How are the English different from us?

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

. Place answers in historical context. Relate answers to our heritage.

Attempting to address the OP question as per instructions above, I find it surprising that Religion has not figured much in previous posts. If the question "whats different between Irish and English" had been put to our parents or grandparents, there is no doubt that the first thing most would have said is "we're Catholics and they're Protestants" -simplistic, but that is how most people thought 40 years ago.

robp wrote: »

Perhaps but many people have a more nuanced view and did so 40 years ago too. Many would acknowledge the protestants have and always had a sizeable presence in Ireland. There is even a more sizeable number of UK Catholics. There are more Catholics in the UK then there are in Ireland and most are in England not Northern Ireland.

Of course I agree with robp that my previous post was simplistic. But in historical terms religion had a huge influence on the development of different lifestyles and attitudes in Ireland and England.
In the 19th century many in the British establishment classes firmly believed that Ireland's problems were due to its people being lazy, slovenly, drunken and lawless. Furthermore, they believed these characteristics could be blamed on Roman Catholic teaching. How could this be argued? - well RC teaching emphasised the role of the church, the sacraments, prayers for the dead and indulgences. Protestant teaching on the other hand was that salvation was a matter of personal responsibility, everyone was individually responsible for their soul and could not be saved by the church. So it was believed RC's were careless and irresponsible whereas Prods were the opposite.
This (not entirely false, but inaccurate) view of the Irish by elements in England influenced the development of Irish Nationalism, and all the subsequent nationalist struggles.

Fratton Fred wrote: »

You've missed my point.

To someone not from these islands, we are very similar. Despite Irish claims to the contrary.

I dunno. My wife is from Australia, which is about as far from these islands as you can get. As an adult she lived for twelve years in the UK, before coming to live in Ireland. She was struck by how very different, socially and culturally, the two countries are (which she had not really expected - she expected only fairly superficial differences).

Couple of thoughts on differences:

Yes, England is largely protestant, and influenced by Protestantism, whereas Catholicism has been a more dominant influence in Ireland. But we can ask why this was? Why did the English, largely, accept the reformation while the Irish, largely, did not? That suggests that there were already cultural differences between the two countries.

And I think the difference was colonisation. The English ruling classes accepted the reformation because it was to their advantage, financially and politically. (Dissolution of the monasteries, etc.) The Irish ruling classes, likewise. But in England the population largely followed their social superiors, because they trusted them and saw them as natural leaders. Not so in Ireland, for the most part, where local bigwigs were either colonial incomers, or Norman/Irish magnates who had compromised with a culturally foreign and unfamiliar government. I think the Irish just didn't have the same trust in the leaders of their society as the English did; hence, they didn't embrace the Reformation. Hence also a continuing difference in social attitudes to government and the exercise of government power, which persists to this day.

Then, of course, you have other differing historical experiences between the two countries - most of Ireland never underwent the social changes consequent on the industrial revolution, for example, with mass migration from rural to urban areas and consequent weakening of social structures depending on the extended family. And that, I think, gives rise to different dymanics around the extended family in England and Ireland, though the dynamics of the nuclear family are probably fairly similar.

Irish Catholic sexual puritanism, ironically, may be an inheritance from England, at least party. The Irish Magdalen laundries, for instance, had their parallels in England, (Lutheran) Scandinavia and the (Protestant) United States, but not in Spain, Italy or France. I don't think this is a coincidence. Of course sexual puritanism was also one of the outcomes of the Famine, which is an experience not shared with England.

First and foremost, they are Canadian. Then French, although many of them are not of French extraction, bleeve it or not. It is anomalous to the so-called Afro-Americans living south of the 48th. Nor does living in Québec automatically make you a French Canadian, a term that many of us dislike. The Anglophone population of Québec is quite large, although of course, they also speak French since Canada is officially a bi-lingual country, except for Nunavut, where the native Inuit would laff their muqluqs off if they were told that they had to leanr to speak French. In Québec you are simply living in a part of Canada, like New Brunswick, where the principal language reflects the origins of the initial European input. In spite of the name, New Brunswick is predominantly Francophone. Walk into a store in Ontario, the next province along from Québec, speaking French, and you are most likely to get a blank stare, although there are exceptions like the beautiful young lady in a Kawartha ice-cream cafe in in Orono......

Oh, and Ottawa, the national capital. On one side of the Ottawa River you have Hull*/Gatineau in Québec, and cross the bridge and you are in downtown Ottawa, where many speak French as a courtesy, or ARE workers from the other side, and are therefore Francophone anyhow. While I was working there for the CDF I used both languages very day, and it didn't hurt me one bit. I would add, though, that I AM the only member of my family who is also Francophone.

I'd also take you to task about the European origins of the Mexicans, too, as the vast majority are descended from the incumbent native population there when Cortés arrived. A casual glance at the language breakdown of present-day Mexico would show this fact.

tac

* Hull, pronounced 'Ool' - like 'wool' without the 'w'.

DanielODonnell wrote: »

That is the same everywhere, I view Canadians the same as yanks but they don't like me saying that, if i lived in Canada and USA I probably would notice the differences, though it can't be compared to this situation as Canadians and yanks have a similar history with being European colonists whereas English were Saxons and Irish Gaels.

That is such a broad and sweeping statement as to be almost nonsensical.