Ever get sick of Irish stereotyping?

Fritzbox

irishguitarlad wrote: »

Ever get sick of it?

For a moment wasn't sure whether you meant the stereotypes the Irish had about the rest of the world or the stereotypes the rest of the world had about the Irish?
The former would be a more interesting topic of discussion in my view.

440Hertz

ILoveYourVibes wrote: »

That's kind of funny though. Dutch DOES sound like that.

There is a certain type of american i love ...the BLUNT ones.

The blunt Dutch response was: At least I don’t sound like a frustrated cat! (Which went “wooosh” over the two Americans who believe they’ve no accents and they’re something only everyone else has.)

There’s blunt and there’s utterly tactless.

Turquoise Hexagon Sun

irishguitarlad wrote: »

The worst is the stereotype that we're all alcoholics, pisses you off when you live in a foreign country.

For the most part stereotypes don't bother me in the slightest. It's just kind of cringeworthy when people play into stereotypes of themselves. "I'm drunk cause I'm Oirish!"

Aside from stereotypes, what bothers me is this awful condescending Irish pride you see on YouTube comments. Like under a Versatile video

"you have to be Irish to understand."

And other comments where people go:

"People love us, cause we're Irish"

Supercringe. Like if you heard anyone from even the most beloved of other countries say the same thing, you'd want to slap them.

ILoveYourVibes

440Hertz wrote: »

The blunt Dutch response was: At least I don’t sound like a frustrated cat!

That's even better!

sbsquarepants

440Hertz wrote: »

Stuff like that happened way too frequently. It’s not just the Lucky Charms thing. There’s a significant lack of awareness and rather unpleasant mocking goes on.

People need to chill the fúck out, sometimes people say stupid things, it's not the end of the world. Some languages just flow better than others, even though i can't speak it French sounds nice when i hear it spoken. It has a nice, almost musical rhythm to it, something like german not so much.

I seen a picture the other day from some protest or other in Canada, this woman had a placard saying "Speak white, racist frogs"

Probably turn out to be photo shopped but i got a giggle out of it anyway:D

Sometimes it's just easier to laugh shít off than take offence.

coffee_cake

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater wrote: »

I'm in New Zealand and it's gas how normal it is for people here (a lot of them are English, granted) to just rhyme off a line of leprechaun accented blarney at you when they hear the Irish accent. It is beyond cringe. All you can do is laugh and fire back a scuttery Eastenders accent (for the English obviously), or ask a Kiwi if he'd like another shrimp on the barbie in your most obnoxious Aussie twang and it tends to shut (or wind) them up fairly quickly.

I started watching some silly show on netflix with either aussie or NZ actors in it, and one of them was supposed to be irish. full on diddly-i begorrah accent. Couldn't watch it anymore

ILoveYourVibes

I worry about my accent now after reading all this!

Practises thirty two thirty two!

Please don't go down this road. Please don't. Yes it gets old but every nation has stereotypes about it.

Can't we at least hold onto the easy going, fun loving stereotype?

Drunks? Yeah we have loads. Fighting Irish? Believe it if ya want, I don't care.

Achebe

elefant wrote: »

And how incredibly direct people will be in sharing their Irish stereotypes with you on first meeting.

They wouldn't consider it acceptable to learn that someone is Indian and ask 'Oh, you must love eating curry?', but it's amazingly common for people to meet an Irish person and follow up with something along the lines of 'Ah, you love drinking so?'.

You'd be surprised. A lot of Irish people found it perfectly acceptable to talk about cocaine as soon as they met Colombians I know.

jimgoose

Achebe wrote: »

You'd be surprised. A lot of Irish people found it perfectly acceptable to talk about cocaine as soon as they met Colombians I know.

I fuck with Americans' minds by telling them I liquidize my potatoes and drink them.

Actually come to think of it, I have an East Limerick/North Tipp accent - I sound exactly like Pat Shortt - and a fella from Galveston, Tx once asked me why I, a "white dude", had a Jamaican accent. :pac:

Antares35

Sure we ham it up when it suits us, pimping ourselves out to American tourists with our pony and trap and leprechaun shíteology for years

ILoveYourVibes

That we are all miserable begrudges ...that we are not soft and we are conservative and conformist ..

like Morrisey basically.

Kaybaykwah

ILoveYourVibes wrote: »

That's kind of funny though. Dutch DOES sound like that.

There is a certain type of american i love ...the BLUNT ones.

The ones who end up victims of BLUNT force trauma?

ILoveYourVibes

Kaybaykwah wrote: »

The ones who end up victims of BLUNT force trauma?

Americans can whip our arses plus they have guns!

We don't like confrontation.

ILoveYourVibes

Achebe wrote: »

You'd be surprised. A lot of Irish people found it perfectly acceptable to talk about cocaine as soon as they met Colombians I know.

OMG ...that happened not in front of colombians ....this girl was saying 'i was just in colombia' and this guy just said ..how was the cocaine? :pac:

My eyes popped out of my head. I was like ...lets ask people about their recreational drug use JUST LIKE THAT!

440Hertz

ILoveYourVibes wrote: »

Americans can whip our arses plus they have guns!

We don't like confrontation.

Ah the old gun loving stereotype that’s entirely true!

Kaybaykwah

sbsquarepants wrote: »

People need to chill the fúck out, sometimes people say stupid things, it's not the end of the world. Some languages just flow better than others, even though i can't speak it French sounds nice when i hear it spoken. It has a nice, almost musical rhythm to it, something like german not so much.

I seen a picture the other day from some protest or other in Canada, this woman had a placard saying "Speak white, racist frogs"

Probably turn out to be photo shopped but i got a giggle out of it anyway:D

Sometimes it's just easier to laugh shít off than take offence.

That reminds me of my youth. I don't know if your account is contemporaneous, but in the sixties and early seventies, a fair bunch of anglos resented the rise of French in Canada.

To this day, there are anglophones in Quebec who complain about having French rammed down their throats. I can tell you that the single fact that French became the official language was enough to keep Canada united, because the majority's needs were addressed. Signage became predominantly French, and immigrant children had to frequent French schools. In a nutshell, that cultural shift was a very strong achievement long overdue.

ILoveYourVibes

440Hertz wrote: »

Ah the old gun loving stereotype that’s entirely true!

In fairness i know several irish people with guns. Only they are not prepared to die for them etc.

Rodney Bathgate

jimgoose wrote: »

I liquidize my potatoes and drink them.

Must try this. Potatoe juice could be the next big thing.

NickNickleby

Niner leprauchan wrote: »

Please don't go down this road. Please don't. Yes it gets old but every nation has stereotypes about it.

Can't we at least hold onto the easy going, fun loving stereotype?

Drunks? Yeah we have loads. Fighting Irish? Believe it if ya want, I don't care.

Indeed. Who's this:

"Cheese eating surrender monkeys"

that always gets a good laugh when I use it in the banlieues .

edit to add:

I don't mind a bit of a ribbing, but there have been times when I've pushed back. I was in a room in England, and one of the geniuses told the group that in Ireland, motorways had to have signs erected saying "Wrong Way" because "the Irish" kept driving down the wrong way and killing each other. He didn't get the laugh he was expecting.

Rodney Bathgate

NickNickleby wrote: »

Indeed. Who's this:

"Cheese eating surrender monkeys"

that always gets a good laugh when I use it in the banlieues .

Freedom fries.

440Hertz

Kaybaykwah wrote: »

That reminds me of my youth. I don't know if your account is contemporaneous, but in the sixties and early seventies, a fair bunch of anglos resented the rise of French in Canada.

To this day, there are anglophones in Quebec who complain about having French rammed down their throats. I can tell you that the single fact that French became the official language was enough to keep Canada united, because the majority's needs were addressed. Signage became predominantly French, and immigrant children had to frequent French schools. In a nutshell, that cultural shift was a very strong achievement long overdue.

Canada is a lot more complicated than many of us realise. The one that I always find surprising is people thinking that Quebec is strange for speaking a different language. It’s got a population that’s as big as a lot of European countries, contains the second largest French speaking city in the world (after Paris) and its 1.668 million km². The entire EU is only 2.6 time’s physically larger!

jimgoose

440Hertz wrote: »

Canada is a lot more complicated than many of us realise. The one that I always find surprising is people thinking that Quebec is strange for speaking a different language. It’s got a population that’s as big as a lot of European countries, contains the second largest French speaking city in the world (after Paris) and its 1.668 million km². The entire EU is only 2.6 time’s physically larger!

There's around 200,000 native speakers of various French dialects distributed through about half of Louisiana as well - they'd be mostly Cajuns.

Kaybaykwah

440Hertz wrote: »

Ah the old gun loving stereotype that’s entirely true!

They dropped millions of tons o' cherry bombs on that lil' nation in Asia, and all them muscles and all that agent Orange somehow brought them back with their tail btwn their legs. No amount of Rambos or Jason Bournes can tip the scale.

Kaybaykwah

440Hertz wrote: »

Canada is a lot more complicated than many of us realise. The one that I always find surprising is people thinking that Quebec is strange for speaking a different language. It’s got a population that’s as big as a lot of European countries, contains the second largest French speaking city in the world (after Paris) and its 1.668 million km². The entire EU is only 2.6 time’s physically larger!

Yes, a lot of folks don't get the idea that one wouldn't want to be fully anglicized, and not want to chuck the folkloric aspect of speaking French. You can summarize it as a strictly business mentality that finds any aspect of life that isn't standardized as an annoyance. I personally find that we are in a better position politically, socially than we have ever been. I think that Ireland is pretty similar in that respect, with the same religious historical background and similar overcoming of difficult circumstances.

NickNickleby

NickNickleby wrote: »

"Cheese eating surrender monkeys"

In all fairness, its a cracking line

Kaybaykwah

jimgoose wrote: »

There's around 200,000 native speakers of various French dialects distributed through about half of Louisiana as well - they'd be mostly Cajuns.

The Cajuns are Acadians that were put on boats, women and children separated from the men, and the men on others by the plantation English and Scottish settlers in Acadia. tehir ships sailed to the gulf of Mexico where they settled. Many of them returned to Canada or even France over time. The accents are different to Quebec French. There are parts of Quebec with an Acadian presence.

Years ago, I was working on a movie in Havre St-Pierre on Quebec's Lower North Shore. That town was festooned with Acadian flags on houses all around. I found out later that the surrounding towns that had been settled about the same time in the nineteenth century by people form the Gaspé peninsula didn't care much for the Acadians and vice versa.


Acadia in Eastern Canada has a sizable population of French speakers, many more than their related cousins in Louisiana. Acadia stretches throughout the Maritime Provinces and Eastern Quebec; Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and a bit of Newfoundland. There is also St Pierre and Miquelon, two tiny islands that are still a part of France, close to Newfoundland.

McGinniesta

Shure stereotyping be jaysus begorrah sez I to you.

I'm off for a few guinness be jaysus in my tweed cap and leprechaun costume begorrah bejaysus.

jimgoose

Kaybaykwah wrote: »

The Cajuns are Acadians that were put on boats, women and children separated from the men, and the men on others by the plantation English and Scottish settlers in Acadia. tehir ships sailed to the gulf of Mexico where they settled. Many of them returned to Canada or even France over time. The accents are different to Quebec French...

Exactly. Him Coonass. C'est bon!

McGinniesta