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?

It’s not incorrect, per se, it just probably not what an English person would say.

Like Americans saying “different than” and English people saying “different to”.

@bibliomania or cop shop instead!

Ate the face off him in Dublin can mean something much better ha

I think as an Irish person that some of these 'Irishisms'are countyisms although the rest of the island including the north would understand them but I am reading some in a 'culchie' accent (oh I went there) and some in a very deep Dublin accent (went there too so fuck yis) and it just makes it all the more entertaining 😂

Mine are definitely culchie things @Psychoticbreak

This drives me mad!!! Brought is not and never will be the past tense of buy.

misses point of thread

I hear it a lot too. Agree it’s used on the news etc

Not really, it's literally the point of the thread. "I'm off" isn't even vaguely an Irishism that would be unusual in England.

‘Asking after you’ as in ‘Granny was asking after you’

Forgotten is fine. I don't know why we hate 'gotten' except that we see it as Americanism - English people don't use the word. Or never used to - it's obviously creeping in..

But language evolves. I hate it, but I do accept that I am a dinosaur pedant.......

No we use the same phrase in England.

But pointless as it doesn't fit the parameters of the thread. Nothing unlighthearted about saying that.

I'd say "asking for you"

to make a haymes of something - mess something up

People used to say that a lot when I was growing up in Belfast. Haven't heard it in years!

I remember some confusion at a wedding in England when my NI family members said 'do you mind ...?' for 'do you remember?', as in 'do you mind yer woman with the blonde hair?'

I noticed someone upthread mentioned stickin' out, meaning great. My dad used to say it.

'How are you?'
'Awk, stickin' out'😆

Who do ya tink ya are havin ‘notions’ now

😂

I am always confused by the Irish 'whenever' rather than 'when' e.g "whenever we went to the beach"

That's Northern Irish

Has ‘waiting on’ been mentioned yet? ‘His family have been waiting on him four days’ to mean that someone is close to death and the family expect it.

It being assumed prayers to St Anthony have been said when you can't find an important document.

Ride 😉 You snigger but only the Irish people get why.

Padre Pio in our house. The world and the entire universe would implode if a candle wasn't 'lit' at least once a week at morning mass.

But English people did used to use 'gotten' and took it with them to Ireland, America etc. Later it died out in most of Great Britain, but not everywhere. I think it's still in Scotland and maybe parts of Northern England. It's commonly used in Ireland still too.

Only some of the people using it in the UK will have picked it up from American TV.

Not sure if these are irish, or just local to my area:
Banjed out - relaxed. I'm going to banje out for a while before we go.
Jammy - lucky. Jammy bastard.

In the 80s if something was easy or simple we'd say it was 'sinch'. I have not heard it since I was a child so it might have been a made up word from my school. Knacky was another one forgotten in time, a gadget or toy that was considered cool was knacky.