Things said in Ireland that no one says in England

SpaceTime

JohnInDublin59 wrote: »

It is not that they CANNOT pronounce O'Doherty in the way we do. It is that they do not take the time to find out how it should be pronounced.

As a general rule it is good manners to pronounce someone’s name the way they pronounce it. If David O’Doherty doesn’t pronounce his name O'Docherty, neither should they. Any more than they should have called Haughey Hockey.

My theory is that it’s not any kind of anti-Irishness. It’s more that if it was some African leader’s name, the BBC would never assume it was pronounced as spelled. But since we speak the same language as them, they assume we have the same pronunciation.

Not a good idea as many English names aren't pronounced as you might think either.
They get very sniffy when people pronounce Worcestershire as written or the L in Holborne

Featherstone is also pronounced as Fanshaw!

Deirdre is the oddest one as there no way you'd read that as Deir drey unless it was spelled Deirdree or deirdery.

Bordeaux isn't pronounced Bord E Ox ... Yet they manage that OK.

Steve F

Meangadh wrote: »

Kerry bet Donegal yesterday. Not beat. Bet.

Hate when people say that.I always feel like saying "No "Bet" is something you do in a betting shop"

SpaceTime

Seasan wrote: »

Why don't you just teach him how to say it?

I find the best approach is :

"One pronounces it thus : Drogheda!"

Realt Dearg Sec

Steve F wrote: »

Hate when people say that.I always feel like saying "No "Bet" is something you do in a betting shop"

A betting shop?! Presume you mean a bookie.

pickarooney

tac foley wrote: »

Does anybody here, living in England, live in the North East, say around Newcastle?

Or Cumbria?

Or deepest Norfolk or Suffolk?

THAT's where the strongest regional accents and differential usage of English occurs. The famous boradcaster and writer, Melvin Bragg, was brought up in Cumbria, and had to learn to speak 'standard English' at quite a late age, sixteen, he notes in the book, 'The Adventure of English' - here is an example...

'Deke's you gadji ower yonder wid't dukal an't baary mort gaan t'beck'.

Translation - 'Look at that man over here with the dog and the sexy girl going down to the river'.

Of course, Irish also has its regional differences, but at least they are more or less mutually intelligible.

tac

There's at least some Romany mixed in there.

Michael D Not Higgins

rachiedee4298 wrote: »

Also the English for some reason can't say the name Cathal correctly - pretty amusing. Comes out sounding like Karl

This is the same reason why Gallagher is pronounced with a hard 'g' and Doherty is pronounced with a 'k'. English doesn't normally have the two vowel sounds together.

I once stopped a colleague in his tracks with a phrase. He announced he was going out to the shop to get lunch and I said "grand so". He stopped and turned and said "What?" with the most puzzled expression.

tac foley

SpaceTime wrote: »

Not a good idea as many English names aren't pronounced as you might think either.
They get very sniffy when people pronounce Worcestershire as written or the L in Holborne

Featherstone is also pronounced as Fanshaw!

Deirdre is the oddest one as there no way you'd read that as Deir drey unless it was spelled Deirdree or deirdery.

Bordeaux isn't pronounced Bord E Ox ... Yet they manage that OK.

French is taught in schools in mainland UK and NI - Irish is not taught at all except in certain schools in NI.

Ask anybody in the street to pronounce Dún Laoghaire or any other Irish word/s for proof.

tac

tac foley

pickarooney wrote: »

There's at least some Romany mixed in there.

Yup - 'gadji' is pure Romany.

And much of Cumbrian and NE dialect is old Norse. Much of the former Danelaw areas of mainland UK are Norse-derived. It would be way OT to detail it all. Even Ireland has two counties whose names are derived directly from their Viking names.

tac, whose name in Irish is only vaguely similar to its present-day pronunciation.

tac foley

JohnInDublin59 wrote: »

It is not that they CANNOT pronounce O'Doherty in the way we do. It is that they do not take the time to find out how it should be pronounced.

As a general rule it is good manners to pronounce someone’s name the way they pronounce it. If David O’Doherty doesn’t pronounce his name O'Docherty, neither should they. Any more than they should have called Haughey Hockey.

My theory is that it’s not any kind of anti-Irishness. It’s more that if it was some African leader’s name, the BBC would never assume it was pronounced as spelled. But since we speak the same language as them, they assume we have the same pronunciation.

Nor are the Irish the only ones who suffer from the indignity of having their names incorrectly pronounced. Many years ago, the newsreader, Trevor MacDonald, chickened out when reading a report of a helicopter or small airplane crash in Mid-Wales, near Llanfihaengl-ym-Mochnant. His report of the crash having taken place 'near a small village in Mid-Wales' left my Welsh wife cackling...

tac

SpaceTime

tac foley wrote: »

Nor are the Irish the only ones who suffer from the indignity of having their names incorrectly pronounced. Many years ago, the newsreader, Trevor MacDonald, chickened out when reading a report of a helicopter or small airplane crash in Mid-Wales, near Llanfihaengl-ym-Mochnant. His report of the crash having taken place 'near a small village in Mid-Wales' left my Welsh wife cackling...

tac

"The Icelandic Volcano" ....Eyjafjallajökull ... Not remotely like how it reads in English.

sbsquarepants

In English it's pronounced fu-kin-rye-nairs-fault. At least it seemed to be at the time.

One thing the English don't seem to grasp is the use of the word grand to mean ok or passable - not magnificent or, eh, grand!

Do you like my new t shirt?
Yea, it's grand.
Fúck off back to spud land you sarcastic paddy bastard.

(Note: This conversation most likely has never happened, nor will ever happen!)

MortGoldman

tac foley wrote: »

Nor are the Irish the only ones who suffer from the indignity of having their names incorrectly pronounced. Many years ago, the newsreader, Trevor MacDonald, chickened out when reading a report of a helicopter or small airplane crash in Mid-Wales, near Llanfihaengl-ym-Mochnant. His report of the crash having taken place 'near a small village in Mid-Wales' left my Welsh wife cackling...

tac

STOP SIGNING OFF! :P

pickarooney

tac foley wrote: »

Yup - 'gadji' is pure Romany.

And much of Cumbrian and NE dialect is old Norse. Much of the former Danelaw areas of mainland UK are Norse-derived. It would be way OT to detail it all. Even Ireland has two counties whose names are derived directly from their Viking names.

tac, whose name in Irish is only vaguely similar to its present-day pronunciation.

Gan hame til wor hoose and see bairn kind of thing

tac foley

MortGoldman wrote: »

STOP SIGNING OFF! :P

?

tac

tac foley

SpaceTime wrote: »

"The Icelandic Volcano" ....Eyjafjallajökull ... Not remotely like how it reads in English.

Goteborg in Sweden = pronounced Yerta-bora.

tac, pronounced tac

SpaceTime

tac foley wrote: »

Goteborg in Sweden = pronounced Yerta-bora.

tac, pronounced tac

Or where English gets completely carried away and adds a silent S to the French city of Lyon

who the fug

SpaceTime wrote: »

Or where English gets completely carried away and adds a silent S to the French city of Lyon

Not Englands fault the French can't spell the name of the tea shop properly

nerobert

Irish: giving out to someone
English: telling someone off

Stepping Stone

SpaceTime wrote: »

Try putting someone from deepest Kerry on the phone with someone from a remote part of East Donegal and you'll see how compatible they are.

I am from deepest south Kerry. I avoid, where possible trying to speak to anyone from Donegal on the phone during work. I may get someone that I can understand but for the vast majority of conversations, they may as well be speaking Cantonese. If I was lucky, I could pick up the odd word but that was it.

I have also spent time in the north east of England. The issue there appears to be that they constantly use local slang without realising that it is not standard English. When dealing with people from there for work, we will modify our language and ensure that we arare not using any colloquiums. Do you think that they return the favour?! Skrat was met by blank looks (means snack) but hilariously they inferred that we could not speak English correctly.

Rory28

Bleeding deadly = Very good.

Strange one that.

"Well" - One of the most versatile words Irish people use.

copey

Are u going to the ploughing

franer1970

Peugeot: Pew-joe (Ireland), Purr-joe (UK) has been mentioned.
But there's also Mer-see-days vs Mer-say-dees (Mercedes)
Awe-dee vs Ow-dee (Audi)
See-at vs Say-at (Seat)
Occasionally still hear Ren-alt (Renault, silent "t" guys) but dying out I think.
Nissan the way Jeremy Clarkson says it, sounds like Nissin.
Opel comes out as Vauxhall somehow in the UK...:D

tac foley

'Well wear', a kind of a blessing spoken to somebody somebody getting something new that he or she has been looking forward to getting.

Never heard of here in mainland UK, mind you, I never heard it up North either.

Derivation/etymology of that phrase would be good to know.

tac

franer1970

franer1970 wrote: »

Peugeot: Pew-joe (Ireland), Purr-joe (UK) has been mentioned.
But there's also Mer-see-days vs Mer-say-dees (Mercedes)
Awe-dee vs Ow-dee (Audi)
See-at vs Say-at (Seat)
Occasionally still hear Ren-alt (Renault, silent "t" guys) but dying out I think.
Nissan the way Jeremy Clarkson says it, sounds like Nissin.
Opel comes out as Vauxhall somehow in the UK...:D

I know this is a bit OT, but....

Speaking of brand/company names, some companies obviously don't get their advertising execs together and say "right, this is how you pronounce the name of our product".

Couple of examples I can think of from ads on TV:

Pantene shampoo: pronounced pan-ten on ads here, pan-teen on ads in NZ.
Maggi soups: pronounced maggy on ads here, madgy on ads in NZ.

tac foley

Basil3 wrote: »

I know this is a bit OT, but....

Speaking of brand/company names, some companies obviously don't get their advertising execs together and say "right, this is how you pronounce the name of our product".

Couple of examples I can think of from ads on TV:

Pantene shampoo: pronounced pan-ten on ads here, pan-teen on ads in NZ.
Maggi soups: pronounced maggy on ads here, madgy on ads in NZ.

I know what you mean. 'Titleist' had me puzzled for years.... 'Tit-leist? What the he77 does THAT mean?

You get it right down there where Maggi IS pronounced 'madgy' - think of Lake Maggiore.

However, you have it wrong with Pantene - there is a circumflex accent over the first 'e' that makes it into a sort of 'eh' sound - nearest to it IS 'Pan-ten'.

tac, prounounced 'tac'

SpaceTime

Nestlé gets called Nes-el by a lot of Americans.

Pantene is a made up word.
It's "Pan Teen" in the US. (really small trousers in Irish granny speak)
Pan Ten in Europe

tac foley

I'm not American, but I'm pretty old, and although a French-speaker, I also say Nessle, like my French-speaking grandam, who always called it Nessle.

Must be something in the flavouring, I guess.

tac

SpaceTime

Apparently in East Donegal its "Nessel's"

tommy100

another I heard today. fella said to an english girl. (it was raining heavily and they were going biking up the mountains). "stand in a there a bit snd stay out of the wet". she didn't understand stay out of the wet

Dozen Wicked Words

SpaceTime wrote: »

Nestlé gets called Nes-el by a lot of Americans.

Ask English people of a certain age, they would say they were brought up calling it nesels

tac foley

sammyjo90 wrote: »

Irish call a swede a turnip! A turnip is a different vegetable entirely!

Well, WE call it a rutabaga.

tac

The J Stands for Jay

tac foley wrote: »

'Well wear', a kind of a blessing spoken to somebody somebody getting something new that he or she has been looking forward to getting.

Never heard of here in mainland UK, mind you, I never heard it up North either.

Derivation/etymology of that phrase would be good to know.

tac

Never heard it and only ever seen it written on boards.ie

madmaggie

"Oh aye", depending on the inflection it can have a variety of meanings.

Puibo

The English say "free" and we say three!!

tac foley

Puibo wrote: »

The English say "free" and we say three!!

The 'lower orders', particularly around the South East - London and Essex and thereabouts, say 'free', 'fret' for 'threat', fought for 'thought' and so on - they also say Haitch.

However, the majority of English English-speakers do not.

Regional accents are as prevalent and obvious here in UK as they are in Ireland, and need to be studied in far more in detail before such sweeping generalisations can be made.

In MY experience, including that living with my Irish-speaking 'fader', many Irish people don't actually say 'three', but DO say 'tree', and carry it on with most words that begin with 'TH' in English. Here on boards.ie I've noticed that many posters actually write 'taught' instead of 'thought', proof positive that they hear the word in their head as beginning with 'T' and not 'THE'.

tac

Puibo

Cheers for the elecution lessons mate but perhaps i should explain to you that this thread or fred as you would say is to be taken with a pinch of salt......

.....if you need me to elaborate just ask.

tac foley

Puibo wrote: »

Cheers for the elecution lessons mate but perhaps i should explain to you that this thread or fred as you would say is to be taken with a pinch of salt......

.....if you need me to elaborate just ask.

I don't say 'fred', since I have neither an English nor an Irish accent. And I also appreciate that this thread is to be taken with a pinch of salt, else I wouldn't be posting on it.

I'm certainly not clever enough to be giving anybody elocution lessons, nor do I have any interest in any elaboration that you might offer me, thanks all the same.

tac

Kiwi in IE

Sam Kade wrote: »

I'm Irish and around a long time I've never heard of a pencil parer called a topper.

My son came home from school calling a pencil sharpener a 'topper'. I thought it must be a silly name that some kid(s) in his class had invented.

PLL

mon t fuccccccck


I lived in England until I was 18, but my whole family is Irish and the school I went to was Catholic. So it was full of kids whose parents had emigrated over, the school was a confusing jumble of kids learning correct English and then randomly spouting Irish expressions learned from their parents, a lot of the teachers were Irish too. The one friend of mine who had no Irish heritage at all once announced that she felt segregated because of her lack of 'Irishness' and said she didn't understand teachers and students sometimes. hahaha :-)

Banjaxed gave some great looks from people who thought I had lost my mind. Got some great smirks off the Irish teachers for saying it too. Sense of community using those words in a different country.

Spanish Eyes

They say Fetch, we say Get

They say Shall, we say Will.

HonalD

McGaggs wrote: »

Never heard it and only ever seen it written on boards.ie

Well wear can be heard in Kildare. Especially if you get a new car.

sunnyagain

The Gibzilla wrote: »

"I will, yeah" in a certain tone in Ireland translates to "No, not a chance."

Two positives making a negative. Don't tell that to any maths teacher.

Quazzie

PLL wrote: »

mon t fuccccccck

Funny story from a few years back. I was at a family NYE party with my sisters and an aunt who was over from UK. One of my sisters decided about 1am to go to bed despite the party still being in full swing. My other sister who was a little disappointed about how early my sister gave in and went to bed said "Ah, she's gone ta fúck", to which my Aunt from the UK was utterly shocked at how we talked so freely about such a thing.

I still don't think she believed me when I tried to explain the Irish meaning of it.

HalloweenJack

Are there any other people who say pencil parer (as in "pare") instead of pencil sharpener?

piuswal

HalloweenJack wrote: »

Are there any other people who say pencil parer (as in "pare") instead of pencil sharpener?

I've heard both over the years, Munster and Leinster

eviltwin

I used to work for a UK company and they were always commenting on how we say Fil-um with two syllables instead of film. That and runners instead of trainers.

onlyrocknroll

We use bring and take differently to other English speakers.

In the Uk and else you take something from where you are to somewhere else (away from you) and bring something to your current location from somewhere else. We don't have this distinction.

Also in Ireland musn't have is used for impossibility in the past, in the UK you have to use couldn't have.

HalloweenJack

piuswal wrote: »

I've heard both over the years, Munster and Leinster

I knew it was an Irish thing but also had the idea that it might be a Gaelscoil thing as the people who use it most are those who were educated as Gaeilge.

feargale

HonalD wrote: »

Well wear can be heard in Kildare. Especially if you get a new car.

It was very widespread in the west and south when I was a kid, may even be used now, I can't say. I move in more sophisticated circles these days. :cool:

feargale

Kiwi in IE wrote: »

My son came home from school calling a pencil sharpener a 'topper'. I thought it must be a silly name that some kid(s) in his class had invented.

I would have called it a topper in my youth. I'm a multi-county Munsterman with some with some Connacht family connections.