Berkley Center

I joined the Ultimate frisbee team at University College Dublin (UCD), and my Irish teammates have alerted me to many amusing differences in our cultures—I can’t tell you the amount of times we Americans have been made fun of for saying “cab” and “liquor store” instead of “taxi” and “off-license.” But recently I had a conversation with a few of my teammates that went so much deeper than these linguistic quirks, as a Canadian, two Americans, and some Irish girls shared opinions, experiences, and cultural differences—as well as similarities.

I met a girl who said that she resents the Irish language, and thinks that it is taught poorly in schools. Since every student in public school is required to learn the language, I understand how it could grow to be a burden rather than a point of pride. But I asked my friends this weekend why they thought it was not a language that more young people were eager to learn and speak, and they did not have a definite answer. Interestingly, they mentioned a holiday to Spain during secondary school, in which they thought they’d be clever by talking about strangers in Irish, until some Spanish shopkeepers surprised them by responding in fluent Irish. It is clearly not a dead language—people in other countries have learned it, one must only look to the Gaeltacht areas to find people who speak it on a daily basis, and even now a new Gaeltacht is being formed in County Tipperary. However, my friends seem to think that there is little support for language among their peers, and that most individuals are not passionate about the status of the language.

Currently, road signs are being replaced in Ireland with signs that have enlarged the font of the Irish text in comparison with the English; a governmental decision that the girls seemed to think was a waste of money. This began a conversation about the way that government works in Ireland, highlighting some interesting differences. The other American and I, both Georgetown students, noted that we had submitted absentee ballots in the last presidential election, though our home states of New Jersey and Massachusetts were guaranteed to go Democratic. In Ireland, absentee voting is not permitted, so to vote one must travel to one’s home county on election day. Because of this, a few of my Irish students who are not from Dublin have not yet voted in any elections or referendums. The Irish voting system, however, seems to give much more power to voters than our system does. Put simply, and as well as I can understand it, voting here feels much more direct, as there is no electoral college, there are multiple candidates from each party, and a voter ranks every candidate who is up for a seat. So, ranking someone second or third can actually cause him or her to win a seat.

Prompting even more revelation of the political and systemic differences among our countries, we began discussing gay marriage. Same-sex marriage is not legal in Ireland, but a referendum is planned for 2015, and if passed by a majority of voters could make it legal. One girl mentioned that she always thought it strange that it was still illegal, since so many people support its legalization. Both the Irish and the Americans agreed, though, that it was not until we left a college setting that we realized how many people are against the legalization of gay marriage; our respective colleges are full of support for its legalization. Quite a few of the my Irish friends said they found Ireland to be contradictorily liberal in some aspects while conservative in others—after all, divorce was only legalized in 1996, yet Ireland often joins Europe in being far more liberal in other aspects than the States are. It was enlightening to have a Canadian in our midst; she shrugged modestly, saying that in Canada “It’s been legal since 2005.” She also said she was surprised when she learned that this decision is dealt with on a state level in the United States, as it was a federal matter in Canada. It was interesting to see the differences in the ways our governments work, but a bit inspiring as well to be with peers from around the world having a serious, political conversation over brunch, and to find similarities in spirit even if not in law.