Stroke Country: Difference between revisions
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{{Useful Notes}}
[[File:350px-NImap-CIA 4957.jpg|
[[I Thought It Meant|Not the home of strokes.]]
The name of the entry is a reference to a local joke name for the city of Londonderry/Derry. That thing between the words "Londonderry" and "Derry" is called a "stroke" in some versions of English. An American would call it a "slash", which could have some [[Slash Fic|pretty strange]] unintended implications (William of Orange/James II [[Foe Yay]]?). The city is officially called Londonderry, but has a City Council that calls it "Derry". An attempt to compromise is "The Maiden City", since it wasn't breached in a 1689 siege.
Roughly, Northern Ireland/Ulster/The Province/Norn Iron/The Occupied Six Counties/the North of Ireland/British-occupied Ireland/The Fourth Green Field/Tuaisceart Éireann/Norlin Airlann. People can't even agree on the name of this place: choosing whether to say "Londonderry" or "Derry" is equivalent to coming down on one side or the other of [[The Irish Question|The Question]]. No wonder [[The Troubles]] were so bad
Northern Irish is, sadly, perceived as one of the worst UK accents - whether this is because of the association with [[The Troubles]] is a question for scholars. Of course, there is an alternate argument which contends that the Northern Irish accent is merely incomprehensible and vaguely threatening which makes it sound worse than it really is. This doesn't stop either the English or Americans incessantly crying, "Oh, I just LOVE your accent. So quaint!".
In Dublin, '''Stroke Country''' is generally referred to simply as "the North", except in official documents and the news (though sometimes they will use 'the North' too). This is probably not politically motivated as most people in Northern Ireland refer to the Republic as "Down South" or simply "the South". Old-fashioned Irish nationalists might refer to "the Occupied Six" etc. People who want to make a point of how ''un''nationalist they are will use "Northern Ireland", even in casual conversation.
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Its people are generally laid-back, but a little more grim and stoic than the Republic. They can, amusingly, claim dual citizenship; forms for both Irish and British passports sit side by side in post offices.
The local flavour of [[ITV]], UTV (or until 1993, Ulster Television - it changed its name mainly to get advertisers to sell to its thousands of viewers in the Republic), used to embody 'regional programming' (teatime "good news" programme before the proper news, replacing ''Tonight with Trevor
The BBC's NI branch is mostly the same as in Britain, though it did give us ''[http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/gmhp/ Give My Head Peace]'', which helped launch the television careers of '[[wikipedia:Hole in the Wall Gang (comedy)|The Hole in the Wall Gang]]'.
'''Stroke Country''' has produced several notable figures in entertainment and the arts, though internationally they are usually identified as either or Irish or British rather than Northern Irish as such - thus [[Liam Neeson]] and [[Seamus Heaney]] - from Nationalist backgrounds - are universally considered 'Irish' while [[Kenneth Branagh]] and
Fiction set in Northern Ireland that doesn't involve [[The Troubles]]:▼
▲{{examples|Fiction set in Northern Ireland that doesn't involve [[The Troubles]] includes:}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* [[Hellsing]] (end of OVA episode 1)
* [[Mobile Suit Gundam]] (the episode 'Char Returns' is set in Belfast, as are several levels in the videogames based on the original series)
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Useful Notes/Britain]]
[[Category:Useful Notes/Europe]]
▲[[Category:Stroke Country]]
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