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?

My Scots parents would say mask the tea. Also amn't. And obviously there's the tale of the porridge in the drawer, I think that's an urban (rural) myth though.

They'd also say someone was a 'heid the ba' ' or say 'hey! You with the heid!' (that would be me)

Why is fruit duck so named ?

Duck loaf with fruit in it?

What is a duck loaf?

?meat loaf made with ground duck according to Google? Surely not!

Just a loaf shape, a bit like a cottage loaf, with a little upper lump of dough as a ‘head’, on top of the main body. Doesn’t really resemble a duck unless you’re pissed or squinting.

I just wondered where the name comes from. It really doesn't resemble a duck.

Sorry I can't do links but google Staffords Fruit Duck.
It's a bit like a brack in taste but is not round in shape and has soft white icing on top.

I suppose the ‘head’ being at one end, rather than the cottage loaf, where it’s centred on top, could look vaguely duck-like?

Oh, I've eaten that, back in the good old / bad old days when I happily ate things made from wheat but unhappily coughed all the time, day and night.

I miss all the delicious things but don't miss the cough. Or as the GP called it, the asthma. I suppose he might have known what he was on about.

I've never seen one with a head?

I don’t think it’s noticeable as a head, and some ‘duck’ loaves don’t seem to have them at all, anymore. I’m just thinking of a loaf shape that slices like this?

I remember those, also proper batch loaves with a little bean flour in the mix, giving a lovely dense-textured but soft crumb. Or is that a batch loaf?

The iced duck I'm most familiar with doesn't have that shape. There's no head bit.

I'm not Irish, but I work with a woman who is from the SE of Ireland.
She says 'do be doing' regularly. Always makes me laugh!

@mjf981 That happens because the Irish language has two types of present tense for the verb 'to be', the present and the present habitual. The latter is used when you're doing something regularly (habitually). English only has the present tense so historically some Irish people modified the language when they were trying to directly translate what they meant from Irish to English. English is most peoples first language here now, but these constructions have been passed down and are still used by many though many others don't use them.

Not a linguist and far from a decent Irish speaker so open to correction , but that's a direct translation from Irish. I think it's a tense that doesn't particularly exist in English.

I do like cake.
I do be doing my best not to eat it.

Or something like that! Struggling to think of examples. It's not a phrase I would use (I do be using!) but always strikes me as useful when I hear it.

ETA @Frostymorningagain said it better!

That @ColleenDonaghy does be always trying to explain things

Lol.

Does always be trying to explain things really badly.

We used to have a tongue twister:

They do be saying that I do be saying do be but the people that do be saying that I do be saying do be do be saying do be themselves so they do be!

That's brilliant @JaneJeffer 😀

That's the Duck Loaf I was thinking of
made by Staffords Bakery.
Thank you for posting a photo of it @Frostymorningagain

No bother @LadyEloise1. We've always known it as iced duck but I've no idea where the duck part of the name comes from.

I always thought "redd up" was unique to NI, but it's in Elizabeth Gaskell's novels as Lancashire/Cheshire dialect.