Which is maybe why people on the North Coast (regardless of religion) tend to have something of a Scottish twang to their accent and those from the South-West of the Province have an accent quite similar to that from their colleagues across the border.
Apparantly I have a few Protestant ancestors from Scotland, their now dead wing of our family now living on in my middle name Clinton 
Depends, what footie top are they wearing 
Or indeed the Finns and others King William of Orange brought with him to fight in Ireland.
Shows you how mad it all is when certain groups try to equate religion and nationality. The Irish Republicans seem to be on firmer ideological ground, when the Loyalists try to celebrate the invasion of England and the dethroning of its King by a foreigner but then make the whole issue about being Protestant = being British it all seems a bit hypocritical :dubious:
A friend of mine who loves to tell tall tales claims to be the heir to the Earl of O’Connell (or Kerry… it changes from time to time…). Where should I look to find out just exactly how full of bs my friend is?
Nowhere, because it’s definite BS. It’s impossible to be an heir of Irish aristocracy, because it officially does not exist. It’s possible to be descended from Irish Earls (or whatever), but almost never possible to prove. (The Road to McCarthy has a chapter which describes the farce of the “McCarthy Moor”, typical of when somebody lays claim to a dead title. It’s also a very good book in general )
it’s said that it’s possible to tell the difference from *their surnames [ii]their first names (sometimes) [iii] their place of employment [iv] the buses they use to get there.
I think the issue over names came from a time when the English tried to get English Protestant settlers to stop getting on with their Irish neighbours by dumping their Irish names and using new ones based on colours or trades e.g. Mr. White, Black, Smith or Baker.
I could stand to be corrected as I only got a hint of this from a history programme on in the background last time I was home (where we pick up Irish TV)
My own name seems to confuse people, the forename being Scottish in spelling and my surname being rather neutral for most people’s taste.
As for place of employment and buses to get there, I could well beleive. Many firms would be family firms, or perhaps (like the engineering firm where a mate of mine works) with a board of directors of the like from one religion. So they would look favourably (not so long ago if not still today) on employees of certain religions.
My Dad was promoted to a higher position in the Ulster Bank when he transferred to a branch on the NI side of the border becaused his Uncle was a Roman Catholic bishop and it did the bank good to be seen with him as an employee. Later he spent his time being transferred around branches to positions that seemingly have always been held by Catholics for not very long periods of time.
And the issue over what bus route someone got into work is (or at least I would assume) from the segregation of housing in Belfast. Belfast is a small city and there are a number of main streets running from the residential areas to the city centre so the bus route would be associated with certain areas that would be predominantly one religion or another. I have to get one route up to the North of the city to see my girlfriend, all along the way the housing is recognisably in Loyalist areas, easy to associate a user of the bus route with Protestantism/Loyalism/Unionism.
And if you’re thinking that’s pedantic and not really worth your while thinking about, well, I guess you just have to know the people who live here… :rolleyes:
I have a question: my girlfriend once got a serious, quiet reprimand from her Irish friends (who were all in a jovial mood up to that moment) for saying something very mildly negative about the IRA at a pub in Chicago. My understanding is that this is just not done. Have the McCartney sisters changed this in any significant way? Is the attitude towards the IRA and Sinn Fein really changing, or is this being overhyped?
Sure, it’s done. It’s done all the time. You should read the Irish media! But there are a number of different reasons why a negative comment might not go down very well. Can you give a little more detail on what the comment was, and what part of Ireland the friends were from?
There’s been no change whatsoever in Sinn Féin’s core support. At the by-election in County Meath earlier this month, the SF candidate’s vote increased both in real terms and as a percentage of total votes cast. Opinion polls over the past couple months have also shown no significant drop in SF support (drops of one or two points but those are within the margin of error).
Now, these same polls have shown a significant drop in Gerry Adams’s approval ratings, which were always much higher than SF’s. What this indicates - if it holds - is that voters who might have been inclined to give SF a second or third preference vote (in Ireland’s proportional representation system) will be less likely to do so. But this will only matter in the south of the country, where the next election could be up to two years away. In the north SF are pretty firmly established as the largest nationalist party and nobody as far as I can tell expects that to change between now and the May elections.
How you can talk about the IRA is wholly dependent on context. Bringing it up when its not being talked about pretty much defines you as someone who has ‘a point’. Even chipping in with an ‘opinion’ can seem as such. There’s nothing new with this - I wouldn’t dream of hectoring Americans over intricacies of American politics, because I wouldn’t claim to know enough about them.
The McCartneys have in some ways articulated the frustrations of a lot of people, that Northern Ireland is in danger of becoming ruled by a more common gangland system with its roots in sectarianism. But they haven’t caused some huge shift by themselves.
What the hell is Norn?
Well, I doubt the well oiled SF propaganda machine would let it have any long lasting impact. They did quite well to gain support despite close links to an organisation that killed roughly 1800 people over 30 years…
I can’t remember exactly, but it seems like it was a lighthearted jest of the sort an outsider would make and not really a political commentary or a rude comment; I got the impression that in this company lighthearted jests were not taken in stride. The response was something along the lines of a suddenly dead serious “never say nothin’ bad about the IRA, love.” I understand some of her accquaintences (not necessarily the guys she was talking to) may have been in America because there was some sort of heat they were avoiding back home, so it may have just been the company she was in…or maybe she said something much more rude than she intended. I’ll ask her when she comes to pick me up in a bit.
Oh Lord, I wish there were more like you! Most folks seem to have no qualms about letting you know in excruciating detail their views on American politics, not stopping even after you’ve made clear you either don’t care or are in fact strongly in agreement with them. 
Inhabitants of Northern Ireland sometimes pronounce the name of the country as “Norn Iron” because of a combination of accent and a tendency to speak a bit more quickly and so slur words slightly. Other areas of the UK and Ireland no doubt have their own quirks