The truth about the Irish and the English

Nqp15hhu

trixi001 wrote: »

I found at conferences over in England, the Irish & Scots tended to form one group and the English another. This was especially noticeable with those from the South of England, the northerners were different and often much more on the same wavelength as the Irish/Scots.

Its not anti-English - i think its much more a class thing, most of the Irish/Scots have a working class background - even if its a few generations back - whereas a lot of the ones I met in England came from families where their grandparents were doctors etc...

Culturally - Ireland & England are similar in a number of ways, but also very different too, but culturally Kerry is different from Kildare, Limerick is Different than Louth, and Dublin is different from Derry too.

People from D4 are maybe happier to congregate with a doctor from Kent, than a farmer from Tipp - people naturallu gravitate towards those like them, regardless of where they are from.

Obviously the language makes a difference too - if someone has English as a 2nd language, who although reasonably fluent, isn't going to pick up on humour, sarcasm, slang etc, it makes having a conversation that much more difficult, so if you have an Irish, German & English at a conference, yes the Irish will tend to gravitate towards the English and not the Germans/

I wouldn’t say this is a class issue. All southern English people are generally very reserved and passive in their communication. They don’t tend to show emotion and beat around the bush in communication...

This is very different to the Irish approach. I found the south to be quite foreign at times to be honest.

And found it odd how they would go out of their way to avert eye contact, almost as if a glance was a negative thing.

Hamachi

[Deleted User] wrote: »

London is nicer than people sometimes think.

I don’t get this thing that people say about Londoners being really cold and rude. I’ve never really experienced that.

To be honest, I don’t see much difference in the level of friendliness between Dublin and London.

bullpost

Hamachi wrote: »

I don’t get this thing that people say about Londoners being really cold and rude. I’ve never really experienced that.

To be honest, I don’t see much difference in the level of friendliness between Dublin and London.

Yep - And of course the huge London-Irish scene which gave us cultural pearls such as The Pogues.

Hamachi

Hamachi wrote: »

I don’t get this thing that people say about Londoners being really cold and rude. I’ve never really experienced that.

To be honest, I don’t see much difference in the level of friendliness between Dublin and London.

Lots of cliches on this thread.

vriesmays

The Irish think the Wicklow-set horror movie Rawhead Rex is awful, silly and laughable; the English think it's a cult curio from the unique oeuvre of Clive Barker.

Mad_maxx

Yurt! wrote: »

Italian or French Swiss are generally alright, German-speaking Swiss though are even more dour than their Swabian and Bavarian cousins.[/QUOTE

German speaking Swiss are the vast majority

monkeysnapper

I work in a place full of Irish, 5 English and 1 Welsh 1 American .... the Welsh being myself ....

There would be regular slagging between us all but in general we all get along fantastic except when the 6 nations is on.

Most of us have Irish partners and children. I have 3 Irish children and my wife is Irish ... I don't really consider myself different to rest of people here and have never in my 22 years here ever been treated differently.

The English are a great nation of people in my opinion.

monkeysnapper

monkeysnapper wrote: »

I don't really consider myself different to rest of people here and have never in my 22 years here ever been treated differently.

Do the Irish get much grief in Wales? I've never really heard much about how Irish people get on in Wales, i'd suspect its much like in England or Scotland. They will get some abuse but probably not that much.

vriesmays

The Englih are divided by left and right-wing politics, the Irish are divided by Fine Gael and Fine Fail.

ulster

jetsonx wrote: »

Anybody foreigner reading internet forums would probably think that the Irish and English can't stand each other.

However, like a lot of things in life, what happens on the internet and what happens in real life is totally different.

When the Irish are in a room full of Europeans, the Irish and the English gravitate towards each other paperclips to a magnet. Over, the years I've seen this countless times in workplaces, conferences and other events. The fact is the Irish don't generally gravitate towards Sylvia from Stuttgart or Kurt from Klagenfurt. After just a few minutes, they will be talking to Nigel and Sally from Slough. And a few weeks ago, the great Tommy Gorman mentioned this phenomenon as well from this his time in Brussels. The Irish contingent working for the EU were not hanging out with other Eurofolk but they were hanging out with Brits.

So despite all the negative talk about Brexit, I think it finally time for the Irish to admit that culturally we are much closer to Britain than any other country in Euroland and they might actually like each other.

I wouldn't mind gravitating towards Sylvia from Stuttgart, she's got a great rack!

TAFKAlawhec

Nqp15hhu wrote: »

I wouldn’t say this is a class issue. All southern English people are generally very reserved and passive in their communication. They don’t tend to show emotion and beat around the bush in communication...

This is very different to the Irish approach. I found the south to be quite foreign at times to be honest.

And found it odd how they would go out of their way to avert eye contact, almost as if a glance was a negative thing.

This might help? Replace "Northerner" (from England, of course) with "Irish" and I don't think it would be much different...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT0ay9u1gg4

pgj2015

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InhQxhLa1BE

I was thinking of this thread when I saw this on the news last night.

Ireland is so similar that our food is a good substitute for British food if they are stuck.

murpho999

pgj2015 wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InhQxhLa1BE

I was thinking of this thread when I saw this on the news last night.

Ireland is so similar that our food is a good substitute for British food if they are stuck.

Well it's hardly a surprise that a country that was colonised for centuries by it's larger neighbour has similarities with things like food, language etc.

Still doesn't mean we're the same.

Like Austrians are not the same as Germans or Canadians are not same as Americans.

NeuralNetwork

Hamachi wrote: »

I don’t get this thing that people say about Londoners being really cold and rude. I’ve never really experienced that.

To be honest, I don’t see much difference in the level of friendliness between Dublin and London.

My experience of London is it’s by and large friendly and extremely diverse. I never encountered a cold vibe and found them generally chatty.

Nobody is going to strike up a conversation on the tube, but when’s the last time you had a chat with a randomer on a packed Luas? I think we have an imagination about some of this stuff or are thinking about a bygone era.

Some of the coldest and rudest conversations I’ve had in England were in Yorkshire oddly enough. It’s also the only place I’ve encountered genuine anti-Irish sentiment and mockery of what were totally neutral Irish accents by someone who had an extremely strong Yorkshire one. I just wrote it off as parochialism.

I’d add though you’ll encounter plenty of English people are clueless about Irish history or anything to do with Irish politics, but they’re often fairly clueless about those topics domestically. I’ve often encountered people who couldn’t really define what the U.K. is, never mind the history of Irish independence.

For a whole variety of reasons, I think Ireland tends to be more politically engaged. It’s possibly even driven by the PR voting system. If you’re in England or the US you’re just largely picking Team Blue or Team Red and don’t engage much beyond that. I noticed a lot of English people wouldn’t even be aware of who their local MP was but just voted for them because they were Labour or Tory. They could be Mr Blobby or a robotic reincarnation of Margaret Thatcher, with extra evil AI, and as long as they were on the ticket for their party they’d put an X in the box. That’s the result of their system though, not their culture.

Achebe

ShatterAlan wrote: »

China is hundreds of times larger than Japan but you can be sure the Chinese are well aware of their history with the Japanese. The same is most definitely true for large Russia and their history with comparitively tiny Germany.

Yeah, because in those cases the smaller countries pillaged the bigger ones.