Question about Irish-Polish similarities

Hi all,

[ Intro ]
I'm a student from the US. My heritage is both Polish and Irish, and so for a project at my university, I thought it would be interesting to create a fictional restaurant/food shop, because the Irish and the Polish use a lot of the same ingredients for cooking (potatoes, cabbage, beef, etc.), that could help to bridge (in a small way) the divide between the two cultures in Ireland.

[I realize that there are not quite as many Polish people in Ireland now that the world economy has dropped, but I still thought it would make a great project].

[ Question ]
Anyways-- I was wondering what things in both cultures are really similar? These could be proverbs, jokes, drinking toasts, slang words etc.

Or even if someone could direct me to any websites that, like this one, discuss the Polish view of the Irish, or the Irish view of the Polish.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks / Dziękuję bardzo

You realise wrong, more have came this year, than left. There are still hundreds of thousands of them residing in Ireland.


That is Irish-Americans, we do not eat much cabaiste here.


Not in the slightest.


Try here; irishpolishsociety.org/about.php

The purpose for which the Society is established is to promote greater mutual interest and understanding between the Irish and Polish communities through social and cultural activities and to promote, sponsor, teach, study, advance and encourage interest in and knowledge of the culture, history, peoples, language and traditions of Poland and the Polish people. (See the Rules of the Irish Polish Society).

To promote interest in Polish life and culture in Ireland, the Society organizes lectures and discussion meetings, concerts, art exhibitions and other cultural and educational events.

A trojan horse, if ever there was one, but may prove useful for your project.

i think polish r very simuler to the irish

I think the Welsh educational system is in decline.

you must be jocking

They use more pork than beef from what I can tell. Stew is stew thats the only thing..


Both alcholics and work in the building trade, probably beat their wives when they get home from a heavy drinking sesh and dont do diddle round the house to help their wives with the seven kids!

The Irish use of the English language and the Polish language are very different.


And we have had a lot of trouble in our separate histories.

You might find this interesting JestemHaley : Celts in Poland.

I am Irish and live in Poland, I enjoy it here and I get on with most of the people very well.

I think we see an Irish-Polish similarity emerging ;) ;)

As for the eating, when I went to Ireland, I found the Irish stew and Irish breakfast very much like Polish obiad (lunch/dinner) ;)

As for mentality, yes, but the cultures are changing. In the 19th century I can see a mutual attitude: searching for political similarities, comparing misfortunes, making an argument for our own/their own cause from the sister country example. There was a lot of it in the journalism on both sides, (though more from the Irish side), still in the years before the First World War. Young Ireland poets could write enormously long poems, with another oppressed land in each verse: Poland, Hungary, Italy, India, Red Indians. Mickiewicz mentioned Ireland across Belgium and Hungary in his Book of the Polish Nation and the Polish Pilgrimage, etc. The same pattern through the century. When a Polish journalist visited the old and blind De Valera in the 1960's perhaps, he (De Valera) recited a long 19th century poem to him, on the abovementioned kind.

Maybe something from it has left with the older educated generation, but I don't think that the young have it... on both sides... Well. what do you think?

I am Irish and I live in Poland.


Polish food can be much heavier, I believe due to the minus 15 degree winters in Poland, Ireland has a much more temperate climate. And it's hard to get a good beef steak here.

Although our love of potatoes is a commonality.


Although our cultures have been separate due to history and geography until very recently I do find some commonalities with the two cultures.

1. Bad history and what I think that means:

Ireland and Poland have both been directly or indirectly occupied by foreign invaders.
Communism can easily be interpreted as an occupying force and before that there was the patrician of Poland ruled by Russia, Germany and Austria.
All of Ireland was part of the British empire until 1920 and now 6 counties remain part of the United Kingdom.
What does this mean? In my honest opinion this separates us, Poles and Irish from other European countries like Germany, Britain and France because we have an "Us and them" mentality when it comes to laws, authority and rules. I could almost say a lack of respect for the authorities due to them having historically been working on behalf of a foreign force. Whereas I can't help but notice that in Germany, England and other European countries the mentality is to better their country for the people, I have met Danish people bragging about how much tax they pay for example and you would not get that in Ireland or Poland.

Also we were both poor countries, I can honestly say Ireland was much poorer than Poland during communist Poland. With poverty comes hard work and ingenuity. My how time changes things...

2. Catholicism:

Both are very Catholic countries, both had the invading forces try to subdue this religion and therefore reinforced it in the people, making it part of their very essence in a passive resistance sort of way.

The more it was outlawed the more people became Catholic.

But it doesn't just stop there,
With Catholicism comes guilt, sexual repression and ceremony this leads to a similar mentality and sense of humour. I have talked at length with people from other European countries about abortion, marriage and the stigmas attached to many things that I find comes from Catholicism, they often find Ireland backwards.

3. Alcohol

We bring the whiskey and Poland brings the wodka and you know you're sitting at the right table :)

I have to agree with a lot of the similarities although one huge difference is the level of bureaucracy in poland. i know irish people who have done business in poland and they firmly believe bureaucracy is holding business and development back. bureacracy is on the whole detested in ireland and even the hardened bureaucrats try to cut corners to save "on all the hassle".

i know many polish people in ireland who detest polands bureaucracy and a few have even said polish people should take a chill pill to relax and not be focused on implementing chains of red tape.

from a personal viewpoint a good few years back i went to an annual communal meeting of tenants from an apartment block and within 10 mins of the 4 hour meet, ifelt like knocking my head against the wall. the number of times that rules were referred to or clarified, and this by mostly 60+ people was unbelievable. the same meeting in ireland would have taken at max 10 mins. was it the communists that created this bureaucracy??? whatever it is, it must be soul destroying for people investing theri hard money into poland!!!

Then you might find Ignacy Aleksander Blumer of some interest, he was a Polish Brigadier General of Irish roots originally his family name was O'Bloomer.

There are many differences, I thought I would give the question about similarities a go :)


Thanks, I had never heard about him before and I can't find anything in English about him but he is in the Polish Wiki here

pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacy_Blumer

Try and get planning permission in Ireland then get back to me. You sound like a civil servant.

i believe the polish planning system is harder. if planning were hard to get in ireland, how is it that with minor flooding, complete estates were flooded. dublin has the population density of max one third of comparable cities in europe. one off houses aren't allowed in most western european countries. hard to get planning..........???..... tell that to people living in mullingar, tullamore, portlaoise who are commuting to dublin every day in houses with negative equity. the problem was.... planning was too easy.. the development plans for these towns was geared at urban commuters. if there was better and more STRINGENT planning . 300000 + surplus houses in a population of now less than 4.2m (has fallen) wouldnt have occurred

and to the civil servant remark.................... there was nt any problem getting a passport in cork .. why did every one go to dublin for one..............??? i support them!!!! apply for one in time!!!

dont you even use the name civil servant. RN will get automatically rush on his back

The men drink because they can't stand the nagging. The house looks like manure because the women were busy watching Oprah and the soaps all morning and talking on the phone all afternoon. As to the "seven kids", only two are biologically related to the father because the

'busy' mom was 'busy' elsewhere.

Hope that helps, lol

I have sometimes thought that some features of Polish and Irish history have similarity: both have had numerous doomed-to-failure rebellions and revolutions against larger and more powerful neighbors that annexed them, in large measure throughout the 19th century, both are predominantly Roman Catholic and while Britain attempted to create a more loyal Protestant population by exporting/planting people from lowland Scotland and northern England into parts of Ireland, mainly Ulster, Russia tried to russify the Polish by requiring them to learn Russian, at least to some degree and creation or encouragement of a Polish Orthodox Church. The nobility of both Poland and Ireland became intertwined to some degree with Russia and Britain, respectively. Both have experienced famine or near famine conditions at certain times in their history driving many to emigrate to North America. Both had a kind of native monarchy that was elective in some way or another. Both became independent states at about the same time in the early 20th century after World War I with Ireland being partitioned by Britain into Northern Ireland and the Republic in the South and Poland's eastern boundary being drawn by Lord Curzon which was basically used by Joseph Stalin after World War II to delineate the Polish-Soviet frontier.

Superficially, Poles and the Irish are quite similar! Apart from the obvious, such as their both being ethnic Europeans and staunch Roman Catholics (the Poles though far more so), they appear tempramentally not to far apart, they both often exhibiting impetuous temper outbursts and a tendency to volatlity:-)

oh please do we have to do that lazy national stereotyping?
And why are Roman Catholics always 'staunch'? Could one be a 'staunch' Methodist?

Indeed, as well as a staunch Lubowitcher etc.. "Staunch" and Catholic simply seem to go together, after all, it's the Protestants who label the Catholics "ideologues" and not vice-versa!

Furthermore, all stereotypes have a basis in fact, haven't they? Pushy Jews?? Sure. You start getting ignored by your neighbors right and left, for years going on decades and you'd be pushy too:-)

they do , don't they? some kind of collocation. Lots of Catholics are not 'staunch' at all though and many Irish people are not Catholic.

I remember once some girl asked my brother if he was from a 'staunch Catholic' family (we have an Irish name) - it took him ages to stop laughing.

Correct, and I'd bet you pounds to zloty there are more "lapsed" Catholics in Ireland than in Poland:-)

Back in the late 90s an Irish colleague (from the Dublin area) was constantly telling me that Ireland was more culturally conservative than Poland. He said his sister's first remark when she visited him was to the effect of "if these girls are catholic then why are their skirts so short?"

He also claimed that the Irish tried to appear more liberal than they were (concerning questions like divorce or premarital sex) while Poles often tried to appear more conservative than they were.

Just putting it out there...

Entirely possible, Mafketis!