Culturally is Ireland any different to the UK ?

hatful · 06-09-2011 10:09PM

Of course the class system in the U.K is more embedded. They have a much bigger immigrant population and hence more inequality which impacts on health, industry, society etc... Where exactly are you coming from with this line of questioning? Do you have BBC 1 ????

epgc3fyqirnbsx · 06-09-2011 10:12PM

Chuck Stone wrote: »

First we'd have to define what UK culture is.

Good luck with that.

Good point. Culture is a very vague term, does it boil down to having different traidtions? If so then yeah, we have different cultures.
Attitudes? Our attitudes, and humour, would probably be more similar than different when compared with other countries.
But when it comes down to the individual sure we're all different

fontanalis · 06-09-2011 10:13PM

Chuck Stone wrote: »

Probably a hell of a lot easier because we're more homogeneous.

Oops, misreading on my part. I thought it said English for some reason.

Ouchette · 06-09-2011 10:27PM

Helen Rapid Theft wrote: »

Attitudes? Our attitudes, and humour, would probably be more similar than different when compared with other countries.

Humour, yes, without a doubt, but I'm not sure at about attitudes. I've lived in Ireland, UK, Sweden and Germany and I'd rate them as all about as different as each other in terms of attitudes.

(and England v Northern Ireland would be as big a difference as any of them)

OPENROAD · 06-09-2011 10:29PM

Very very little difference between Ireland and England imo

For me maybe we take the mick out of ourselves a bit more compared to the English , and the English particularly Londoners are more polite and mannerly.

bayern282 · 06-09-2011 10:31PM

There are more individualistic / eccentric types of people in England that you don't get here, you can't really compare like for like with a country of 50+million and one of 4m

Don't bother going to London or Birmingham etc to look for them, the English live in places like Devon, Norfolk or Cumbria.

The skanger / underclass element of people in the UK also tend to be a lot rougher and dumber and there's far more extreme cases of murder etc over there.

If we'd have followed the Finnish / Norwegian way of running our affairs instead of the Anglo-U.S greed is good, look after #1 model, I'm sure the differences would be more marked and better as well.

amacachi · 06-09-2011 10:32PM

dlofnep wrote: »

Britain isn't even culturally the same. Scotland is vastly different to England.

Aye, and "The North" is very different to those poofters down south. :pac:

johndaman66 · 06-09-2011 10:33PM

mike65 wrote: »

Yes its culturally different, no-one ever started a thread on a UK board asking

"Culturally is the UK any different to Ireland?"

Probably because Ireland is a small country compared to the UK, in terms of population anyway and the UK is our only immediate large neibhbouring country. On the face of it, its always going to be likely that UK culture will impact ours (certainly certain aspects of it anyway) whether you like to accept it or not. It stands to reason that Ireland being a much smaller country will not impact UK culture to the same degree

By the way how are you so certain no such thread was ever started on a UK board?;) A pound to a penny it probably was...

Musicman2006 wrote: »

The only difference is you cant get Worcester sauce flavour crisps here. Other than that - identical.

Do remember that you certainly wont find red lemonade over there in a hurry;)

LondonIrish90 · 06-09-2011 10:35PM

Chuck Stone wrote: »

First we'd have to define what UK culture is.

Good luck with that.

Britain has probably had more of a cultural impact on the world than any other nation.

From literature - shakespeare, dickens, chaucer, austen, hardy, keats, conan doyle etc to theatre, music, film, and art.
From sport - football (the oldest clubs and leagues in the world, the oldest international derby), rugby (enough said) and cricket (Lords - the home of cricket, the ashes), and of course wimbledon.
From the royal wedding to remembrance day, the military tattoo to the trooping of the colour. London's empirical architecture to the compact streets of Edinburgh.
Music, From the proms - Rule Britannia, Land of hope and glory, jerusalem, to the beatles, the rolling stones, the who etc
Film - From bond, Hitchcock, to harry potter.
TV, Fawlty Towers, to only fools, from monty python to Dr Who.
Science and technology - darwin, newton, the spinning jenny, stephenson, brunel, watt etc.
Exploration and military prestige - nelson, wellington, raleigh, drake, cook, livingstone etc. Trafalgar, to waterloo, to rorke's drift.
food - from curries coming back from British India, to traditional sunday lunch, to English ales and Scotch whisky.
British people have more to identify with, associate with, and be proud of than just about any other nation on earth.

LondonIrish90 · 06-09-2011 10:39PM

dlofnep wrote: »

Britain isn't even culturally the same. Scotland is vastly different to England.

So?

You as a person who sees Ireland and a 32 county state in future would surely not care about this? There is a vastly different culture and tradition among some in Northern Ireland compared to the majority in the republic. Does this mean you wont recognise them as one people, one country, one Ireland? I highly, highly doubt you will.

Just because there are different cultural traditions from England to Scotland does not mean they cannot come together to form and interesting and diverse British culture. I see the union flag flying from edinburgh castle and from the houses of parliament and feel in the same country really.

Richard Hillman · 06-09-2011 10:39PM

Very similar but if you are in England you would know its a different country. I think we have more in common with England than Northern Ireland. Northern Irelanders and Scots are just a completely different species to ourselves the english and welsh.

Greentopia · 06-09-2011 10:42PM

hatful wrote: »

Of course the class system in the U.K is more embedded.

Money is to Ireland what the class system is to the U.K. I think, although we have a lot of class division and class consciousness here as well.

Also we're a much more agriculturally dependant country than the U.K. (as a percentage of the number of people working the land and jobs derived from it I mean).

Dionysus · 06-09-2011 10:46PM

Signposts, street names, place names, etc are the most obvious difference to me at this moment. I thought their English-only signposts over there were very odd, lacking in warmth and culture. It took my going away to become more appreciative and interested in the Irish names on all our signs, etc when I came home.

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater · 06-09-2011 10:48PM

LondonIrish90 wrote: »

Britain has probably had more of a cultural impact on the world than any other nation.

From literature - shakespeare, dickens, chaucer, austen, hardy, keats, conan doyle etc to theatre, music, film, and art.
From sport - football (the oldest clubs and leagues in the world, the oldest international derby), rugby (enough said) and cricket (Lords - the home of cricket, the ashes), and of course wimbledon.
From the royal wedding to remembrance day, the military tattoo to the trooping of the colour. London's empirical architecture to the compact streets of Edinburgh.
Music, From the proms - Rule Britannia, Land of hope and glory, jerusalem, to the beatles, the rolling stones, the who etc
Film - From bond, Hitchcock, to harry potter.
TV, Fawlty Towers, to only fools, from monty python to Dr Who.
Science and technology - darwin, newton, the spinning jenny, stephenson, brunel, watt etc.
Exploration and military prestige - nelson, wellington, raleigh, drake, cook, livingstone etc. Trafalgar, to waterloo, to rorke's drift.
food - from curries coming back from British India, to traditional sunday lunch, to English ales and Scotch whisky.
British people have more to identify with, associate with, and be proud of than just about any other nation on earth.

Interesting point.

In fairness, there are a few things in that list that few outside of Britain give a toss about;

Traditional Sunday Lunch - Could vary greatly depending on where in the world you live

English Ale - You'll do well to find a pint of that stuff outside mainland Britain/Magaluf

Compact streets - Countless cities all over Europe would make Edinburgh's old town look like 5th avenue

Cricket - Hasn't exactly spread like wildfire outside of the old empire

Don't get me started about the Royal Wedding.

If any country has impacted the rest of the world culturally in a major way then its the yanks.

KeithAFC · 06-09-2011 10:51PM

Richard Hillman wrote: »

Very similar but if you are in England you would know its a different country. I think we have more in common with England than Northern Ireland. Northern Irelanders and Scots are just a completely different species to ourselves the english and welsh.

I agree with this. Although you could also Donegal too.

westendgirlie · 06-09-2011 10:52PM

OPENROAD wrote: »

and the English particularly Londoners are more polite and mannerly.

Thank you very much

dlofnep · 06-09-2011 10:53PM

LondonIrish90 wrote: »

So?

I voiced my opinion. Deal with it.

LondonIrish90 · 06-09-2011 10:56PM

dlofnep wrote: »

I voiced my opinion. Deal with it.

I did deal with it. You seemed to not have any sort of mildly interesting response and went on to cut it out. Instead replying with this strange, semi-aggressive post that I have quoted. It would probably have been better for you to say nothing, but hey your post count went up by one.

Red Hand · 06-09-2011 11:00PM

dlofnep wrote: »

I voiced my opinion. Deal with it.

LondonIrish90 wrote: »

I did deal with it. You seemed to not have any sort of mildly interesting response and went on to cut it out. Instead replying with this strange, semi-aggressive post that I have quoted. It would probably have been better for you to say nothing, but hey your post count went up by one.

Alright, shake your dicks guys, the pissing contest's over.

The Scientician · 06-09-2011 11:03PM

Scotland always strikes me as quite similar to Ireland. England has more of an urban culture with nearly 10 times the population of either Scotland or Ireland. My cousin and friends who live in England say people in England are more anonymous, less friendly but I think again it's more to do with being more urban perhaps.

There are I suppose national cultures, but even across this small island and population there are several quite distinctly Irish cultures. The same across Britain but even more diverse. They have four national languages, and huge migrant and 2nd/3rd generation populations from throughout the world.

Irish Guitarist · 06-09-2011 11:03PM

British humour seems to be more about laughing at other nations than Irish humour does. The British make fun of the French and Germans and still bang on about the war.

Watch one of those British comedy quizzes like Mock The Week or Have I Got News For You and you'll usually hear someone having a go at 'frogs' or 'krauts' followed by the audience going into hysterics. Irish people are more likely to laugh at themselves. I bet English jokes aren't as popular in England as Irish jokes are here.

LondonIrish90 · 06-09-2011 11:05PM

Jeremiah 16:1 wrote: »

Alright, shake your dicks guys, the pissing contest's over.

I am not in a contest of any kind with the man, I just don't understand his point. He refused to expand on it so I suppose that is the end of it. I wondered why he thought differing regional cultures didn't link to one national culture(Northern and Southern Germany, Eastern and Western USA, Northern and Southern India, France, Spain etc, could go on forever) but not going to argue the point in the aggressive, blunt manner he seemed willing to!

pragmatic1 · 06-09-2011 11:10PM

KeithAFC wrote: »

I agree with this. Although you could also Donegal too.

Do you be about Raphoe much Keith.

languagenerd · 06-09-2011 11:15PM

We speak English in a different way to them. Hiberno English is actually quite different to British English; without even realising it, we throw in loads of Irish terms. Things like answering a question with the verb instad of yes/no ("Will you have a cup?" "Ah, I will"), using "bring" and "take" as the same word, the whole "I do be doing..." thing... Now and again I say something and my English friends are confused by the phrasing. A Spanish woman told me a while ago that the Irish are one of the hardest English speakers to understand because we "use far more adjectives and colloquialisms".

Then there`s things like sense of humour (we`re quite self deprecating, they aren`t) and religion (even though we aren`t really religious anymore, our society is a lot more influenced by religion than theirs).

Don`t know if this fits into culture, but also, we see the history between the two countries as a lot more important than they do. We sometimes still hold a grudge against them, and half of them don`t even know what for!

dlofnep · 06-09-2011 11:15PM

LondonIrish90 wrote: »

I am not in a contest of any kind with the man, I just don't understand his point. He refused to expand on it so I suppose that is the end of it.

The point was that if Britain itself has no defined culture and differs across the island - then how could Ireland be culturally the same as something that has no definition.

You went off on a tangent because I said Scotland and England had different cultures. You almost seemed offended at the suggestion, and had to invoke some parallel between the north and south of Ireland. There is no fundamental difference between Monaghan and Fermanagh. Cross the Scottish border however and the first thing that greets you is a Scottish bagpipe player.

Ireland is pretty homogeneous across the Island. We have 32 county sporting association, music, dance, language, festivals, etc.. - and the tourist boards both north and south invoke the cliché 'Irish culture' in advertisements to bring in tourists.

Ireland is vastly more homogeneous than Britain. But that's here nor there. I don't consider the differences between Ireland and England, or indeed England and Scotland to be miles apart - but they are different and have their own unique values and cultural aspects. Ireland and Scotland have more in common than England if we must be frank from a cultural standpoint.

charlemont · 06-09-2011 11:15PM

BRITS OUT !!! TIOCFAID ÁR LÁ !!!

dlofnep · 06-09-2011 11:19PM

charlemont wrote: »

BRITS OUT !!! TIOCFAID ÁR LÁ !!!

Was that really necessary?

westendgirlie · 06-09-2011 11:22PM

Bleedin ell we're way diff aint we? Cos Paddys can't speak proper wot like we can.

Gummy Panda · 06-09-2011 11:22PM

Of course.

They love mushie peas, gravy and chips from the chipper while we prefer chips, cheese and garlic.

teol · 06-09-2011 11:22PM

charlemont wrote: »

BRITS OUT !!! TIOCFAID ÁR LÁ !!!

Tiocfaidh Átha Cliath Lá :pac:

I think the community spirit in rural England is much better than ours. Also I like their beer garden culture.

Culturally is Ireland any different to the UK ?

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