Irish vs Canadian culture clash!

heh I'm from Ontario! It's always about New York. I feel special when someone mentions Canada.

I've never been to Ireland, and I'm not Irish, either, so I'm afraid I'm not really much help with this. But I know where I live, Ottawa, there's a lot of small little stores that sell Irish tea and that kind of thing. I've never gone in them, but my friends have. It's usually a mix of Irish and Scottish food. Also, Canadian history had a lot to do with the Irish so it's way easier to find the Irish culture here than, say, Dutch. So your character should be able to find a lot of places downtown or something that have the irish culture present and strong.

Also, the small-town thing - it totally depends where in Ontario she's going to live in. Like I said before, I like in Ottawa, and it's definitely not a small town.

Hope I was able to help, even just a bit ! :P

Sorry for the late reply. On Irish, it depends where you're from and your political leanings. If he's from the Republic of Ireland then they would've had to learn it at school, if he's from the North (like I am) then it's a choice and dependant if the school offers it. I do know people who are fluent though, especially if they went to an Irish speaking primary school. So you've got some leeway with that. Personally, I'd only know few phrases.
Slang differs again on where you're from, but stuff like calling somebody a dote or mustard, saying feck (or just swearing, we do tend to swear quite a bit). Some girls will call their friend babes. Millies are really trampy, tacky girls who generally wear a lot of fake tan, smicks are the male equivalent. A preswal would a drinking session before you go out to a club, a carryou is like drinking in the streets or in the park (but I wouldn't say that.) We tend to insult people jokingly and have bant with them (like my friend calling me a slag or something.)
I'm not sure about the teenage binge drinking in Canada, but here its quite common for underage people to drink, I know that parks would be quite common if you were about 13-15, but after that you'd probably go to clubs.
This might not be applicable to the south, as I'm from Belfast, but it could be quite similar.
Also this is not entirely true but it's what the accent sounds like, and it's got a lot of slang, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7FY6vMFIyE
If you want to know anything more, just Nanomail me.

You spell it differently? We call it St. Paddy's day.
We also have lots of food variety here too. We don't have Chinatown or anything like that, but there are countless chinese restaurants, takeaways, indian places, anything.

Haha I guess you know how I feel! Compulsory languages are not fun. We also have to take a third, like I take French as well. It's usually between Spanish and French and sometimes German in schools here. So if your charatcer took French in school they'd have no problem knowing what basic french words mean and could probably take it in their new school as well! (leaving Irish behind for good, yay!)

There are techincally Irish speaking places here, but they're tiny little villages way off in the West. And I just realised that Dingle is a tiny village way off in the West. I'm pretty sure it's in the Gaeltacht - which are Irish speaking regions. A lot of teenagers go to the Gaeltacht for maybe 2/3 weeks in summer to improve their Irish (sort of like summer camp, you'd do lots of games and sports and water sports and such, except living with Irish speaking families and *trying* to always speak Irish etc - it's fun!). Dingle is one of those places. Does she have to be from Dingle? Maybe somewhere else in Kerry? Or a coastal town on the east?

I've never heard of the name Keena. Keenan itself would be pretty rare. But don't let that stop you! I like Keena Marie. It's a nice name. Yay brunettes - I think we, as a people, are mostly brunette, so that would make sense! Is she insanely pale? That's a very Irish trait. Pale skin that is especially prone to sunburn and does not ever tan (example: me, haha).

Yeah, good call on not going all out on the slang. Oh - and gas is called petrol, but gas stations are called garages. Also, we pronounce garage differently (this is irrelevant, because you're writing a novel, haha) You say ga-rahj and we say ga-ridge. Strollers are most definitely buggies, pacifiers are dummies, kindergarten doesn't exist, well, the whole schooling system is very different, actually. If you need help with that just ask! And how old is she?

Okay, climate. Well, I wasn't kidding about the snow thing. We tend to freak out and over react when it snows here, because it doesn't happen that frequently. This year it didn't snow once. Last year, I'm pretty sure I got about 2 weeks worth of snow days. It hit minus 17 degrees celsius in some places last year, which was absolutely insane. Our usual freezing cold would be maybe just under freezing during the winter months. Little snow. Frost, sometimes ice. Very cold bitter wind. But absolutely nothing compared to Canada. Usually if it does snow, you have enough to make one snowman, and that's it. No mountains of fluffy white snow to slide down, unfortunately.

Summer is very strange. It can be very nice, but not all the time. I'm pretty sure we tend to get good weather in May/June. It's never terribly warm, but just nice. And it tends to rain quite a bit during the summer, unfortunately. You really cannot predict an Irish summer. You can book your wedding to be right in mid July, and you could get grey skies and rain showers. It's hit and miss, really. I went to Canada in the summertime and there were two days when I literally felt like I was going to die because I was so hot. Also - cars don't have air conditioning here because they don't need it haha. Actually, nothing has it. We have heating systems, not cooling systems :)

So, basically, your climate is going to be pretty intense for an Irish person. We're used to kind of cold and kind of warm - not extremes. Maybe your Spring/Autumn time would be pretty normal for her. Right now the sky looks extremely white because it's just covered in clouds. Very normal.

Dingle is a pretty funny name. I've always liked Youghal. Try pronounce that haha - it's actually pronounced like "y'all". It's a little town in Cork, I think. Nice place. Yeah, her speaking Irish could be kinda interesting. Hard, but interesting! She would definitely need to adapt to the big city, being a country girl!

Ah, celsius! yay! I didn't know that. I just assume anywhere across the pond uses Fahrenheit! Oh my goodness, Keena's going to live in no less than 20 layers. I'm sure of that! Canadian winter will be insane. Oh, and do you use family portrait christmas cards there? I have Canadian relatives who send those to us, they're funny! We don't do that, ever. We send cards with little snow landscapes on them or pictures of santa or a christmas tree or anything relatively Christmassy! No family portraits though, haha. Nothing like that :)

Ah, the schooling system. If she's 19, she's out of school - usually. She would have typically just left seconday school (high school) and would be starting university next year. Most kids go to play school at 3, I think. Maybe even 2. And then either at 4 or 5 you start Primary School. Secondary school starts at 12/13, when you begin 1st year, and lasts for 5 or 6 years until 6th year. It goes like this:
From 1st to 3rd year, you study for a series of exams called the Junior Certificate, which you take when you finish 3rd year (age 15ish).
And then... things get a little complicated, haha. You have an option. You can do 4th year aka Transition Year or progress straight into 5th year. Most people go right into 5th year, but about a third of people would do Transition year. TY is a year where you sort of stop focusing on exams and academics. You stay in school, of course, but you do different classes, and take part in projects and courses and exchange programs, do work experience, go on trips, etc. I did it, and it's very fun! It's a nice "break" to try new things etc.
And then you go into 5th year. 5th and 6th year are geared towards another series of exams called the Leaving Certificate. They're the exams that decide whether you get into college or not, basically. I'm in 6th year now so I'm taking these in June! You get a score out of 600 points based on your best 6 exams (most people take 7 exams), and then depending on what you've applied for, you either get into college or you don't, based on if you meet the points requirements or not! (eg good universities like Trinity College Dublin or hard courses like Medicine would have very high points, like 580, and then something like Science might be 420 and an Arts degree might be 360 etc). Your character would have gotten her results in mid August time.

That's a pretty long explanation but I wanted to give you an idea of where she is right now haha. Do you have free education for college in Canada? If she's going to college, that might shock her, because ours is "free" (We have to pay about 2000, but that's it).

Oh, another thing! It's pretty likely she went to an all girls catholic school. Uniform wearing and all that. I go to one, most people do. But, don't get the wrong idea, we're not insanely holy good girls, haha. There's usually a couple girls who get pregnant, silly second years who vandalise the toilets, etc. No nuns! And the boys school is never that far away haha :)