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?

Wait... whaaaaa??? I've been calling it a birth cert! I'd no idea people didn't know that one.

"He's after his tea" is the one that always gets me. In NI/Donegal it means "he has just had his tea" and in England they mean "he wants his tea". Has created some misunderstandings at nursery pick up!

Thank you @LadyEloise1 and @Abhannmor. I am enlightened.

I got a very funny look from an Irish friend once for referring to a particular church as Roman Catholic rather than just Catholic. But I grew up just down the road from an Independent Catholic church, so for me there's no automatic assumption of which type of Catholic is meant.

Happy Pancake Tuesday!

We used to call it Shrove Tuesday when I was young.

Interesting @NoBinturongsHereMate . I've only ever seen one independent Catholic Church in Ireland. They use the old Latin Mass. I remember going to a Latin Mass as a child. The Altar boys were hurrying the old priest along. No sooner had he started to say Dominus Vobiscum than the lads shouted : Et Cum Spiritu Tuo. It was all over in 25 minutes!

'That was great now' , said my grandmother .

This is a really great thread!
I'm skim reading in work so might have missed some
Has anyone mentioned:

banjaxed for broken or useless
Poss out for having a wash
Oxters for armpits
Plock for snacks (sweets / crisps)
Bla'gard for someone misbehaving
Tom The Gom for a stupid person

Dara O'Briain did a sketch about this, about a 'mixed marriage' as they were called, a wedding between a Catholic and Protestant. Grooms people on one side and brides on the other as usual. He described how at a certain point in the Our Father all the Catholics sat down but the Protestants kept praying then half the Catholics were jumping back up in embarrassment and the Protestants were praying but looking flustered. It was really funny the way he told it, that's the first I knew of the difference. My DD was asking about the lyrics of Ed Sheeran's Nancy Mulligan song which is also based around a mixed marriage. She was gobsmacked that these differences existed not so long ago, it certainly was still a mixed marriage when I was a kid but people didn't care that much, it was absolute scandal in my parents day.

My kids went to a Church of Ireland primary school and learned the protestant version of 'Our Father'. We took them to a Christening once where during the mass they automatically launched into the extended version 'For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory' and I had to hush them up fast before we got funny looks!

'candle shrine thingy'

Pagan!😂😇

I've never heard 'poss out' for a wash, but wonder is it related to the old instructions for a 'strip wash' in a basin back in the days before showers - first wash down as far as possible, then wash up as far as possible, and never forget to wash possible!

or as my mother would say to us if we weren't moving fast enough to get out of bed for mass on time,

'Get out ye Pagans'.

On her way to mass of a morning it was, (said with a sigh).
'I'll light a candle for ye sinners'. 😃

My mother burnt the equivalent of a couple of hundred candelabras in her time.

Well I do like all the smells and bells , candles and stained glass. Someone took me to a Gregorian chant mass in London a few years ago . Robed monks , place full of goths and hippies. Well trippy!

I'm Glaswegian and also say both these things, I am of fairly recent Irish descent though, like many other folk from Glasgow.

I'll never look at a mikado biscuit in the same way again but it won't stop me from eating them. 😂

Oxters is Scots too.

Oxter is the actual name for an armpit though so not Irish or Scottish!

Do people still say "red up"? As in to tidy up/ clean other household chores.

I saw "redd up" in a recent novel, although I think it was set some decades ago.

I think of 'red up' as northern, but no idea how extensive that is - all Ulster counties maybe?

Messages and press are both in Alice in Wonderland, so were obviously in use in mid-Victorian England.

There's a couple of good books on this - the 'Concise Ulster Dictionary', and 'Slanguage' by Bernard Share. Apologies if someone's already mentioned them.

@MaudGone I will have to check them out. My mum says some of the Ulster Scots words her grandparents used but I keep forgetting them. There was a wonderful word for feeding the chickens and another for the outhouse.

A new one on me today, possibly regional or even v local. I'm in Munster. Commenting on a good looking woman as 'She's pencilled' Did anyone else hear that one before? It's like she's a work of art. I like it 😆 We had a good laugh discussing it.
Never heard of the Js but don't have any close by.

On first meeting with an English friend, I started to tell her a joke 'Did you hear R Kelly died?' Well we never got to the punch line because of the 'R' We both ended up sitting on a kerb hysterical with laughter as I tried to explain to her bewildered self who I was talking about. Still makes me giggle!
(PS He believed he could fly 😆)

Great thread! I'm not Irish - originally from Liverpool so same thing really!

Yes it's Pancake Tuesday

Cute - sly/sneaky
Messages - shopping
Gansy - cardi/sweater
Give over - stop it
Gullup - swig of soft drink

Gee - vulva. Not said as in gee whiz but like the Indian butter.

Wear - a snog.

Langers / langered - very drunk.

Lol@gee 😆

I will in me gee

I was thinking of this too @Spookymormonhelldream and the plural “yizzers / yissers”

Bouncer at the door of 90s nightclub “have yis got yissers IDs on yis” 😂

(As we all rummage for our fake provisionals)