work at 12 and just went straight home after. No expectation that we catch up on work.

The funerals thing is down to the size of the population and the fact that so many churches have graveyards that are full or the churches have been sold and turned into homes. Using Bristol as an example. It's the 10th biggest city in the UK with a population of about half a million. It has 2 council crematoria (3 if you count the one just outside in South Gloucestershire) and I believe one Muslim one (we have a big Muslim population). That's what causes the slow turnaround.
The other thing about attending funerals is that many of us in the UK struggle to get time off work to attend funerals. My employer only grants compassionate leave for attending the funeral of a parent, child ,grandparents or spouse. It's usually only one day and any more for travel is taken from valuable annual leave.

Same.

Agreed on the SoCo Dublin thing! I grew up another city in Ireland, left for decades, moved back five years ago, and an English friend who moved to Blackrock around the same is always asking me questions about the social dynamics of her area, and I have to tell her that’s not ‘my’ Ireland and functions very differently to the places I know.

Exactly. I’m always interested in the logistics which allow this to be seamlessly managed within 48 hours in Ireland, often in less, but which takes three weeks or more in England. I imagine part of it is that far more Irish people are still buried rather than cremated, and many of us have family plots, so it’s not about waiting for a crematorium slot. I wonder if the fact that priests are dying off will be what finally halts fast funerals, for those who still want a Catholic one.

And yet Irish writers write, and have always written, about Irish history or contemporary, and have chiefly written about it in English, so there’s very little excuse for a literature-attuned English person not to have encountered key moments in Irish history via Yeats, Bowen, Muldoon etc.

Culturally Catholic is very big in the northeast US and to some extent in Quebec (Quebec really massively secularised in recent decades). It’s hard to explain but you definitely know it when you see it. It’s part of people’s identity but it doesn’t mean they go to church regularly.

i grew up in the UK but in a fairly traditional Jewish family and so was also always somewhat appalled by British funerals. Jewish ones aren’t elaborate but we have strict rituals.

Gosh inheritance is certainly a topic frequently discussed in DH's family. We are in the grips of it now as FIL is old and all of this bitthers and sisters are up in arms about what might happen to a small parcel of land he owns. It is adjacent to all of theirs and they don't want to 'hear English voices' if it's passed to us 🤔
FIL is widowed and keeps shacking up with anyone who will look after him which sends them in to throes about them being 'gold diggers' and only after his land.

Also the cultural catholic I absolutely get GIL and MIL were dead against religion but still sent their kids to catholic schools and when MIL died we said no mass as it would be against her wishes but we're overruled and a mass would definitely be expected and people would talk.

Yes! My DD gets money thrust upon her whenever we see Irish relatives! I’d forgotten that.

My MIL magically gives a hot dinner to any caller to the house.

I’m British married to an Irish man, I love Irish in laws. Communication is an issue, MIL seems to think that I magically know about plans.

generosity is a big difference and death/funerals. My DH attends everyone’s funeral in England

writing eulogies, choosing music/readings/giving people notice to come from all over/booking somewhere for tea or drinks…

All that has to happen for an Irish funeral too though, just very quickly.
Rip.ie is useful for spreading the word.

Death and funerals are very different- at home I wouldn't think twice about going to a school friend's parent's funeral. In the UK I would only go to a funeral if specifically invited.

See I’m in the UK and would always go to a school friend’s parent’s funeral - have been to colleague’s parent’s funerals too. Part of being there for someone.

The funeral thing…I do think Ireland is much better at familiarity with death. I’m born and raised in England but had an Irish granny, and when she died when I was a small child we were all taken to kiss her goodbye (in her own bed. This seemed completely normal and was really helpful as a peaceful acceptance that she was really gone, but it’s only now occurred to me that it would be quite unusual here and my mum’s instinct to do it probably came from that background.

The speedy funeral thing I think is tied up with the fact that a Catholic Requiem Mass is quite a standard issue template, so there isn’t as much to think about/capacity for personalisation. While the length of time some people have to wait for a funeral here can be awful, they do take planning, whether in church or secular - writing eulogies, choosing music/readings/giving people notice to come from all over/booking somewhere for tea or drinks…and I think having all of that to think about can give people a focus that helps them get through that first couple of weeks. It must be possible to get it down quicker here though, because Muslim and Jewish funerals are always immediate.

I'm Irish living in the UK(Surrey). I grew up just outside Dublin and my wider family is from Mayo and Tipp.

There are deffo cultural differences between Ireland and the UK but also the Dublin area and outside of Dublin. The expectations around behaviour were different within my friendship groups and family groups.

At my wedding it was so funny to see the differences between the gifts given by our English friends and Irish friends. There was also a big difference in how dressed up they got for the wedding.

Death and funerals are very different- at home I wouldn't think twice about going to a school friend's parent's funeral. In the UK I would only go to a funeral if specifically invited.

Chatting to people out and about - when I first moved to the UK I would chat to people (men and women) at the bar waiting for drinks - so many people thought I was hitting on them when I was just passing the time! It felt a little bit like people expect you to have an agenda if you speak to a stranger. That might just be a south Eastern UK thing though. I'm not even particularly friendly by Irish standards!

I find people here are either very reserved and difficult to get to know or they tell you their life story when you show the smallest bit of interest and ask nothing back.

In Ireland, there isn't as much a focus on "class" and historically the difference between poor and wealthy wasn't as vast as in England. I found that as a foreigner, people here didn't always know where to "place" me class wise which led to some funny assumptions.

This is a big generalisation - People in England actually practice their religion (if they have one) Irish people don't tend to be religious but will do the nice days out I.e. Christenings, communions, confirmations, weddings.

Can I throw sport into the mix? The GAA as the backbone of many communities, the fact that on big sporting occasions we don't have to keep our fans separate. You'll find both sides mixing outside the ground ahead of hurling and football finals.

There will be friendly piss taking about each others teams but rarely serious violence (we'll reserve that for the schmozzle on the pitch). A marriage between a Cork and Kerry person or Dublin and Meath will be described as a "mixed marriage" with discussion of which side any future kids will take after in jest.

On the private school issue - all I can say is hello South Dublin neighbours! There's more of us on MN than I'd have guessed.

Irish people will also manage to work out some kind of loose connection between them when they meet for the first time. "Sure didn't you go to school/work with John's best friend" or your parents were from the same parish and then both parties are satisfied that they have established a connection.