To be surprised at how little British people seem to know about Ireland?

[WriterofDreams]

I'm from Ireland and I've lived in England for a total of two years. In Ireland we watch all the British channels and get all the British newspapers so most Irish people are pretty up to date on everything that's going on in Britain. Also, the Irish news tends to mention Britain a lot, so even if you only watch Irish tv or read Irish newspapers you'll still get a lot of information on current affairs in Britain.

When the whole thing with Ireland going down the pan financially came up on Channel 4 my mum rang me to say "Ireland's on the British news!" and we knew then it must be bad, simply because Ireland is so rarely mentioned over here. Now I know it's a tiny country but it's a close neighbour of Britain and a large population of Irish people live in Britain, so I would have thought it was reasonable that there would be a fair amount of mention of Ireland in schools and in newspapers and on the tv. But that's not the case.

Since living here it has struck me that so many people don't seem to know basic facts about Ireland, such as who the President is, who the Taoiseach is, what the native language is called, what the native sports are and so on. I've noticed in primary schools (not sure about secondary) that Ireland is rarely mentioned as part of history or geography despite the long and complicated historical links between the two countries.

Would it be fair to say that there isn't much mention of Ireland in Britain? Do you feel you know much about Ireland? Not saying we're special or owt, just curious.

in case you were wondering

spidookly: How dare you I'm from Offaly and I was reared to be a lady. .
I can shamefully admit that I actually know Biffo. .

And can also honestly say that I have been asked this year if my Mum's house had electricity. They were shocked when I showed them it on Google maps that it didn't have a thatched roof and an ass and cart outside the gate.
I just find it odd that actually quite a bit of the British economy actually relies on Ireland (we are their largest customer for export goods) but other than quick snippets on the news you wouldn?t know that Ireland going under will actually have an effect on the UK.
OH who is English gets quite a few questions from his colleagues about Ireland, but as he?s a wind up merchant he just adds to the ignorance. Though he is very good at picking up the different accents and surprising people on the phone when he can say oh you?re from Dublin, Cork etc. And has networked using bags of Taytos. . which he borrowed/stole from my PMT stash

go away outa dat - very interesting altoghether

Bannaher is probably right too. Loads of Irish towns are spelled multiple ways in English.

It could be a hurling thing. Offaly's hurling country.

Mmmm. Tayto.

The (one) good thing about MIL's husband coming over in the car is the 18-pack bag of Tayto Snax in the cupboard. Now if he'd only brought a few boxes of Barrys with him too.

And Tullamore sausages and white pudding on brown bread, best hang over cure ever!

Chickens - what do Doody and Janey Mack mean?

I got terribly confused when I went to Northern Ireland to give seminars on new UK law and the attendees kept talking about how you might do things 'down South' and 'in the South'... having had months of this from people in Scotland and most of England, I assumed they meant us in London, only they were getting the law wrong.

Finally someone told me they were talking about Dublin - I struggled for a polite way to point out that that's a different country!

Does anyone remember about 10-15 years ago when Eastenders had a couple of eps set in Ireland? It was cringingly, laughably, shockingly terrible and cliched! There were donkeys roaming in the dirt roads, and drunks throwing beer around and punching people, and women with black eyes and dirty faces.

Seriously

Grumpy I would send you a box of Barrys tea from my stash [8 boxes, it was on special offer but FFS I live in IRL ] but the local Posties are not out and about this week.

I live in Northern Ireland and I say the South or Southern Ireland for Ireland. And I have been known to say the 'mainland'.

But delivery companies say 'delivery free to mainland UK.

Years ago when I did history there was always something called "The Irish Question" on an exam paper. Unfortunatley Irish history was so complicated it was impossible to learn enough to answer that question and all the rest, so everyone always decided to miss it out and concentrate on the other questions, hence our appalling ignorance.

And of course the thing about the Irish question is that as soon as the English found the answer, the Irish changed the question ...

BPB, those Eastenders episodes were fucking hilarious. I was pissing myself laughing, and DH was getting more and more indignant. If I remember correctly, there were a ton of complaints.

notcitrus - Doody seems to be a baby name for dummy/soother. Elderly ladies were forever upsetting DS1 by whipping his dummy out of his mouth when he was quite content and saying 'You don't want that dirty doody'. He bloody did . Janey Mack seems to be a polite exclamation of surprise, so instead of blasphemy we get 'Janey Mack! Would you look at your man's hair!' for example.

"It was cringingly, laughably, shockingly terrible and cliched! There were donkeys roaming in the dirt roads, and drunks throwing beer around and punching people, and women with black eyes and dirty faces.

Seriously "

Spoken like someone who's never been to Sligo.

Yup doody is a dummy, although when my sister was little it morphed from doody to dooda to dadoo, I have no idea how.

I feel rather restricted (linguistically) by the fact British English doesn't have the distinction between you singular and you plural. In Ireland it's you for one person and ye for many people (at least it is where I come from).

As I work in horse racing I often deal with breeders from Ireland.

My personal favourite anecdote involves the chap in Brannockstown, Kildare, who had to pay a bill to us for one of his horses.

I told him he could pay by credit card if he wanted and that he should fax me his credit card details (as I needed his signature as authorisation).

A few minutes later the fax machine beeped and off came a sheet of paper with a dark rectangular shape in the middle of it. It took me a few seconds to figure out what the heck it was - he had literally tried to fax his credit card to us!

I still have the fax pinned to my noticeboard (you can't make out any of the details) and whenever I'm having a bad day I look at it and it never fails to raise a smile!

Damn you mayorquimby, I was going to make that joke about Kerry.

Why should little British people not know about Ireland? Is the Irish information kept really high up?

I live in NI - whole family is Irish and we refer to 'the south' all the time! Not sure what else we would call it really. Didn't realise it was offensive. Or is it only offensive from the Southern British?

bubbleymummy, I'm from NI too and live in Cork. So when I'm in NI I refer to the south, as that's geographically correct, and not offensive. What people are objecting to is people referring to the 26 counties as Southern Irteland, as no such country exists. There is NI, and there is Ireland.

YADNBU. I live in England but I am Irish descent. I was livid with ELC recently. My dd received a Map of the Word Game as a gift. It had all these cards with capitals and countries on. Republic of Ireland was not in it. I complained and they told me it was based on simplified maps used in primary shool.

Interesting about some "Southern Irish" accents being similar to American. But, I suppose that makes sense. The unflux of Irish must have influenced some Ameican accents, particualrly New York. Same in Liverpool. Dublin and Liverpool accents can sound very similar sometimes

If you're actually in Northern Ireland and you say "the south" there's nothing at all wrong with that as it's geographically correct. I don't think anyone would find that offensive. What's annoying is when British people refer to some mythical country called "Southern Ireland."

as long as you don't mean Donegal!

which technically is in Ulster