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?

Yes to all of the above apart from Jesus H Christ. Also 'Holy Mother of God!' and Jesus, Mary and Holy St. Joseph!' was a popular one at home. Also 'Grant me patience!' and imploring the patience of all the saints. I think Mum was a bit short on patience 😁

No idea either that 'making a hames of it' was an Irish one. I'm still coming to terms with 'lodging a cheque'!

Anyone for ‘sufferin’ ducks!’?

God bless the work or Bail ó Dhia ar an obair used to be common when I was growing up but you don't hear it much nowadays.

Acting the maggot but not sure if it's an Irish saying.

Lord have mercy on me!!

Oinseach(owenshock) and Sthook and Gom were other words for eegit
Malavogue meant a beating as in
"If ye do that again I'll Malavogue ye"
Yee for you plural
When late for work due to oversleeping
Irish people sleep it out and British sleep in for work

Holy mother of God and the sweet baby Jesus.

He'd take the milk out of your tea and come back for the sugar.

Sick as a small hospital

Talk the hind legs off a donkey

When someone's annoyed they could be described as having a face like a slapped arse.

He's as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike

When visiting Northern Ireland with DS1 a relative said to my English husband, “he’s quare big the wee’un”.
Not confusing but another relative adds a phrase to the end of nearly every sentence along the lines of so I did, so it is, etc

Woegeous and cat melogeon for something terrible

Cat for anything crap or useless . Irish : caite - worn out , spent used up. I'm guessing the melodeon part came from bad musicianship!

My grandad was always calling us óinseachs. The female version of amadán. But he used it on both sexes.

Another one was 'laughing like a jennet' which is some kind of donkey apparently. Or if you were fidgeting ' have you got St Vitus dance?' Don't hear that anymore.

Ps I have a friend from Derry , he days Hi! at the end of a sentence, tis fierce confusing.

I say it, but in an ironic, atheist way. Come to think of it, there’s a lot of implicit religious belief crammed into the most ordinary phrases in Irish. Not just ‘Dia dhuit’ etc, but there’s an Irish language podcast I listen to, and the guy is about 23, but when he’s talking about plans or things he is hoping will happen, he says ‘le cúnamh Dé’ all the time, which cracks me up.

My father used to say 'if God spares us' if he was planning anything, even the least little thing.

'An Aimsir Chaite' the past tense in Irish makes sense as 'caite' is worn or used up. I used to wonder why something was 'cat' and 'catmelodeon' really baffles me.

I feel we have missed a trick with naming the tenses to not have 'An Aimsir Bháistineach' when it rains continuously:)

I was sitting at my elderly aunt’s bedside in hospital where she’d been admitted after collapsing in the street. A young doctor appeared and asked her to describe how she was feeling. She replied “cat”. I knew what she meant but he didn’t and tried rephrasing the question to my irritable aunt. She replied “ I feel feckin cat !

Very funny 😁 (Your poor aunt. Hope she recovered).

@Jitterybugs

😂 😂 😂

That's hilarious 😂

🤣

@harrietm87 that's it!

There should clearly be a vocab list for foreign medics to help them estimate how a patient feels:

cat
banjaxed
in bits
shook
fierce shook
brutal
I’ve a bad dose
sick as a small hospital
etc

Love this list 😄

I'll add 'I'm all in'.

As sick as a plane to Lourdes

🤣🤣

I'm English and we've always said Pancake Tuesday and Mother's Day 🤷‍♀️ totally normal around here.