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?

I didn't know that was an Irish thing, it's been commonly used as long as I can remember but I don't have many Irish connections at all

How do Irish people know that English people don't use the same words and phrases?

Quite a number of things mentioned are commonly used in my experience

Forgot one.
Lodge money or lodge a cheque - they don't use that in England. I had a poor bank clerk very confused when I asked if I could make a lodgement.
i lived in the UK for years in reply to poster who asked how we know words differ.

This is a great thread. My friend is Irish and I love the way she will say 'not too clever' to mean 'not in good condition' ('these flowers aren't too clever, are they, but they'll perk up when I get them in some water').

I used to work with someone who'd previously worked in a back and she sometimes said that, I assumed it was an old fashioned word as she was a bit older and had worked in a bank when she left school

Similar in meaning to cute is sleekit - she's sleekit, that one

I've heard "mor yah" in that context.
As if he/ she didn't know something when they did.

Rubber for eraser.

Rubber is the usual word in England. Eraser is more American.

But this is also British English. I don't believe you that you 'realised' that people don't call them rubbers in the UK because almost everyone does? I'm sure a few say eraser, too, but rubber is the default.

It's the North Americans who say eraser (and rubber is condom that side of the Atlantic).

Because many of us spent decades living in England.

Some of the non-specifically Irish expressions that have been posted on here have also been posted by non-Irish people not living in Ireland who seem to be assuming a particular word of phrase is Irish simply because they’ve heard it said by an Irish relative/friend, and associate it with them only.

@LadyEloise1 and @januaryjan, it’s ’mar dhea’, often anglicised in the ways you write. Really interesting phrase in Irish — can mean ‘ostensible’ or ‘professed’ or ‘pretend”, or have the effect of putting whatever you’re qualifying it with into quotation marks. You’d translate Cher’s ‘As if!’ in Clueless as ‘Mar dhea!’

That’s the Irish phrase mar dhea … translated loosely as ‘as if’ or ‘yeah right’

‘The wear’ for dishes is actually the ‘ware’ as in ‘dishware/dinnerware/tableware’

I’m an Irish child of the 70s/80s, from an extremely Catholic household, and never heard Shrove Tuesday commonly used. It was Pancake Tuesday at home, school and at mass. In fact, I remember asking my mother about Shrove Tuesday when I first heard the term and she told me it was what English people used!

I’ve never heard an Irish woman use the phrase “I’m on” or “I’ve come on” to describe having her period… everyone I know says she had/has her period or uses a euphemism.

That’s true, though ‘I’ve come on’ is a euphemism in itself (and one I’ve always found inexplicably irritating…) But I’ve never heard an Irish person say it.

Hiberno-English expressions for body parts or sex or bodily functions can be an interesting combination of quite frank and extremely avoidant. My mother would refer to periods as ‘the other oul thing’, and I’ve certainly heard ‘síos ansin’ (down there) used for vagina in Irish. But there’s also a lot of colourful non-twee slang expressions in Irish and English. My sister refers to her vagina as her ‘growler’. In Irish ‘gabhal’ can mean a woman’s crotch or vagina or a creek, estuary, or junction (which means stopping at Limerick Junction is slightly cheerier than it would be otherwise). Manchán Mayan had a book out about it not long ago. I remember him listing ‘portach draíochta’ (magic bog) as a euphemism for vagina. Also ‘Caitlín’!

Thanks for the correction and explanation. When I showed my husband the post he also corrected my totally misspelt “wear”.

Has anyone said ‘mockyah’ (mockeyah?) yet?

That reminds me once of a horrified American poster whose 7 year old just started school in the UK and his teacher told her he'd need a pack of rubbers sent in 🤣🤣🤣

It wasn’t ‘catch’ in our house, it was ‘cop on to yourself’ or ‘cop yourself on’ (used interchangeably). I don’t know if these are specific to my Dad’s region (Wexford man).

‘Giving out’ was what my Mum did when she was annoyed about something, but my Dad would ‘rare up’ ie. get very shouty and angry. I heard an English woman at work use ‘giving out’ the other day and I instantly knew her parents must be Irish (and I was right!) .

My Dad always told us to ‘shut off the light’ rather than ‘turn the light off’ and I had a few odd looks when I used this as a child in London.

That reminds be of another expression that's often used - a bit shook, very shook etc.
It means not looking or feeling the best.
So you might say the flowers looked a bit shook in the above example. It's more often used to describe a person, so when speaking of someone who'd been through an illness or some difficult life event you might say of them that 'they're very shook'.

Thanks for this! It's only in the last couple of years I noticed people on Irish Twitter using "gowl" as an insult which I'd never heard growing up (in the west but parents from other parts of Ireland) but then I wouldn't have, in our fairly devout/prudish family, if that's what it means 😀

When we were young we would say something was Mary Hick if we thought it was old fashioned, girlfriend in dublin was me mot, you would ask someone if they would have a cup of tea in their hand (not sure if that's an irish one) as pp said to shift was to snog, but my adult dc also said meet, did you meet him, meaning did you snog him. Another one that was popular for a while was, that's a grand cake Nora, or just grand cake, if you liked something, it came from a TV ad. Really enjoying this thread!]

yes cute to me has 2 meanings, the usual one referring to a child or something small and pretty, or the meaning you describe, usually with the word hoor after it, he's a cute hoor that fella. It means someone very savvy with money, could be ripping you off, might be dodging tax or operating without a licence, that sort of thing. Usually where I come from its used in relation to business owners in Co. Kerry (sorry!!) for example: He's a cute Kerry hoor.

My Dad used to say “face cloth” for flannel, also “tea cloth” for tea towel and “hair wash” for shampoo.

He also used the singular for words that are pluralised in Standard English, e.g. “a scissor” rather than scissors or a pair of scissors. Similarly, “a trouser”.

Nobody's mentioned “Top of the morning to you” and its response or “as fit as a racing snake”

No one has said ‘Top of the morning to you’ since Darby O’Gill and the Little People.