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Ever get sick of Irish stereotyping?

  • 27-10-2020 10:10am
    #1
    Registered Users Posts: 2,855 ✭✭✭irishguitarlad


    Ever get sick of it?


«1

Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 40,536 ✭✭✭✭ohnonotgmail


    Begorrah sure I do.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,409 ✭✭✭corner of hells


    Begorrah sure I do.

    Is that your shillelagh or is it mine ?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,487 ✭✭✭Fighting Tao


    No. I try not to let insignificant things affect my mental health.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 310 ✭✭Osborne


    Top o' the Morning to ye all.

    Tis surely tiresome.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 81,220 ✭✭✭✭biko


    I'm tired of being called Paddy.





    My name is Mick.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 991 ✭✭✭TuringBot47


    One of the funniest p*ss takes of the Irish I've seen/heard, was Dennis Learys "traditional Irish song". Check out the lyrics of it.



  • Registered Users Posts: 2,855 ✭✭✭irishguitarlad


    Osborne wrote: »
    Top o' the Morning to ye all.

    Tis surely tiresome.

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


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 15,202 ✭✭✭✭ILoveYourVibes


    no i love it.

    Ive decided i don't want to be irish anymore tho...


  • Registered Users, Subscribers, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,591 ✭✭✭✭antodeco


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

    In fairness, the vast majority of Irish people I know these days either feel like they've wasted a weekend of they haven't gotten a hangover or done a few lines of coke. There is a far stronger underlining of a drinking culture in Ireland than is actually believed


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,639 ✭✭✭completedit


    Not really but the worst is when people try to correct your pronunciation. It'll be Tom from England. a lad who literally can't pronounce his r's, and he'll act like pronouncing 'th' like 'd' is the most ridiculous thing ever.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,950 ✭✭✭ChikiChiki


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

    And many of us are happy to play up to that stereotype from my travel experience. It casts a shadow over those that do not.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,855 ✭✭✭irishguitarlad


    antodeco wrote: »
    In fairness, the vast majority of Irish people I know these days either feel like they've wasted a weekend of they haven't gotten a hangover or done a few lines of coke. There is a far stronger underlining of a drinking culture in Ireland than is actually believed

    Fair enough but to say that we're all alcoholics I feel isn't a fair representation of us. It's like me saying that all Spanish people are bull Killers and are gypsy flamenco dancers.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,480 ✭✭✭Chancer3001


    Saw a stereotype this morning.

    Was so angry i spit my guinness out all over my spuds and battered wife


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 40,536 ✭✭✭✭ohnonotgmail


    Is that your shillelagh or is it mine ?

    'tis mine and i'll take the shirt off the back of any man who says it isn't.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,812 ✭✭✭✭sbsquarepants


    Stereotypes generally don't just arise out of nothing, there's usually a grain of truth in them. Obviously they don't apply to everyone - but that's the thing with generalisations, there's always tons of exceptions.


    I personally couldn't give a rats arse what Irish stereotypes exists - there are better things to be concerned about. If you want to believe i'm some superstitious, drunken, idiot, you go ahead and believe that. Jokes on you - i'm only 2 of those things;)


  • Posts: 7,712 ✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    antodeco wrote: »
    In fairness, the vast majority of Irish people I know these days either feel like they've wasted a weekend of they haven't gotten a hangover or done a few lines of coke. There is a far stronger underlining of a drinking culture in Ireland than is actually believed

    ZvWjrBZ.gif


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 16,530 ✭✭✭✭whisky_galore


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

    Funny that you never saw a US president or Queen Liz/Phil the Greek getting a photo op with French wine or German beer.

    Publicans having the ear of government.

    Irish pubs our best known export.

    A & E until recently flooded with drunken wasters.

    Well then...


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 15,202 ✭✭✭✭ILoveYourVibes


    Not really but the worst is when people try to correct your pronunciation. It'll be Tom from England. a lad who literally can't pronounce his r's, and he'll act like pronouncing 'th' like 'd' is the most ridiculous thing ever.
    What does he think of people who say Fink for think?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 20,180 ✭✭✭✭jimgoose


    Not really but the worst is when people try to correct your pronunciation. It'll be Tom from England. a lad who literally can't pronounce his r's, and he'll act like pronouncing 'th' like 'd' is the most ridiculous thing ever.

    Tell him "Eee howay tha day wor lad, ah'm gannin yarrum laahk. Toon!" :pac:


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,236 ✭✭✭Dr. Kenneth Noisewater


    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.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 20,180 ✭✭✭✭jimgoose


    To address the matter at hand, the day Jeremy Clarkson calls me an unintelligible red-haired potatoist with a semtex fetish will be the day my life is complete.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 20,180 ✭✭✭✭jimgoose


    One of the funniest p*ss takes of the Irish I've seen/heard, was Dennis Learys "traditional Irish song". Check out the lyrics of it...

    "...my father would sometimes swear in Gaelic. It doesn't get more religious than that." -- Denis Leary


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 15,202 ✭✭✭✭ILoveYourVibes


    jimgoose wrote: »
    "...my father would sometimes swear in Gaelic. It doesn't get more religious than that." -- Denis Leary
    Yeah i think we can all agree ..no he didn't denis ..feck is not gaelic ..and erm gaelic is not irish.

    Americans always say ....oh my parents spoke irish ...they did in their hole ...2% of the population speaks it ..

    Can you remember your parents ever speaking irish? cuz i can't


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,672 ✭✭✭elefant


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

    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?'.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,709 ✭✭✭Feisar


    I get "top of the morning to ya" from one lad in the UK when I'm over. It actually took me a while to realize he was taking the piss as I have never heard it said here. Another lad says "ooh potatoes" in a Leprechaun voice. It's only a bit of banter.

    First they came for the socialists...



  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 962 ✭✭✭irishblessing


    biko wrote: »
    I'm tired of being called Paddy.





    My name is Mick.


    I know this is in jest, but we haven't a leg to stand on when most people here refer to American's as Yanks. Yank harks back to colonial times. The US is full of people who are indigenous, or brought there as slaves/african ancestry, and is a big melting pot of many different cultures. It's so stupid, doesn't even apply to modern society yet we carry on using it to refer to people who don't even relate to it. :rolleyes:


  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    7 odd billion ppl on the planet

    i think youd want to acquire some perspective about how much time the other 6.995 billion are going to spend in gaining a subtle grasp of the minutiae our own specific culture.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,709 ✭✭✭Badly Drunk Boy


    Not really but the worst is when people try to correct your pronunciation. It'll be Tom from England. a lad who literally can't pronounce his r's, and he'll act like pronouncing 'th' like 'd' is the most ridiculous thing ever.
    And the English usually can't pronounce 'wh' correctly either. 'Whales' is pronounced the same as 'Wales', for example. In certain areas, 'th' is pronounced like 'f', as something already said with the' think/fink' thing.

    The one that I'm hearing more and more is their inability to say the word 'sixth'. They say 'sickth' instead. :confused:


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 15,202 ✭✭✭✭ILoveYourVibes


    There are two types of Irish men

    Richard Harris in the Field and Sean Bean in the field. There is said it.

    There are two types of women ...Mrs Doyle ..and Brenda Fricker from my left foot!


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  • Posts: 18,962 [Deleted User]


    Feisar wrote: »
    I get "top of the morning to ya" from one lad in the UK when I'm over. It actually took me a while to realize he was taking the piss as I have never heard it said here. Another lad says "ooh potatoes" in a Leprechaun voice. It's only a bit of banter.

    you should sue the bashtards

    #Red-faced Potato-Head Paddies Matter

    #cultural appropriation OUTRAGE


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 651 ✭✭✭440Hertz


    I got it way worse in America than in the U.K.
    To be fair, I think they’ve mostly moved on from paddywhackery in Britain over the last 30 years, but the Americans certainly haven’t and it can alternate between just ignorant “can you see the moon in Europe?” to just using stereotypes about Lucky Charms.

    That being said, the Americans often have a tendency to produce comedy based on characters with “silly” foreign accents etc and can be extremely lacking in awareness of anything beyond their own bubble.

    They’ve also a rather hilarious notion that we are ultra conservative in a puritanical way, which given our history in might not be baseless, but it is extremely dated and just a bit ironic coming from a culture that currently can’t do anything without thanking Jesus and where politics and religion are merged.

    I had the bizarre experience of someone a in the USA tiptoeing around mentioning gay marriage and assuming I must be some ultra hardcore right wing Catholic and would be offended. Also had the experience of being asked to say grace at dinner, and when I said : “emmmh... I have ever done this before and actually, I’m an atheist” so I just raised a toast to the farmers, the food producers & the chef and everyone just went into this weird and awkward silence and someone later got a bit drunk and started giving me hassle over it, including implying I wasn’t Irish enough!!!

    It’s also not just Irish people who get stuff like this. I’ve a lot of French family and they get absolute hell - stuff like being asked by English people “do you wash? which is ironic, as the assumption in France is the British are soap shy and use fish & chips as perfume. France tends to be the other extreme spending ludicrous amounts per capita on cosmetics and perfume.
    Then Americans going on about how women don’t shave their armpits, I am aware of one case where this actually ended up in a guy being slapped! People doing terrible impressions of French accents and in one case being if you drink wine for breakfast!

    The one thing I would say though is Ireland tends to actually care about what they think. The French would tend to just think : “oh how awful it must be for them to be so uncultured!” and approach it as an anthropological study.

    I think sometimes we could do with developing a bit more of a brass neck ourselves & ignoring it.

    At times I feel Ireland has a history of being the bullied kid at school who deflects by acting the clown & making it into a joke, when in reality they’re often really quite put out by what has been said and goes home to over analyse it and brood about it on boards.ie


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 962 ✭✭✭irishblessing


    440Hertz wrote: »
    I got it way worse in America than in the U.K.
    To be fair, I think they’ve mostly moved on from paddywhackery in Britain over the last 30 years, but the Americans certainly haven’t and it can alternate between just ignorant “can you see the moon in Europe?” to just using stereotypes about Lucky Charms.

    That being said, the Americans often have a tendency to produce comedy based on characters with “silly” foreign accents etc and can be extremely lacking in awareness of anything beyond their own bubble.

    They’ve also a rather hilarious notion that we are ultra conservative in a puritanical way, which given our history in might not be baseless, but it is extremely dated and just a bit ironic coming from a culture that currently can’t do anything without thanking Jesus and where politics and religion are merged.

    I had the bizarre experience of someone a in the USA tiptoeing around mentioning gay marriage and assuming I must be some ultra hardcore right wing Catholic and would be offended. Also had the experience of being asked to say grace at dinner, and when I said : “emmmh... I have ever done this before and actually, I’m an atheist” so I just raised a toast to the farmers, the food producers & the chef and everyone just went into this weird and awkward silence and someone later got a bit drunk and started giving me hassle over it, including implying I wasn’t Irish enough!!!

    It’s also not just Irish people who get stuff like this. I’ve a lot of French family and they get absolute hell - stuff like being asked by English people “do you wash? which is ironic, as the assumption in France is the British are soap shy and use fish & chips as perfume. France tends to be the other extreme spending ludicrous amounts per capita on cosmetics and perfume.
    Then Americans going on about how women don’t shave their armpits, I am aware of one case where this actually ended up in a guy being slapped! People doing terrible impressions of French accents and in one case being if you drink wine for breakfast!

    The one thing I would say though is Ireland tends to actually care about what they think. The French would tend to just think : “oh how awful it must be for them to be so uncultured!” and approach it as an anthropological study.

    So you just made a post generalising and stereotyping 330 million people in America, all the British and French and Irish because you feel generalised and stereotyped? Well done.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 651 ✭✭✭440Hertz


    So you just made a post generalising and stereotyping 330 million people in America, all the British and French and Irish because you feel generalised and stereotyped? Well done.

    One has to admire though how modern Ireland is becoming over sensitive, permanently offended and utterly humourless.

    My point is the biggest issue we have here is a tendency to superficially laugh off stereotypes when they are aimed at us but then go off into self-critique in discussions like this.

    We care far, far too much about how we are perceived a lot of that time and I don’t think it’s a particularly useful trait sometimes as I think it shatters a lot of self confidence and take self deprecation into more like a self destructive complex.

    I know for example, I have encountered older Dubliners using the term “oh that’s a bit Irish” meaning obtuse or somewhat gruffly thick e.g. when some plumber didn’t show up or whatever.

    Our national self image is pretty poor sometimes and you can see that in the “only in Ireland (is water this wet)” type narrative that regularly is a feature here.

    If you compare how most more self confident cultures tend to react to such things it’s usually just with totally dismissal or not even significantly noticing unless they’re very extreme insults. I find we spend a lot of time analysing and reanalysing some comment that someone made. We could do with just brushing it off a lot more than we do.

    I find Ireland affable but when you see or hear stuff like a radio & other media attention about an American who blogged about her pet peeve about living in Ireland, as happened a few years ago, it does tend to point to extreme over sensitivity.

    There’s a fine line between healthy self deprecation and an unhealthy, serious lack of self confidence & I think it’s one we sometimes trip over a little too easily - it likely stems from our history and particularly the interaction with the British establishment but, also I think from a home grown education system that for a very long time seemed to try to knock any sparks of pride or confidence out of most of those who experienced it. That’s really only changed since the 1980s.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,420 ✭✭✭✭dxhound2005


    And the English usually can't pronounce 'wh' correctly either. 'Whales' is pronounced the same as 'Wales', for example. In certain areas, 'th' is pronounced like 'f', as something already said with the' think/fink' thing.

    The one that I'm hearing more and more is their inability to say the word 'sixth'. They say 'sickth' instead. :confused:

    You're condemning "the English" unfairly. The Wales pronunciation is standard these days. Wh still exists in Scotland. These things can change over the centuries.

    https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2019/11/whale.html

    And sixth is just one of thousands of words with more than one standard pronunciation. There is an old riddle which works in speech, but not in writing. If I had 26 sheep and one died, how many would I have left? The answer will usually be 25, but you can say 19 claiming that you said 20 sick sheep.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,480 ✭✭✭AllForIt


    No. I never get sick except when i drink over 10 pints of Guinness.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,480 ✭✭✭AllForIt


    So you just made a post generalising and stereotyping 330 million people in America, all the British and French and Irish because you feel generalised and stereotyped? Well done.

    I agree with 440Herts. It's a painfully lefty trend to complain about generalising or stereotyping. I think that is just a way to stop people saying things that have truth to them but ppl like you think you have found a way to nullify a point altogether if some claim isn't 100% true if every case. Well it's not gonna work.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,702 ✭✭✭fonecrusher1


    Erraah I wouldn't be fond of the Irish stereotyping, but when I do go at it I go at it awful hard. I'd have about 45 pints in about 2 hours, and I'd have an aul packet a crips then or an aul packet eh peanuts, and I'd have 3 more anyway. And I'd get up in the morning then, and Maureen'd have the fry on.

    And I'd go at it again. And I tell ya one thing, there'd be no fückin shtopping me. I'd drink the shirt off any man's back.

    Bastards.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,987 ✭✭✭Pauliedragon


    To be sure to be sure was one comment that used to wreck my head when I was in OZ. I literally never heard that saying before I left Ireland. To be fair though most of the time it's just friendly stuff they genuinely don't realise how annoying it is for us Irish.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 651 ✭✭✭440Hertz


    On the pronunciation issue, these islands have *extremely* strong localised accents in contrast to relatively homogenised American or Australian accents that have much less regionalisation (with some exceptions in older US cities especially)

    It can become a bit tiresome when you’ve someone who in their mind has no accent (but often has eg a central Dublin accent or a Cockney accent) is laughing at someone who has a slightly different accent from another nation or region.

    Eg Th issue is common - often ends up as de, dh and even F in London.

    The reason you can’t hear a difference between Whales and Wales in parts of England is they’ve an unvoiced H which varies from places to place and speaker to speaker.

    In general though I think we, especially in Ireland and Britain, wear accents as a badge of national and regional identity. There’s also a lot of class system nonsense linked to them, more so in England - history of public schools, RP etc etc.

    We’re not above mocking accents from inner city Dublin, Cork, Kerry, Belfast, Cavan etc etc either.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,025 ✭✭✭Hyperbollix


    As stereotypes go, we could have done worse. The association with drunken eejitry can be tiresome but it's nice that the world thinks of Irish people in terms of happiness, friendliness and hospitality.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 4,731 ✭✭✭jam_mac_jam


    I think you have to laugh it off. it generally isn't really meant in badness. The potato thing coming from Brits is funny, oh yeah famines, how hilarious..

    its weird that its totally acceptable to laugh at an Irish person's accent while I don't think you would be slagging off somebody from India to their face about their accent. I notice this in particular in the UK and UK television.

    I think you generally have to take it that the person is a bit stupid or uncultured and not get offended by it. I think you just smile and nod.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 651 ✭✭✭440Hertz


    AllForIt wrote: »
    I agree with 440Herts. It's a painfully lefty trend to complain about generalising or stereotyping. I think that is just a way to stop people saying things that have truth to them but ppl like you think you have found a way to nullify a point altogether if some claim isn't 100% true if every case. Well it's not gonna work.

    [sarcasm]

    There you go stereotyping the extremely woke!

    [/sarcasm]


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 651 ✭✭✭440Hertz


    I think you have to laugh it off. it generally isn't really meant in badness. The potato thing coming from Brits is funny, oh yeah famines, how hilarious..

    its weird that its totally acceptable to laugh at an Irish person's accent while I don't think you would be slagging off somebody from India to their face about their accent. I notice this in particular in the UK and UK television.

    I think you generally have to take it that the person is a bit stupid or uncultured and not get offended by it. I think you just smile and nod.

    It’s done quite regularly on American television. It’s just that the U.K. has become lot more sensitive to humour that’s based around xenophobic stereotyping, particularly when it’s targeted towards groups who are already subject to a lot of racism in general. There are varying degrees of sensitivity because it can be part of an overall wall of nasty in some cases, and in others you’re looking at quite established and robust groups.

    Take a look at the Big Bang Theory and their Raj character, a really poorly written Indian stereotype.

    Apoo on the Simpsons has only very recently become a sensitive issue. Groundskeeper Willie is also a rather ludicrous stereotyping. As is Mexican Bee Guy and that went to town on us on Whacking Day, Bart’s trip to France etc etc etc.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 15,202 ✭✭✭✭ILoveYourVibes


    Originally Posted by AllForIt View Post
    I agree with 440Herts. It's a painfully lefty trend to complain about generalising or stereotyping. I think that is just a way to stop people saying things that have truth to them but ppl like you think you have found a way to nullify a point altogether if some claim isn't 100% true if every case. Well it's not gonna work.

    I agree.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,442 ✭✭✭NSAman


    First time in America, meeting a plumber who came to the house.

    I was introduced as an Irish person. Plumber then went into the usual lucky charms etc. The proceeded to say “ I’ve never met a real live Irish person”

    Of course I replied “ so you’ve met plenty of dead ones?”

    Totally over his head.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,812 ✭✭✭✭sbsquarepants


    To be sure to be sure was one comment that used to wreck my head when I was in OZ.


    I have to admit to saying that one quite regularly myself. Sometimes you do need to be sure, to be sure.;)


  • Site Banned Posts: 27 Incel In The Membrane


    Not really, makes it easy to lay American chicks. Just Paddy it up, get 'em drunk and give them a taste of your auld shilleleagh.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,456 ✭✭✭blackbox


    Never bothered me...


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 13 Chockablock Theodore


    Fair enough but to say that we're all alcoholics I feel isn't a fair representation of us. It's like me saying that all Spanish people are bull Killers and are gypsy flamenco dancers.

    Stereotypes exist for a reason.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 15,202 ✭✭✭✭ILoveYourVibes


    Not really, makes it easy to lay American chicks. Just Paddy it up, get 'em drunk and give them a taste of your auld shilleleagh.

    At least you get something out of it. ;)

    I suppose we do have ourselves to blame somewhat for the stereotypes.

    I mean ...all the hamming.

    Richard harris etc ...they do play up to it ...

    A generation of abbey actors were always ranting about the famine to be sure to be sure.


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