We were up in Belfast yesterday doing some shopping. For going shopping for the day, Belfast is a far friendlier and more pleasant place than Dublin. Even the foreigners serving in shops and restaurants in Belfast are friendlier than those serving in Dublin. Much of the population is on Prozac, and BBC Northern Ireland news is overseen by military personnel, but those are not the only reasons.
I wonder if Prozac has the effect of introducing use of the diminutive into people’s speech. I can’t recall, from the time when I used to go down to Belfast on a Saturday morning in the 1980s, any great amount of ‘here’s your wee receipt’ and ‘there’s a wee bag’ and ‘would you like a wee Big fries with your wee Big Mac?’
The Punishment of Sloth 
It is not Prozac that does this. It is time. I am afraid you are now listening to a new generation speak. I realise this is possibly a depressing subject as it may force you to realise that you are now over 21 but by the time it happens to you for the third go round you accept it. This acceptence does not make it easier or any less depressing, just another knock as you realise another twenty years have gone by. Maybe if I took Prozac it would reverse the proccess?
You’re probably right. I guess it’s initially difficult to associate ‘wee’ with a younger generation of Belfast people, since I actually associate it with an older generation, as in ‘My Aunt Jane she brought me in, she gave tea out of her wee tin/ Half a bap, a wee snow top, three black lumps out of her wee shop’.
My elder brother (12years older)regarded everything as “cool”. Naturally I would have died of morification had I uttered it myself. My kids now use it constantly, especially when they wish to amuse themself by vexing the old fellah.
I find the use of the word “wee” in the service sector in Belfast rather endearing.