Irish in the UK - what are the things that it took you ages to realise people don't say here.

[ConflictedCheetah]

Inspired by the thread about Pancake Tuesday.

That thread has cracked me up because SO many posters are insisting no one EVER calls pancake Tuesday - it's Pancake Day - and sayu it's weird and wanky to call it that. And then all the Irish people on the thread are like ' wait, we've always called it that and never noticed that no one else did.

So what else you got?

For me, and I'm here 20 years, I only found out about a year ago that no one here calls a birth certificate a 'birth cert'. My English husband thought it was proper weird that I kept saying that. I had never picked up that it wasn't a thing! I think Irish people are so used to talking about the Leaving Cert or Junior Cert etc. that the Cert but feels natural. DH says no.

What other ways have I been unknowingly embarrassing myself for 20 years?

These sound like they come from the movie The Committments! I'm Irish and these are really not that common.

TheLongRider · Today 04:05

"What age are you/is she now?"

That's a Geordie thing, too.

This might be just a 70s (and earlier) thing but "minerals" for fizzy drinks. My gran used to get in a selection of minerals for the grandkids at Christmas.

One of my favourite words is 'Gobshite' - says a whole lot without being too rude.

For those saying "yer man", the female equivalent is "yer wan".

@galliverstravels I agree. I'm scottish and use several of the phrases mentioned.

I’m English and only refer to the floor if indoors. Outside it’s the ground
A floor is man made but always inside.

You can always tell it’s an Irish poster if they say they’re “raging” which might mean merely irritated! There was a post a few weeks ago where someone said this and lots of replies saying that “raging “ was an OTT reaction!

It was Mothering Sunday when I was a kid.

Wow! There's an Anglican hymn, "My Song is Love Unknown," which has a verse about how Jesus was rejected in His lifetime. It contains the lines: "But men made strange, and none // The longed-for Christ would know." I've always been a little puzzled by that, and now I wonder if it's linked to the Irish expression.

This takes me back to an Irish colleague years ago who got really irrate that we didn't contract am not in emails to amn't. I remember being really perplexed and telling her amn't was not a contraction and she went ballistic, or toke as she called it. She also didn't understand why we said "give off" to mean admonish rather than give out. She would also accuse people of "taking notions" which I took to mean rising above their station.

‘Full spin experience’ 😂😂😂😂👍

Well, it’s not rude. It’s what they call a ‘minced oath’. Or to feck something is to steal it, eg ‘I spent my teens fecking lipglosses from Boots’.

The Hairy Baby references are making me once remember that I once had a torrid and very brief fling with a Frenchman who recognised my Sheridan’s Cheesemongers cotton bag from his student days in Galway.

On a side note, it infuriates me when speaking to someone of distant Irish heritage who adopts a slight Irish accent when speaking to me. FFS just stop mocking my accent, you don't do it to any other minority

My SIL did that for a while when living in Ireland. ‘Oh, I pick up accents so easily…’ no you don’t, that sounds like no Irish person I know. 🤬

"Come out from in under there" is a work of pure genius 🤣. Also makes total sense to me.

'wasn't able for it' is definitely one my DH called me out on about a year ago. Like WTF does that mean. I had no idea why he was so confused!

Yes - cmere to me I want you -
classic mammy phrase

I haven’t read the whole thread, but I grew up in London with Irish parents and remember getting to school age and discovering the things I said that were ‘Irishisms’.

Giving out
Raring up
The hot press
Any strange/no strange?
Yoke
Calling your Mum ‘Mammy’

…spring to mind.

teacher edition -

‘correcting copies/copybooks’ = marking books

‘yard’ = playground

‘non-uniform day’ = mufti day

telephone etiquette edition -
‘ bye bye bye, bye bye, (rapidly) b-b-b-b-bye’ = goodbye

Yes, why was that in any way confusing? It’s self-explanatory.

Unlike, say, ‘Go ‘way out of that’, meaning ‘Tell me more — I’m not sure I believe you, but am fascinated anyway.’

Living in London for 35 years and still lots of phases from NI that everyone picks up on or does not understand
Catch yourself on
muck to the oxsters - the kids nursery workers really did not know what I meant by this
doing messages in town
that needs washing/doing - my DH always comments on this. Apparently that needs to be washed!
Fierce - good, bad, hot 🤣

The word cheeky in Northern Ireland means a rude nasty person.

Someone up thread said 'starving' to mean cold. My dad insists that famished can mean freezing cold but we've been telling him he's wrong for years.... Irish mumsnet, have we done him a disservice?

Not even all of Ireland, but yes I think so in some areas. MIL is from Fermanagh and I think she says starved for cold and I do think I've heard famished.

My grandmother from Cumbria said starved for cold. We looked it up in the OED once and it said stiff with either hunger or cold. I think I came across it somewhere else as well, maybe ‘Wuthering Heights’ but whether anyone outside Ireland still uses it to mean cold, I don’t know.

Majority of these are also used in Scottish English. Amn't is very common and I didn't realised 'needs washed' wasn't Standard English (UK) until I moved to England. Interesting fact: in Scottish English it's more common to say 'I've not' and in English English it's 'I haven't' (don't have the source but that's from a linguistic study, anaecdata I'm sure will suggest individuals do their own thing).