We have a book from the Irish governmental tourist board, and it lists all of the homes and cottages you can rent in Ireland. But, I have a question about terminology..maybe someone can help out.
I am see a phrase like this: “Rooms en-suite” and sometimes like this “3 rooms have en-suites”.
I assumed the latter referred to connected restrooms/bathrooms.
But I’m less confident about a phrase like “rooms en-suite”.
Here’s an actual example:
“It has four luxurious bedrooms that can sleep up to eight people. Downstairs, there is a double and twin room with bathroom while upstairs there is a twin and a double bedroom both en suite.”
Someone correct me if I’m wrong…
But how I would read your example - the rooms downstairs share a bath, while the rooms upstairs each have their own bathroom (I have always understood en-suite to mean a private bathroom).
All “en suite” means is it has a bathroom attached. In your example, the two downstairs bedrooms have a bathroom which they share which probably is not attached to either room. Like a family bathroom might be here. The bedrooms upstairs both have en suite bathrooms which means they each have a private bathroom which is accessible only through their bedroom. Here in the US, the Master bedroom generally has it’s own bathroom, attached to the bedroom, with the only access being through the bedroom. Then there will be another bathroom (family bathroom) which is not attached to any bedrooms. The master bedroom in that case would be “en suite”.
spelled out version without bad grammar:- …there is a twin and a double bedroom, both with ensuite bathroom and toilet
jargonised version without bad grammar:- …there is a twin and double bedroom, both with en suite
What the quoted material is saying
(pedantic interpretation):-
…there is a twin and a double bedroom both in room …
whereas a less pedantic, but also wrong (but understandable)
interpretation is:
… there is a twin and a double bedroom as an attachement to something else
(ie two billiards rooms, one with an en suite twin and one with an ensuite double bedroom)
Just be aware that “bathroom” in Ireland (and Gt. Britain) has a different meaning than what we use in America. Often the toilet and sink are in one room and the bath/shower are in another. So in my experience an ensuite has a private toilet but not always a private bath; you might have to share the bathroom with other guests…no big deal unless someone is spending forever in the shower when you’re trying to get out in the morning. Then again, I haven’t been to Ireland since 2001, and a LOT has changed since then…last time I was there several of the places had more American-style toilet-and-shower-in-the-same-room setups.
Very occasionally someone may refer to a room with just a toilet and a sink in it as the bathroom, but invariably this is just an additional toilet to the one in the main bathroom elsewhere in the building and they’re just being lazy with they’re speech. More commonly it will be referred to as the toilet.
If you’re renting a holiday property or staying in a hotel in the UK and it says there’s an en-suite bathroom it WILL have either a shower or a bath in it and a toilet.
That’s what we thought, also…it’s just that often the ambiguous word usage left us unsure.
Tal: the word usage on many ads led me toward the “less pedantic, but also wrong (but understandable)” conclusion. If only they had you to write all the ads!
Thanks everyone for the help
I figured as much..many of the ads list bathrooms and "wc"s which I assume is short for “water closet”, ie: toilet and no tub.
Maybe I didn’t explain myself very well: I just meant that to an American, a “bathroom” pretty much always has a toilet, sink, tub, or shower (or both a tub and a shower). That’s not the case across the Atlantic, that’s all I meant. A lot of Americans going to Ireland or the UK (or much of Europe) for the first time are surprised to find the toilet in a separate room from the tub or shower.
But that’s right about the en-suites – in most cases they do have both a toilet and shower/tub, but I do remember in the 1990s staying in a few “en-suites” in the west of Ireland that just had the toilet and there was a shared bath in the hallway.
At Martin’s mom’s house there is a downstairs toilet (the name of the room; what Americans would call a half-bath) with toilet and sink, and two rooms upstairs where the toilet is in one room all by itself and the sink and bathtub are in the room next door. I think it’s the only house I have encountered here with that configuration, but it does exist. Though I haven’t been in a huge number of private residences!
I haven’t seen one where the bathtub/shower is in a room all by itself, without the sink.
This is a slight hijack, but Katherine said that there are no sinks in the public toilets in France (at least not the ones she has been in). Not that this matters at all, but your comment made me think of it
What part of France is that? I may have been drunk for the whole weekend I was there, but I do still remember seeing sinks in the public toilets throughout Paris.
Poitiers, I think. She hasn’t been to Paris yet, so it might be different there. I have no idea. I think she was just surprised, which is why she mentioned it.
Same here (well, not the drunk weekend part). Sinks were in abundance in Paris and other cities. The unisex loos, on the other hand, are a bit startling at first.
I think you are lucky to find a place with the loo inside the house.
I currently live in a house where all the upstairs bathrooms are en suite, there is no family bathroom. What this results in is all the kids who don’t have an en suite wander through your bedroom at all hours and stink the place up. I think there is an argument for having a bog at the bottom of the garden al la Shrek.
I so wish I was going too! You guys are going to have a blast! 
