University College Cork (UCC)

The Irish (especially the Cork accent) is beautiful but hard to understand at the beginning. It is not that stiff as the British one and not that broad as the American. All in all a good and friendly mixture. Forget about the "th" by the way. No Corkian pronounces it! Since it was kind of difficult to get to know a lot Irish students and I was dealing mostly with other international students (Spanish, Italian, French...), we had to be careful not to adopt each other's mistakes and create a kind of "foreign English". Cork's inhabitants are extremely friendly, especially the elderly. It often happened to me, that an old man or woman just started a pleasant conversation on any topic (e.g. in the supermarket, on my way to UCC etc.), unobtrusive and kind of charming.

My overall language and communication experience is really positive. At university, I had the possibility of sharpening my English listening and and writing skills. Moreover, the outcomes improved consistantly as far as the my speech abilities are concerned. This was mainly due to the constant interaction with other foreign students and with the housemates.

At the beginning, it was difficult to understand people, especially cause those we met had different accents (Irish accent, and Italian or Spanish accents...). But it went easier as time passed to get to know other people.

No problem with communication at all. I am the kind who like interacting with people from differnt background, hence I already had first hand experience with Irish culture while in Germany- from Irish exchange students.

It took me some time to understand the people leaving in the city because in this area of Ireland they have a difficult accent but I've got used in a couple of months. At University I didn't have many problems.

In the first days I was crazy. The Irish accent was really difficult to me because I always studied english accent. But I was lucky because of the fact that irish people are very polite and they try to explain everything till you understand it.