6 ms·

Tea drinking in Ireland is a big part of the culture, and we have a lot of unwritten rules around it. I'm sure other irish HN'ers will jump in here and add to t

Tea drinking in Ireland is a big part of the culture, and we have a lot of unwritten rules around it. I'm sure other irish HN'ers will jump in here and add to the list, but off the top of my head - if you don't offer someone tea when they come to visit, you are rude. if they refuse, and you accept their first offer without insisting, that's also rude. you have to persist a bit. this was parodied in the TV show "Father Ted" but it has some truth to it - additionally, if someone says yes to a cup and you don't offer a second cup a while later, probably rude - if you don't have biscuits, you need to apologise and explain why. - if you drink green tea or anything other than black "breakfast" tea, you're "fancy" - Households are either "Barrys Tea" or "Lyons Tea" and people are expected to have a loyal devotion to one and hatred of the other. Other brands (non-irish) are ridiculed, although we all drink all kinds. (Note - this rivalry also extends to 'crisps' or potato snacks - you're either Tayto or Kings) - some people prefer coffee which is fine, but if you don't like either you're considered odd

vonzepp 3y ago
Accepting anything offered to you on the first offer is a bit rude. Basically, you are a guest of someone and shouldn't be a burden on them. They have to prove to you that you are not a burden, and then once that is clear you don't feel bad being served. Then your tea comes with cake, ham sandwiches and biscuit which is beyond the scope of the initial drink you were offered.
- bigger_inside 3y ago
  very culturally dependent. In Germany, the first offer is the offer. If you refuse it, there will not be a second one; and making a second, third offer, in turn, would be rude in Germany, as it is pestering and assumes I'm lying with the first answer or I don't know what I want. How dare you assume this? :D The English always think the Germans terribly rude. In turn, Germans find these English (also Irish, I guess) conventions of running around things fifteen times for ritual terribly exhausting, a complete waste of time and honestly, just an outright lie. Take email rules. Germans ridicule this "Hi, how are you, how's the family?" loop before the email (or phone call, or meeting) comes to "I need this from you." A German mail is "Hi, I need this. Thanks." That is not rude at all; the contrary, you did not force your family on me and didn't pretend to care about things that you do NOT care about, and you didn't impose on me with private things from strangers that I do not care about. (in the English mail, signified by the fact that there are no actual answers. "Fine!" .... Great, that was useless and just signaled openly that we really do not care and the question was, in fact, a lie.)
  - 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 3y ago
    if by 'lie' you mean part of the culturally specific social ritual which is an essential glue knitting disparate people together, then yes, it's a lie.
    - bigger_inside 3y ago
      we lie all the time to knit people together, yes, of course. The key is in the "culturally specific" part. What kinds of lies are coded as rude and what kinds of lies are coded as glue? This differs, which was all I'm saying. I don't want to take the ritual from the English; I just want to keep them from making it universal (the English are very good at making whatever they do universal around the globe. ahem) This isn't just different between cultures, it's different between status positions, scenes, relationship levels. If someone I'm just getting to know asks me for lunch and I don't feel like it, I'll say "I'd love to, I can't" if I do want to keep making a relationship with that person. If someone's an old friend, I'll say, "I don't want to", knowing that our friendship won't be hurt by that.
  - cameronh90 3y ago
    It's not a lie. Often the "how are you" is answered with "not bad", i.e. nothing much to say or don't want to talk about it, but sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it turns into a conversation about how life is going, or the problems you're having, or what you're looking forward to at the weekend or on your holiday. Or maybe just some idle chat about how hot it's been. Not only is this inevitably more fun than whatever the meeting was supposed to be about, it allows you to become closer with your colleagues. It's basically just giving some room for that social interaction, which may or may not be used.
    - sersi 3y ago
      I'd argue that's only really the case face to face but very rarely by email
    - bigger_inside 3y ago
      though it's not giving room in general; if it actually does depends on whether, in this context, it MAY be used or not, which the question itself doesn't communicate. This makes it a hornet's nest to actually use it. A purely ritual "how are you" met with actual emotional expression might make the situation quite awkward. Thus, there are deeper contextual frames you need to understand in order to know if that "how are you" actually means "please, open up" or it it only means "I'm just checkmarking politeness in this convo before I tell you to stay 3 hours longer today".
- VagabundoP 3y ago
  Yeah a good break down, and despite its size, Ireland has quite a variation depending on your county. As with everything trivial we'll fight you about it. For a really good look at tea drinking read Strumpet City, apart from it being an amazing novel, has the many ways they brewed and drank tea at the turn of the century. Irish Black tea tends to be different than English Black tea, apart from being superior of course, we source the leaves from different locations, something something due to rationing during WWII...
ithkuil 3y ago
> Households are either "Barrys Tea" or "Lyons Tea" and people are expected to have a loyal devotion to one and hatred of the other So if you offer Barry's to a guest who is in the Lyons, are you being rude?
- bartislartfast 3y ago
  House rules. If you're a Lyons house and a Barrys drinker comes in, they have to put up with it. depending on how well you know them they will either quietly accept or start an argument to convince you how wrong you are
- secondcoming 3y ago
  No. It would be rude to turn down a tea because you don't like the blend. And if someone needs an emergency cup of tea they won't mind.
ilyt 3y ago
That kind of shit is why I hate dealing with people, same thing happens here in Poland but with food. I just started saying "nope, I'm too fat for that"
- Octabrain 3y ago
  Why "hate"? I personally find fascinating that kind of implicit cultural rules.
  - trilbyglens 3y ago
    Because once you see the pattern it can become an oppressive social requirement. I'm american but have been living in Czechia for about 15 years, and I've seen friendships blown up due to shit like "we visited and he didn't even offer us lunch", or "she didn't even offer to pay for lunch". It's fun when you are a visitor and you can view it from a distance, but when it's the local unaware social OS, it's got a far different effect. The food thing, specifically (probably a slavic thing) I find really fucking tedious. There is no "I'm not hungry but thank you" or "sorry I don't eat meat". Refusing food on a visit is basically equivalent to taking out a gun and shooting the family dog. You're likely to never be invited over again, and people will think you are a complete asshole. Because of this social overhead, visiting friends and family is a huge ordeal as everyone is expected to roll out the carpet and play host. No one wants to burden others, and no one wants to be burdened, so visits are fairly uncommon unless it's a bigger occasion like a birthday or holiday. There's absolutely no "I was in the neighborhood and thought I'd pop in and see what you're up to".
    - saiya-jin 3y ago
      You can train people, at least sane people you actually care about. It takes some time, but unless they are dense as neutron star, they will grok it eventually. Wrap it up in talk about honesty, being a man who talks and thinks straight. Also, this should not be the issue with young folks, only older generations are like that.
    - The_Colonel 3y ago
cubefox 3y ago
And I thought it was only the English who have such a close relationship to tea!
- 5e92cb50239222b 3y ago
  > only the English who have such a close relationship to tea ... excluding Japan, China, Russia, all of Central Asia (where I am from), and probably many other countries. So typical for HN.
  - n4r9 3y ago
    I'm currently reading "Infused - Adventures in Tea" by Henrietta Lovell. She makes the good point that British people say "normal tea" to refer to English breakfast (blended black) tea, but for the majority of tea drinkers in the world "normal" is green tea.
  - maksimur 3y ago
    According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tea_consumption_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tea_consu..., Turkey is the top tea-consuming country per capita, with Ireland second and UK third. Interestingly, Russia isn't too far off either. I would've assumed Russia to be among the countries with the lowest per capita tea consumption, but these numbers challenge that assumption. I wonder what (cultural?) factors affect those numbers.
    - 0ct4via 3y ago
      Piggybacking off your assumption of Russia having low tea consumption, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_tea_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_tea_culture is very much a thing.
      - Obscurity4340 3y ago
        God, I love Wikipedia. Such a random thing to receive the Wikipedic treatment
Tomte 3y ago
> Households are either "Barrys Tea" or "Lyons Tea" That seems to be a cultural constant. In East Frisia it's Bünting or Thiele.
I_complete_me 3y ago
Two points: It's important to note whether the milk goes in the tea first or the tea first and then the milk. When the host is serving the tea, if the milk goes in first, then the host is admitting that they have inferior (non-china) cups, since china cups are more robust and can withstand the sudden heat shock. However, I have never had tea from a china cup so I can't possibly say. When making hay in the summer time, the tea served to the workers should have equal parts tea, water, sugar and milk. Well, that's how it tasted to me back in the day!
- n4r9 3y ago
  This is one of those things where everyone has heard a slightly different tale. I've read in other places the exact opposite: some people put milk in first in china cups because they think china is delicate and prone to cracking. Some people prefer milk afterwards so they can get the tea to the right colour. Others say that putting it in first may prevent denaturing the milk proteins. More research is needed.
  - mrob 3y ago
    Not only was research done, it was the origin of statistical significance testing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_tasting_tea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_tasting_tea
    - n4r9 3y ago
      Incredible! Thank you for the link. The page for the "Lady" in question adds that she preferred the milk first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muriel_Bristol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muriel_Bristol This makes sense, given some slightly more recent research into the "denatured proteins" hypothesis - https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jun/25/science.highereducation https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jun/25/science.higheredu... Orwell was not right in everything, it seems.
- lynx23 3y ago
  How bad must the cups actually be for this story to have any relevance at all? In the 40 years that I have been drinking tea and other drinks that go into a cup, I have never witnessed one breaking because of hot water, never.
lynx23 3y ago
If someone asks me a question, I give a clear answer, and they ask the same question again, I consider them rude and obnoxious. It feels like talking down to someone, not qanting to accept their answer. I hate that behaviour. Although, I know it is part of a social dance, I strongly believe these dances need to be abolished.
- bartislartfast 3y ago
  > It feels like talking down to someone, not wanting to accept their answer. In Ireland at least, it's not talking down, but rather making the assumption that the other person is refusing only out of politeness, so as not to inconvenience you, but actually would love a cup of tea, because, well, who wouldn't? If someone refuses tea with a good reason, like they don't drink tea, or they are had too much caffeine already today, or it's too hot, we don't argue with them
thomasjb 3y ago
You're leaving out those of us with loyalty to Thompson's Punjana, otherwise, entirely accurate.
spicymapotofu 3y ago
Also big in Iraq, for many of the same rules. I'm reading "guests of the shiek" and getting better details on these cultural norms, but I'm surprised to see basically the same thing in an Anglo country!

vonzepp 3y ago

Accepting anything offered to you on the first offer is a bit rude. Basically, you are a guest of someone and shouldn't be a burden on them. They have to prove to you that you are not a burden, and then once that is clear you don't feel bad being served. Then your tea comes with cake, ham sandwiches and biscuit which is beyond the scope of the initial drink you were offered.

bigger_inside 3y ago
very culturally dependent. In Germany, the first offer is the offer. If you refuse it, there will not be a second one; and making a second, third offer, in turn, would be rude in Germany, as it is pestering and assumes I'm lying with the first answer or I don't know what I want. How dare you assume this? :D The English always think the Germans terribly rude. In turn, Germans find these English (also Irish, I guess) conventions of running around things fifteen times for ritual terribly exhausting, a complete waste of time and honestly, just an outright lie. Take email rules. Germans ridicule this "Hi, how are you, how's the family?" loop before the email (or phone call, or meeting) comes to "I need this from you." A German mail is "Hi, I need this. Thanks." That is not rude at all; the contrary, you did not force your family on me and didn't pretend to care about things that you do NOT care about, and you didn't impose on me with private things from strangers that I do not care about. (in the English mail, signified by the fact that there are no actual answers. "Fine!" .... Great, that was useless and just signaled openly that we really do not care and the question was, in fact, a lie.)
- 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 3y ago
  if by 'lie' you mean part of the culturally specific social ritual which is an essential glue knitting disparate people together, then yes, it's a lie.
  - bigger_inside 3y ago
    we lie all the time to knit people together, yes, of course. The key is in the "culturally specific" part. What kinds of lies are coded as rude and what kinds of lies are coded as glue? This differs, which was all I'm saying. I don't want to take the ritual from the English; I just want to keep them from making it universal (the English are very good at making whatever they do universal around the globe. ahem) This isn't just different between cultures, it's different between status positions, scenes, relationship levels. If someone I'm just getting to know asks me for lunch and I don't feel like it, I'll say "I'd love to, I can't" if I do want to keep making a relationship with that person. If someone's an old friend, I'll say, "I don't want to", knowing that our friendship won't be hurt by that.
- cameronh90 3y ago
  It's not a lie. Often the "how are you" is answered with "not bad", i.e. nothing much to say or don't want to talk about it, but sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it turns into a conversation about how life is going, or the problems you're having, or what you're looking forward to at the weekend or on your holiday. Or maybe just some idle chat about how hot it's been. Not only is this inevitably more fun than whatever the meeting was supposed to be about, it allows you to become closer with your colleagues. It's basically just giving some room for that social interaction, which may or may not be used.
  - sersi 3y ago
    I'd argue that's only really the case face to face but very rarely by email
  - bigger_inside 3y ago
    though it's not giving room in general; if it actually does depends on whether, in this context, it MAY be used or not, which the question itself doesn't communicate. This makes it a hornet's nest to actually use it. A purely ritual "how are you" met with actual emotional expression might make the situation quite awkward. Thus, there are deeper contextual frames you need to understand in order to know if that "how are you" actually means "please, open up" or it it only means "I'm just checkmarking politeness in this convo before I tell you to stay 3 hours longer today".
VagabundoP 3y ago
Yeah a good break down, and despite its size, Ireland has quite a variation depending on your county. As with everything trivial we'll fight you about it. For a really good look at tea drinking read Strumpet City, apart from it being an amazing novel, has the many ways they brewed and drank tea at the turn of the century. Irish Black tea tends to be different than English Black tea, apart from being superior of course, we source the leaves from different locations, something something due to rationing during WWII...

ithkuil 3y ago

> Households are either "Barrys Tea" or "Lyons Tea" and people are expected to have a loyal devotion to one and hatred of the other So if you offer Barry's to a guest who is in the Lyons, are you being rude?

bartislartfast 3y ago
House rules. If you're a Lyons house and a Barrys drinker comes in, they have to put up with it. depending on how well you know them they will either quietly accept or start an argument to convince you how wrong you are
secondcoming 3y ago
No. It would be rude to turn down a tea because you don't like the blend. And if someone needs an emergency cup of tea they won't mind.

ilyt 3y ago

That kind of shit is why I hate dealing with people, same thing happens here in Poland but with food. I just started saying "nope, I'm too fat for that"

Octabrain 3y ago
Why "hate"? I personally find fascinating that kind of implicit cultural rules.
- trilbyglens 3y ago
  Because once you see the pattern it can become an oppressive social requirement. I'm american but have been living in Czechia for about 15 years, and I've seen friendships blown up due to shit like "we visited and he didn't even offer us lunch", or "she didn't even offer to pay for lunch". It's fun when you are a visitor and you can view it from a distance, but when it's the local unaware social OS, it's got a far different effect. The food thing, specifically (probably a slavic thing) I find really fucking tedious. There is no "I'm not hungry but thank you" or "sorry I don't eat meat". Refusing food on a visit is basically equivalent to taking out a gun and shooting the family dog. You're likely to never be invited over again, and people will think you are a complete asshole. Because of this social overhead, visiting friends and family is a huge ordeal as everyone is expected to roll out the carpet and play host. No one wants to burden others, and no one wants to be burdened, so visits are fairly uncommon unless it's a bigger occasion like a birthday or holiday. There's absolutely no "I was in the neighborhood and thought I'd pop in and see what you're up to".
  - saiya-jin 3y ago
    You can train people, at least sane people you actually care about. It takes some time, but unless they are dense as neutron star, they will grok it eventually. Wrap it up in talk about honesty, being a man who talks and thinks straight. Also, this should not be the issue with young folks, only older generations are like that.
  - The_Colonel 3y ago

cubefox 3y ago

And I thought it was only the English who have such a close relationship to tea!

5e92cb50239222b 3y ago
> only the English who have such a close relationship to tea ... excluding Japan, China, Russia, all of Central Asia (where I am from), and probably many other countries. So typical for HN.
- n4r9 3y ago
  I'm currently reading "Infused - Adventures in Tea" by Henrietta Lovell. She makes the good point that British people say "normal tea" to refer to English breakfast (blended black) tea, but for the majority of tea drinkers in the world "normal" is green tea.
- maksimur 3y ago
  According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tea_consumption_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tea_consu..., Turkey is the top tea-consuming country per capita, with Ireland second and UK third. Interestingly, Russia isn't too far off either. I would've assumed Russia to be among the countries with the lowest per capita tea consumption, but these numbers challenge that assumption. I wonder what (cultural?) factors affect those numbers.
  - 0ct4via 3y ago
    Piggybacking off your assumption of Russia having low tea consumption, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_tea_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_tea_culture is very much a thing.
    - Obscurity4340 3y ago
      God, I love Wikipedia. Such a random thing to receive the Wikipedic treatment

Tomte 3y ago

> Households are either "Barrys Tea" or "Lyons Tea" That seems to be a cultural constant. In East Frisia it's Bünting or Thiele.

I_complete_me 3y ago

Two points: It's important to note whether the milk goes in the tea first or the tea first and then the milk. When the host is serving the tea, if the milk goes in first, then the host is admitting that they have inferior (non-china) cups, since china cups are more robust and can withstand the sudden heat shock. However, I have never had tea from a china cup so I can't possibly say. When making hay in the summer time, the tea served to the workers should have equal parts tea, water, sugar and milk. Well, that's how it tasted to me back in the day!

n4r9 3y ago
This is one of those things where everyone has heard a slightly different tale. I've read in other places the exact opposite: some people put milk in first in china cups because they think china is delicate and prone to cracking. Some people prefer milk afterwards so they can get the tea to the right colour. Others say that putting it in first may prevent denaturing the milk proteins. More research is needed.
- mrob 3y ago
  Not only was research done, it was the origin of statistical significance testing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_tasting_tea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_tasting_tea
  - n4r9 3y ago
    Incredible! Thank you for the link. The page for the "Lady" in question adds that she preferred the milk first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muriel_Bristol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muriel_Bristol This makes sense, given some slightly more recent research into the "denatured proteins" hypothesis - https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jun/25/science.highereducation https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jun/25/science.higheredu... Orwell was not right in everything, it seems.
lynx23 3y ago
How bad must the cups actually be for this story to have any relevance at all? In the 40 years that I have been drinking tea and other drinks that go into a cup, I have never witnessed one breaking because of hot water, never.

lynx23 3y ago

If someone asks me a question, I give a clear answer, and they ask the same question again, I consider them rude and obnoxious. It feels like talking down to someone, not qanting to accept their answer. I hate that behaviour. Although, I know it is part of a social dance, I strongly believe these dances need to be abolished.

bartislartfast 3y ago
> It feels like talking down to someone, not wanting to accept their answer. In Ireland at least, it's not talking down, but rather making the assumption that the other person is refusing only out of politeness, so as not to inconvenience you, but actually would love a cup of tea, because, well, who wouldn't? If someone refuses tea with a good reason, like they don't drink tea, or they are had too much caffeine already today, or it's too hot, we don't argue with them

thomasjb 3y ago

You're leaving out those of us with loyalty to Thompson's Punjana, otherwise, entirely accurate.

spicymapotofu 3y ago

Also big in Iraq, for many of the same rules. I'm reading "guests of the shiek" and getting better details on these cultural norms, but I'm surprised to see basically the same thing in an Anglo country!