Kuchen?
May 30, 2022 1:23 PM Subscribe
Irish and German people offering each other things. Never have Ask and Guess culture been so clearly shown as in this delightful 37-second Twitter video.
Consistent with my theory that Guess culture is stable in scarcity and Ask culture is stable in sufficiency.
posted by clew at 1:45 PM on May 30, 2022 [43 favorites]
posted by clew at 1:45 PM on May 30, 2022 [43 favorites]
Noticing the comedian’s name - Killian Sundermann - my headcanon fantasy is that he’s half Irish and half German so he may have had to learn to switch gears a lot if he wanted to enjoy both cake and approval.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 1:58 PM on May 30, 2022 [22 favorites]
posted by nouvelle-personne at 1:58 PM on May 30, 2022 [22 favorites]
I dunno if the scarcity argument holds water. This doesn't address the YOU'RE SO THIN? WHY AREN'T THEY FEEDING YOU??! EAT! (forces cake on you) mode, or the silently putting cake out and if you don't eat it your host being more and more insulted as time goes on mode. Both of those are quite endemic in middle eastern cultures no matter how poor the host.
posted by seanmpuckett at 2:04 PM on May 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 2:04 PM on May 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
if he wanted to enjoy both cake and approval
As opposed to England, where it is cake or death.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:06 PM on May 30, 2022 [13 favorites]
As opposed to England, where it is cake or death.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:06 PM on May 30, 2022 [13 favorites]
... or the mode of simply not offering you anything, because if you were hungry you should have eaten or brought your own. Which is definitely a thing in some countries of plenty.
posted by seanmpuckett at 2:09 PM on May 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 2:09 PM on May 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
This video has convinced me not to apply to this job in Ireland. Slightly joking (not feeling like a cross-Atlantic move right now), but only slightly.
posted by coffeecat at 2:29 PM on May 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by coffeecat at 2:29 PM on May 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
Coincidentally, I just saw this Europe-specific Twitter thread: Will you receive food at as a guest at someone's house.
posted by bigendian at 2:31 PM on May 30, 2022 [26 favorites]
posted by bigendian at 2:31 PM on May 30, 2022 [26 favorites]
Killian Sundermann - my headcanon fantasy is that he’s half Irish and half German
St. Kilian was an Irish saint who ended up in Würzburg in Bavaria, so it is a known name in Germany. (But yeah he was born in Dublin to German parents.)
posted by scorbet at 2:32 PM on May 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
St. Kilian was an Irish saint who ended up in Würzburg in Bavaria, so it is a known name in Germany. (But yeah he was born in Dublin to German parents.)
posted by scorbet at 2:32 PM on May 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
So this is great and also highlights a confusion I have about how to explain/articulate the difference between Guess culture and Ask culture. Because one quick way to explain Guess is to say that it's rude to say no so you try to avoid putting someone in a position where they have to say no. But in this example, it's polite to say at least once and rude to immediately say yes. This intuitively makes sense to me (as someone who grew up in Michigan) but I'm unsure how to explain it, especially succinctly.
posted by overglow at 2:33 PM on May 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by overglow at 2:33 PM on May 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
one quick way to explain Guess is to say that it's rude to say no so you try to avoid putting someone in a position where they have to say no
It’s rude to say no to someone asking you *for* something, like a favour. It’s polite to refuse something being offered.
posted by scorbet at 2:41 PM on May 30, 2022 [17 favorites]
It’s rude to say no to someone asking you *for* something, like a favour. It’s polite to refuse something being offered.
posted by scorbet at 2:41 PM on May 30, 2022 [17 favorites]
Coincidentally, I just saw this Europe-specific Twitter thread: Will you receive food at as a guest at someone's house.
This does not track with my experience of rural Denmark (and smaller towns/cities in Jylland) at all. You will be offered food as a guest in someone's house.
posted by Dysk at 2:43 PM on May 30, 2022 [8 favorites]
This does not track with my experience of rural Denmark (and smaller towns/cities in Jylland) at all. You will be offered food as a guest in someone's house.
posted by Dysk at 2:43 PM on May 30, 2022 [8 favorites]
Let me back up Dysk here, I’m from Iceland and mostly live in Finland these days. In both places you will absolutely get stuffed like a thanksgiving turkey if you’re a guest.
This doesn’t apply to Sweden, however, where apparently it’s fairly normal not to feed guests, even children, even at mealtime, even breakfast if kids sleep over.
To sum up, don’t judge the rest of us Nordics, judge the Swedes.
posted by Kattullus at 2:56 PM on May 30, 2022 [46 favorites]
This doesn’t apply to Sweden, however, where apparently it’s fairly normal not to feed guests, even children, even at mealtime, even breakfast if kids sleep over.
To sum up, don’t judge the rest of us Nordics, judge the Swedes.
posted by Kattullus at 2:56 PM on May 30, 2022 [46 favorites]
scorbet: It’s polite to refuse something being offered.
In many, many societies, refusing hospitality is a grave offense. Which is why people in those societies go to great lengths to suss out whether it would be appropriate to offer hospitality before offering it. Being refused, and being put in the position of having to refuse, are both humiliations.
posted by Kattullus at 3:02 PM on May 30, 2022 [15 favorites]
In many, many societies, refusing hospitality is a grave offense. Which is why people in those societies go to great lengths to suss out whether it would be appropriate to offer hospitality before offering it. Being refused, and being put in the position of having to refuse, are both humiliations.
posted by Kattullus at 3:02 PM on May 30, 2022 [15 favorites]
haven't spent much time among the Irish or Germans, but as a New Yorker who's lived in the midwest, this is extremely familiar to me
posted by entropone at 3:04 PM on May 30, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by entropone at 3:04 PM on May 30, 2022 [10 favorites]
Coincidentally, I just saw this Europe-specific Twitter thread: Will you receive food at as a guest at someone's house.
So a bit further poking around on the internet reveals that the "selfish (or possibly just Viking) Swedes don't feed their guests" thing is actually "in some parts of Sweden in the mid 20th century the norm that kids eat what their parents provide at home for dinner because family dinner is important was so strong that if you were visiting a friend's house at their dinner time, the assumption was that you would go home at your dinner time and eat with your family". So actually, Swedes did feed their guests, but hesitated to give dinner to friends' kids if the friends' kids were close to their own homes because the assumption was that each family had their own food preferences.
Strangely, instead of a monstrous and inexplicable pan-Swedish moral failing, it's actually a time-bound and relatively-reasonable-if-you-accept-the-first-premises practice by some Swedes in part of the 20th century. Disappointing for the internet, I know.
posted by Frowner at 3:05 PM on May 30, 2022 [32 favorites]
Being refused, and being put in the position of having to refuse, are both humiliations
Oh, I meant in the Irish context that you see here. And even there it’s a performative refusal - both sides know that you aren’t getting out of there without several cups of tea, and probably a cake that was specially baked/bought for the occasion that the host “just happened to have in the press”.
posted by scorbet at 3:11 PM on May 30, 2022 [11 favorites]
Oh, I meant in the Irish context that you see here. And even there it’s a performative refusal - both sides know that you aren’t getting out of there without several cups of tea, and probably a cake that was specially baked/bought for the occasion that the host “just happened to have in the press”.
posted by scorbet at 3:11 PM on May 30, 2022 [11 favorites]
The Twitter map is correct that in England, if you drop by someone's house, you'll probably be offered tea (or coffee or water), but are unlikely to be offered much food unless you've specifically been invited over for a meal. At most, you'll be offered some biscuits if they have any. This is also true for very British-Canadian regions (like the Maritimes). I couldn't imagine not being offered tea if I were visiting someone down east.
I do get very confused between "Guess" and "Ask" culture. The culture I know best is English/English-Canadian (very similar), where you would never ask for a cup of tea (or anything specific other than maybe a glass of water), but when offered you are free to say yes or no with no drama (ala the German example). Is this Ask or Guess? The host is free to ask, but the guest is not.
posted by jb at 3:19 PM on May 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
I do get very confused between "Guess" and "Ask" culture. The culture I know best is English/English-Canadian (very similar), where you would never ask for a cup of tea (or anything specific other than maybe a glass of water), but when offered you are free to say yes or no with no drama (ala the German example). Is this Ask or Guess? The host is free to ask, but the guest is not.
posted by jb at 3:19 PM on May 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
Non-European, but my great-aunts would do this when we were kids. Absolutely stuff you with random things that they "just happened to have." One of my great-aunts is a pretty phenomenal cook and baker, and the other one was ... not, so it was a bit like Russian roulette at family gatherings. There were always a lot of glances among the cousins as we tried to figure out who had made what based on how eagerly they were asking you to take more of it.
My grandmother, by contrast, would just skip all the shenanigans and put things on your plate, no questions and no performative refusals.
posted by basalganglia at 3:36 PM on May 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
My grandmother, by contrast, would just skip all the shenanigans and put things on your plate, no questions and no performative refusals.
posted by basalganglia at 3:36 PM on May 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
The government of Saudi Arabia put out an advertisement asking people to stop inviting Census takers in for coffee and lunch, because it's taking forever to finish the Census with all this hospitality at every doorstep.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 3:40 PM on May 30, 2022 [76 favorites]
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 3:40 PM on May 30, 2022 [76 favorites]
Instead of guessing, I was going to ask which country was ask and which was guess, but I decided to just figure it out on my own, but there is actually no Wikipedia page, but Google led me rather quickly to ScaryMommy and from there straight back to AskMeFi. So I guess I have to ask, where is GuessMeFi?
posted by hypnogogue at 3:42 PM on May 30, 2022 [12 favorites]
posted by hypnogogue at 3:42 PM on May 30, 2022 [12 favorites]
This doesn’t apply to Sweden, however, where apparently it’s fairly normal not to feed guests, even children, even at mealtime, even breakfast if kids sleep over.
Like... people come over, and you just go about your meals while they watch you eat??
posted by dusty potato at 3:45 PM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
Like... people come over, and you just go about your meals while they watch you eat??
posted by dusty potato at 3:45 PM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
TIL that, even though all of my traceable ancestry is Irish, and the closest that ancestry.com will actually put anyone in Germany is "Eastern Europe and Russia" (my great-grandmother embarked to America from Danzig pregnant with my grandfather, co-conceiver unknown), I'm apparently as German as Till Lindemann wearing lederhosen and dancing the waltz with Angela Merkel.
posted by Halloween Jack at 3:48 PM on May 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 3:48 PM on May 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
Like... people come over, and you just go about your meals while they watch you eat??
I don't know why this is bugging me today, but no, this is not what happens. "Swedes don't feed their guests" is a viral just-so story based, as far as I can tell, on a mid-20th century habit of assuming that little kids who drop by to play at random are going to go home and eat with their families and so sometimes the guest kid would hang out rather than eat dinner.
This appears to have a been a regional practice - ie, not all Swedes did it, it applied to little neighbor kids who just dropped in to play casually and it seems to have been a mid-twentieth century thing.
It is incomprehensible to people now in part because "just dropping into play with the neighbors" no longer exists among middle class people. If you literally dropped your kid off three miles from home for an all-day playdate, then yes, it would be awful not to feed the kid a meal. If a kid stopped by every day to play with their best friend who lived down the block, you might actually expect that the kid's parents would want to have family dinner and not feed them up on the boring potatoes that you made for a boring weekday meal.
The internet loves a "this culture is composed of incomprehensible monsters, my family would NEVER" story, but those are usually false.
posted by Frowner at 3:52 PM on May 30, 2022 [24 favorites]
I don't know why this is bugging me today, but no, this is not what happens. "Swedes don't feed their guests" is a viral just-so story based, as far as I can tell, on a mid-20th century habit of assuming that little kids who drop by to play at random are going to go home and eat with their families and so sometimes the guest kid would hang out rather than eat dinner.
This appears to have a been a regional practice - ie, not all Swedes did it, it applied to little neighbor kids who just dropped in to play casually and it seems to have been a mid-twentieth century thing.
It is incomprehensible to people now in part because "just dropping into play with the neighbors" no longer exists among middle class people. If you literally dropped your kid off three miles from home for an all-day playdate, then yes, it would be awful not to feed the kid a meal. If a kid stopped by every day to play with their best friend who lived down the block, you might actually expect that the kid's parents would want to have family dinner and not feed them up on the boring potatoes that you made for a boring weekday meal.
The internet loves a "this culture is composed of incomprehensible monsters, my family would NEVER" story, but those are usually false.
posted by Frowner at 3:52 PM on May 30, 2022 [24 favorites]
The clip also serves as an example of high-context culture vs. low-context culture, right? Maybe with elements of indirect communication vs. direct communication?
Anyway, it reminds me of the time my grandmother in Minnesota met my New York born girlfriend. When she received an immediate and enthusiastic 'yes' after offering some homemade pastry, my grandmother was so taken aback by this breach of conduct all she could do after an uncomfortable pause was ask 'Are you sure?'
posted by theory at 4:08 PM on May 30, 2022 [18 favorites]
Anyway, it reminds me of the time my grandmother in Minnesota met my New York born girlfriend. When she received an immediate and enthusiastic 'yes' after offering some homemade pastry, my grandmother was so taken aback by this breach of conduct all she could do after an uncomfortable pause was ask 'Are you sure?'
posted by theory at 4:08 PM on May 30, 2022 [18 favorites]
I think there's a tendency to try to apply the ask vs. guess dichotomy to a lot of different types of situations, but it's not actually a universal fit. To me ask vs. guess culture is not the same as hosting culture. There's overlap: both of them have to do with high-context and low-context culture, as mentioned above, and with the potential to give offense. But what's going on here is about well-defined hosting rituals, combined with cultural values where accepting the host's offerings (and especially food they prepared themselves!) is acknowledging their dignity ('I'm not so poor I can't feed you'), competence ('I made/selected this food'), graciousness as host, and so forth, plus cultural attitudes towards food. It's not quite the same animal as hesitating to ask someone for help because you don't want to discommode them or place them in the uncomfortable position of having to say no. The Irish host isn't worrying that their guest might not want to eat and trying to give them an easy out should they need it, or at any point considering not offering cake; nobody's evaluating the other side's needs and context; this is a predefined interaction.
(Regarding the Swedish thing - on the one hand, sure, that makes sense, and on the other hand the prevailing reaction in much of the world to 'this kid is going to eat at home' would be "of course you need to go home and eat! Here, have something before you go! You can't leave our home hungry! And here's some food to bring your parents too!" That is not an exaggeration! In the culture I grew up with, letting a kid be in your house without trying to feed them would absolutely be enough to qualify you for unfeeling monsterhood, to say nothing of sitting down to eat without automatically including everyone present. The very idea is just totally bizarre; whatever logic there may be runs up against the overwhelming axioms of "guests must be fed" and "children must always be fed and doted on, primarily via food. That is what children are for".)
posted by trig at 4:17 PM on May 30, 2022 [21 favorites]
(Regarding the Swedish thing - on the one hand, sure, that makes sense, and on the other hand the prevailing reaction in much of the world to 'this kid is going to eat at home' would be "of course you need to go home and eat! Here, have something before you go! You can't leave our home hungry! And here's some food to bring your parents too!" That is not an exaggeration! In the culture I grew up with, letting a kid be in your house without trying to feed them would absolutely be enough to qualify you for unfeeling monsterhood, to say nothing of sitting down to eat without automatically including everyone present. The very idea is just totally bizarre; whatever logic there may be runs up against the overwhelming axioms of "guests must be fed" and "children must always be fed and doted on, primarily via food. That is what children are for".)
posted by trig at 4:17 PM on May 30, 2022 [21 favorites]
I remember a story a family friend told me of visiting a mutual friend while he was eating and being asked if she wanted to join in. We are all born and raised in Canada but our parents were from India and Pakistan. She said "no" to the offer to be polite, which is the "traditional" way, and he just said "ok" and continued eating. She was actually hungry but couldn't say anything about it afterwards. It was a funny story at the time but I think these days most interactions between people of our generation or younger would be like the mutual friends' response where we aren't going to do the initial refusals or repeated offers. Our interactions with people of our parents' generation are still going to do that though.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:22 PM on May 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:22 PM on May 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
(Also, stereotypes about the food-stinginess of (some?) Germanic cultures definitely predate the internet)
posted by trig at 4:22 PM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by trig at 4:22 PM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
(And yeah, deffo did the "hanging round a friend's house while they have dinner" thing as a kid - you know, sitting at the table with them, conversing, etc - but it was always because my parents had either already fed me dinner, or had dinner waiting. It was indeed because we just ran around each other's houses freely, wasn't planned, and both sets of parents had shopped and cooked for themselves and their kids. I was always offered dinner, though it would have been rude and weird to say yes and then also eat at home.
As an adult you have the authority to make your own decisions in life, so this situation only really occurs if the significant other has something special planned, and you'd usually just leave at that point. It's a product of having freedom of movement while not being independent, as a kid.)
posted by Dysk at 4:27 PM on May 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
As an adult you have the authority to make your own decisions in life, so this situation only really occurs if the significant other has something special planned, and you'd usually just leave at that point. It's a product of having freedom of movement while not being independent, as a kid.)
posted by Dysk at 4:27 PM on May 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
I loved this video. Especially the Irish saying no and the German going "okay" and walking off.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:41 PM on May 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:41 PM on May 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
I wonder if performative refusals are just orthogonal to the (pretty fuzzily-defined to begin with) Ask/Guess axis. Maybe this perspective is entirely personal, though. I'm Guess-y in general nature -- I was brought up to attempt to mind read by default and impose as little as possible on those around me -- but I was not acculturated to any kind of performative refusal and find it utterly baffling. It's quite the opposite for me, actually, in matters of hospitality: if you enter my home Thou Shalt Be Offered Chow with obnoxious levels of exuberance and I impose no expectation or value on the answer, though I might press on anyway in case someone is a performative refuser. Others may not share that value, and if they offer me nothing that's an acceptable choice that I may just Guess is their default.
posted by majick at 4:51 PM on May 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by majick at 4:51 PM on May 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
What culture is it when someone says, "here, eat this" . Push culture?
posted by eustatic at 5:25 PM on May 30, 2022 [12 favorites]
posted by eustatic at 5:25 PM on May 30, 2022 [12 favorites]
I passed this on to a friend of mine: born and raised in Canada, but the daughter of Irish parents and resident in Germany these last twenty years. She confirms it is true in every detail.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:04 PM on May 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:04 PM on May 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
“You’re very confident” is a staple in my house
posted by BlunderingArtist at 6:20 PM on May 30, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by BlunderingArtist at 6:20 PM on May 30, 2022 [8 favorites]
This does not track with my experience of rural Denmark (and smaller towns/cities in Jylland) at all. You will be offered food as a guest in someone's house.
Eli DiLorenzo, a delightful Swedish comedian I follow, confirmed that it is true for Sweden. They won't feed you or offer you water, interesting conversations, or even basic life support like air to breathe, so you might as well leave her the fuck alone.
posted by mark k at 6:21 PM on May 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
Eli DiLorenzo, a delightful Swedish comedian I follow, confirmed that it is true for Sweden. They won't feed you or offer you water, interesting conversations, or even basic life support like air to breathe, so you might as well leave her the fuck alone.
posted by mark k at 6:21 PM on May 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
Push culture?
Your first dinner is free...
I find this really stressful, having to try and guess correctly whether the right answer to "would you like a drink/dinner/etc?" should be "yes, thank you!" or entering into the "no I can't," "oh, but I was making it anyway," "well maybe a little" routine. I grew up with and prefer the first, but I also grew up with the expectation to be polite, and for a lot of people the way to be polite is to do the no/yes/no/yes interaction.
I don't think it is anything to do with the ask/guess thing, this is all about what the expectations are for a social interaction and how to be polite.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:31 PM on May 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
Your first dinner is free...
I find this really stressful, having to try and guess correctly whether the right answer to "would you like a drink/dinner/etc?" should be "yes, thank you!" or entering into the "no I can't," "oh, but I was making it anyway," "well maybe a little" routine. I grew up with and prefer the first, but I also grew up with the expectation to be polite, and for a lot of people the way to be polite is to do the no/yes/no/yes interaction.
I don't think it is anything to do with the ask/guess thing, this is all about what the expectations are for a social interaction and how to be polite.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:31 PM on May 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
Somewhere in Douglas Adams' books a character responds to an offer of what I seem to remember as food with a single line like "oh I couldn't possibly you're too kind no really I can't why thank you I'd be delighted" (please tell me someone else read this and remembers more about it than I do) and I tend to rush through those same phrases all in a row like that when offered food at someone's house. Just get it all out of the way, it saves time.
posted by potrzebie at 6:46 PM on May 30, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by potrzebie at 6:46 PM on May 30, 2022 [10 favorites]
This appears to have a been a regional practice - ie, not all Swedes did it, it applied to little neighbor kids who just dropped in to play casually and it seems to have been a mid-twentieth century thing.
That doesn't seem to be entirely true? People were talking about being expected to stay through dinner time, being at overnight sleepovers and not being fed, being expected to bring sandwiches, etc. And periods rather later than mid-20th century. It certainly doesn't seem to have been universal, but not a freak outlier either.
posted by tavella at 6:53 PM on May 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
That doesn't seem to be entirely true? People were talking about being expected to stay through dinner time, being at overnight sleepovers and not being fed, being expected to bring sandwiches, etc. And periods rather later than mid-20th century. It certainly doesn't seem to have been universal, but not a freak outlier either.
posted by tavella at 6:53 PM on May 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
Surprised there has been no mention of the Dutch where “koffie?” might as well me hello. Cookies will probably be offered but for gods sake only take one!
posted by misterpatrick at 7:09 PM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by misterpatrick at 7:09 PM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
If you ask me, your guess is as good as mine.
posted by y2karl at 7:19 PM on May 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by y2karl at 7:19 PM on May 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
I would like someone Japanese to confirm this, but I understand Japanese culture absolutely requires you to refuse the first offer of food or drink, and you can't ask, which is ok because hosts ALWAYS offer. But my former sister-in-law in much more direct New Zealand culture went hungry and thirsty a lot until she figured out that she wasn't going to get asked twice and that it's ok to request a drink of water.
I do think it's important to understand the nuances and also the economic condition of people you're visiting, especially in another culture. Should you eat a lot? Should you eat poor people out of house and home because actually you're expected to take a few polite bites and then exclaim how full you are? Is it ok to bring a contribution unasked or a mortifying faux pas? Reading a situation when you don't know the rules is hard.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:26 PM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
I do think it's important to understand the nuances and also the economic condition of people you're visiting, especially in another culture. Should you eat a lot? Should you eat poor people out of house and home because actually you're expected to take a few polite bites and then exclaim how full you are? Is it ok to bring a contribution unasked or a mortifying faux pas? Reading a situation when you don't know the rules is hard.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:26 PM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
potrzebie, is it this bit from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency?
Dirk shook his head in admonition, then wrote "I couldn't possibly that would be most kind." As soon as Richard had read this, Dirk took the note back and added "Get money from secretary" to it.posted by quintessence at 7:37 PM on May 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
Richard looked at the paper thoughtfully, took the pencil and put a tick next to where he had previously written "You haven't got secretary." He pushed the paper back across the table to Dirk, who merely glanced at it and ticked "I couldn't possibly that would be most kind."
Well, as a southerner (US), this does go some way in clarifying why it was so easy to make friends in Ireland.
(If you change the accent, the Irish version is exactly, 100% every member of my family being offered almost anything).
posted by thivaia at 7:58 PM on May 30, 2022 [10 favorites]
(If you change the accent, the Irish version is exactly, 100% every member of my family being offered almost anything).
posted by thivaia at 7:58 PM on May 30, 2022 [10 favorites]
My South Indian ex taught me the “three no’s” rule, in that you can only really take the third time someone refuses as an actual refusal.
posted by sixswitch at 8:00 PM on May 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by sixswitch at 8:00 PM on May 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
would like someone Japanese to confirm this, but I understand Japanese culture absolutely requires you to refuse the first offer of food or drink, and you can't ask, which is ok because hosts ALWAYS offer.
I am not Japanese but I live in Japan and it's exactly as the Irish do: Oh, I made this cake, it's probably not any good, but please do me a favor and have some.
Oh, no, I couldn't possibly, no.
Repeat a few more times. That's very Japanese.
posted by zardoz at 10:09 PM on May 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
I am not Japanese but I live in Japan and it's exactly as the Irish do: Oh, I made this cake, it's probably not any good, but please do me a favor and have some.
Oh, no, I couldn't possibly, no.
Repeat a few more times. That's very Japanese.
posted by zardoz at 10:09 PM on May 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
> I would like someone Japanese to confirm this, but I understand Japanese culture absolutely requires you to refuse the first offer of food or drink
It's not a monolith. There are regional (and other context-based?) differences. One stereotypical rule-of-thumb in Kyoto etiquette is that you must not accept an offer of hospitality until the third time it's made--which my relatives and friends from other regions in Japan consider ridiculous.
(Kyoto is known within Japan for having especially indirect or difficult-to-gauge etiquette...There are lots of stereotypical examples but I hesitate to list them here as I haven't personally experienced them, but the point is that the language can be so roundabout that you as the guest end up doing a lot of room-reading in order not to be a bad guest.)
There's probably also some kind of sample skewing; IME, Japanese people who are hosting foreign guests will try to guess what would make the guest feel more comfortable so might deviate from their usual local rules (to the chagrin of immersion homestay program organizers), and foreign visitors generally will get a lot of leeway for not knowing or following local custom. Plus most of the Japanese people I've hung out with have spent time abroad or know foreigners in Japan, so there's usually a mix of cultural influences rather than a strict adherence to what's stereotypically known to be Japanese Culture.
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 10:45 PM on May 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
It's not a monolith. There are regional (and other context-based?) differences. One stereotypical rule-of-thumb in Kyoto etiquette is that you must not accept an offer of hospitality until the third time it's made--which my relatives and friends from other regions in Japan consider ridiculous.
(Kyoto is known within Japan for having especially indirect or difficult-to-gauge etiquette...There are lots of stereotypical examples but I hesitate to list them here as I haven't personally experienced them, but the point is that the language can be so roundabout that you as the guest end up doing a lot of room-reading in order not to be a bad guest.)
There's probably also some kind of sample skewing; IME, Japanese people who are hosting foreign guests will try to guess what would make the guest feel more comfortable so might deviate from their usual local rules (to the chagrin of immersion homestay program organizers), and foreign visitors generally will get a lot of leeway for not knowing or following local custom. Plus most of the Japanese people I've hung out with have spent time abroad or know foreigners in Japan, so there's usually a mix of cultural influences rather than a strict adherence to what's stereotypically known to be Japanese Culture.
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 10:45 PM on May 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
Firstly, this video is very amusing. Still, while I like the Ask vs Guess culture thing, I think people tend to take it too literally. Sure, in Germany, it would probably be taken as rather pushy if you keep trying to get someone to eat your cake after a clear no. But there's plenty of things and subjects in Germany that are indirectly communicated. I mean, the language still has a formal "You" (Sie, as opposed to Du), which operates by its own unpoken rules about when to use what, that very from region to region. And no you can't generally just ask if you can "Du", unless you're already very sure that the answer is yes.
The other day I had a guest over, and for some reason I decided to introduce myself with my full name. I think I did it because I have the feeling that if I just say my first name, it's kind of noncommital, but by saying my full name, I was trying to convey "This is who I am, here is my home, you are welcome anytime." Of course, by introducing myself with my full name, that caused the German guest to think she had to "Sie" me. Cue 5 minutes of us talking without using any pronouns (Germans have a whole way of talking without pronouns when they're unsure which to use) before I think she eventually realized that as a Canadian I couldn't possibly give a shit, and she asked me.
For me, as someone who likes to operate with single, sincere yeses and nos, Ask vs Guess culture is a good reminder that some people want to be asked multiple times. Which I never do... except if it's about guests helping me clean up after a dinner party ("oh no, of course not, well if you insist, oh thank god for helping"), or entertaining the kids so my spouse and I can take a breath ("oh no, of course not, well if you insist, oh thank god for helping"). Generally speaking, how highly I rank a guest has to do with how well they do on these unspoken tasks, so... *shrug*?
posted by Alex404 at 11:35 PM on May 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
The other day I had a guest over, and for some reason I decided to introduce myself with my full name. I think I did it because I have the feeling that if I just say my first name, it's kind of noncommital, but by saying my full name, I was trying to convey "This is who I am, here is my home, you are welcome anytime." Of course, by introducing myself with my full name, that caused the German guest to think she had to "Sie" me. Cue 5 minutes of us talking without using any pronouns (Germans have a whole way of talking without pronouns when they're unsure which to use) before I think she eventually realized that as a Canadian I couldn't possibly give a shit, and she asked me.
For me, as someone who likes to operate with single, sincere yeses and nos, Ask vs Guess culture is a good reminder that some people want to be asked multiple times. Which I never do... except if it's about guests helping me clean up after a dinner party ("oh no, of course not, well if you insist, oh thank god for helping"), or entertaining the kids so my spouse and I can take a breath ("oh no, of course not, well if you insist, oh thank god for helping"). Generally speaking, how highly I rank a guest has to do with how well they do on these unspoken tasks, so... *shrug*?
posted by Alex404 at 11:35 PM on May 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
thank you Sockin'inthefreeworld, that's exactly the comment I hoped would come to correct me!
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:35 PM on May 30, 2022
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:35 PM on May 30, 2022
Incidentally I just showed this video to a German friend of mine who spent time in Cork as an exchange student, and he responded thus:
[redacted]:Oh god I remember that cultural awareness training when first going to Ireland
[redacted]: Wasn’t about cake but about how to ask someone to close the window if you’re cold
[redacted]:Start off by asking if it’s just you or if it’s getting cold outside….
[redacted]: Escalate from there
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:41 PM on May 30, 2022 [27 favorites]
[redacted]:Oh god I remember that cultural awareness training when first going to Ireland
[redacted]: Wasn’t about cake but about how to ask someone to close the window if you’re cold
[redacted]:Start off by asking if it’s just you or if it’s getting cold outside….
[redacted]: Escalate from there
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:41 PM on May 30, 2022 [27 favorites]
Frowner: It is incomprehensible to people now in part because "just dropping into play with the neighbors" no longer exists among middle class people. If you literally dropped your kid off three miles from home for an all-day playdate, then yes, it would be awful not to feed the kid a meal. If a kid stopped by every day to play with their best friend who lived down the block, you might actually expect that the kid's parents would want to have family dinner and not feed them up on the boring potatoes that you made for a boring weekday meal.
I grew up with “just dropping into play with the neighbors” in Iceland and my son is just reaching the age where that would be starting in Finland.
If the kid doesn’t go home on their own accord, or the parents don’t call or come around, and a friend of your kid is around at mealtime, that kid gets fed. The only exception would be if the kids’ parents had requested that the kid would be sent home around dinner time. This is absolutely non-negotiable as a cultural norm in the Nordic countries which I’m familiar with, and that it’s not in Sweden is shocking to me.
I say Sweden, but there is an area on the western coast of Finland that’s very closely linked, culturally, to Sweden, where not feeding kids at mealtime is acceptable, and the rest of Finland is absolutely appalled by this (this isn’t a Swedish-speakers exclusively thing, incidentally, it’s a regional custom irrespective of language).
posted by Kattullus at 12:31 AM on May 31, 2022 [9 favorites]
I grew up with “just dropping into play with the neighbors” in Iceland and my son is just reaching the age where that would be starting in Finland.
If the kid doesn’t go home on their own accord, or the parents don’t call or come around, and a friend of your kid is around at mealtime, that kid gets fed. The only exception would be if the kids’ parents had requested that the kid would be sent home around dinner time. This is absolutely non-negotiable as a cultural norm in the Nordic countries which I’m familiar with, and that it’s not in Sweden is shocking to me.
I say Sweden, but there is an area on the western coast of Finland that’s very closely linked, culturally, to Sweden, where not feeding kids at mealtime is acceptable, and the rest of Finland is absolutely appalled by this (this isn’t a Swedish-speakers exclusively thing, incidentally, it’s a regional custom irrespective of language).
posted by Kattullus at 12:31 AM on May 31, 2022 [9 favorites]
Oh my god, this has brought back some (bad) memories. I was brought up to avoid telling people directly that I didn't like food that they were offering me, because that would be rude, and just to decline without giving a specific reason if I didn't want any.
Reasonable, right? Not if you're surrounded by people who believe that 1) obviously everyone loves dessert and wants dessert, 2) especially women, 3) but women are always on some weird diet or something, but 4) they secretly really want to cheat on their diets and have the dessert anyway, and therefore 5) they would just love for you to cajole them in increasingly pushy and obnoxious ways to have the dessert.
I'm a woman, I dislike a lot of dessert foods, and I really dislike being pressured into something that I have already repeatedly declined. So I have on multiple occasions been pushed to snap at someone that look, I just don't like cheesecake, which then leads to a cascade of them feeling bad and trying to think of something else that they could find for me instead, or figuring out what they can bring for me next time, etc., all of which could be avoided if people would just believe a "no, thank you".
I don't think this is ask/guess culture exactly. There's something that really rubs me up the wrong way about a system set up to make it impossible to refuse something because it is assumed that you can't possibly not want it.
posted by confluency at 2:20 AM on May 31, 2022 [16 favorites]
Reasonable, right? Not if you're surrounded by people who believe that 1) obviously everyone loves dessert and wants dessert, 2) especially women, 3) but women are always on some weird diet or something, but 4) they secretly really want to cheat on their diets and have the dessert anyway, and therefore 5) they would just love for you to cajole them in increasingly pushy and obnoxious ways to have the dessert.
I'm a woman, I dislike a lot of dessert foods, and I really dislike being pressured into something that I have already repeatedly declined. So I have on multiple occasions been pushed to snap at someone that look, I just don't like cheesecake, which then leads to a cascade of them feeling bad and trying to think of something else that they could find for me instead, or figuring out what they can bring for me next time, etc., all of which could be avoided if people would just believe a "no, thank you".
I don't think this is ask/guess culture exactly. There's something that really rubs me up the wrong way about a system set up to make it impossible to refuse something because it is assumed that you can't possibly not want it.
posted by confluency at 2:20 AM on May 31, 2022 [16 favorites]
The other hospitality related issue between Irish and Germans is arrival time. In Ireland, if the invitation is for 7pm, everyone tacitly agrees that they'll aim for 7pm-ish, but that's being very optimistic about the traffic, so in reality no-one will be there before 7:15, and it may even be 7:30. Naturally, the host is doing something similar - planning to be prepared by 7pm, but if necessary they'll still have that 15min+ grace period. (And usually end up using it...)
In Germany it is polite to be on time, if not slightly early. So if you're invited for 7pm, you aim to be there maybe 10 minutes early so you're definitely there at 7pm. It's fine to ring the doorbell a bit ahead of time, if you've already arrived.
These two approaches don't mesh all that well together, with German guests frequently arriving to find their hosts only half-dressed, or mid make-up. Whereas German hosts are frustrated wondering where on earth their guests are.
(The Irish approach here only applies to events where someone is hosting, and doesn't applies to meetings and things. There it would be considered rude to be late. Oh, and as an Irish person working for a multinational company in Germany, the Irish-German conflict over polite arrival times is nothing compared to the Spanish/South American - German one...)
posted by scorbet at 2:36 AM on May 31, 2022 [9 favorites]
In Germany it is polite to be on time, if not slightly early. So if you're invited for 7pm, you aim to be there maybe 10 minutes early so you're definitely there at 7pm. It's fine to ring the doorbell a bit ahead of time, if you've already arrived.
These two approaches don't mesh all that well together, with German guests frequently arriving to find their hosts only half-dressed, or mid make-up. Whereas German hosts are frustrated wondering where on earth their guests are.
(The Irish approach here only applies to events where someone is hosting, and doesn't applies to meetings and things. There it would be considered rude to be late. Oh, and as an Irish person working for a multinational company in Germany, the Irish-German conflict over polite arrival times is nothing compared to the Spanish/South American - German one...)
posted by scorbet at 2:36 AM on May 31, 2022 [9 favorites]
I'm just doing my check-in for "three No's rule" culture (Malay Malaysian).
re: video - my brain noted the cultural affinity/similarity with the Irish and landed on the (very tangential) observation: ohhh this is why the Irish can entertain horror stories the way Southeast Asians do (where it's barely fictional and it's always about someone you know/yourself/a real person).
posted by cendawanita at 3:06 AM on May 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
re: video - my brain noted the cultural affinity/similarity with the Irish and landed on the (very tangential) observation: ohhh this is why the Irish can entertain horror stories the way Southeast Asians do (where it's barely fictional and it's always about someone you know/yourself/a real person).
posted by cendawanita at 3:06 AM on May 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
Comedy trio Foil Arms and Hog on When an Irish Exchange Student Comes to Germany.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 3:14 AM on May 31, 2022 [11 favorites]
posted by TheophileEscargot at 3:14 AM on May 31, 2022 [11 favorites]
Coincidentally, I just saw this Europe-specific Twitter thread: Will you receive food at as a guest at someone's house.
Fascinating cultural differences.
posted by rory at 4:39 AM on May 31, 2022 [9 favorites]
Fascinating cultural differences.
posted by rory at 4:39 AM on May 31, 2022 [9 favorites]
Did we catalogue the places where a huge spread is put out to impress you the first visit and then 'you know where the mugs and kettle are' once you're an insider/thereafter?
posted by k3ninho at 5:09 AM on May 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by k3ninho at 5:09 AM on May 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
except if it's about guests helping me clean up after a dinner party ("oh no, of course not, well if you insist, oh thank god for helping"),
No no no no! That's one extra no for the Three-No cultures to indicate that, really, do not touch the dishes you have no idea how to load the dishwasher or which ones are hand wash or where to put the clean ones. In the best case you're allowed to carry them to the counter and pile them next to the sink.
posted by autopilot at 6:13 AM on May 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
No no no no! That's one extra no for the Three-No cultures to indicate that, really, do not touch the dishes you have no idea how to load the dishwasher or which ones are hand wash or where to put the clean ones. In the best case you're allowed to carry them to the counter and pile them next to the sink.
posted by autopilot at 6:13 AM on May 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
Did we catalogue the places where a huge spread is put out to impress you the first visit and then 'you know where the mugs and kettle are' once you're an insider/thereafter?
Little makes me happier than the first time someone feels comfortable enough to ask "tea?" and get up to go the kitchen when they're round. (I can guarantee you it is never because we haven't poured enough tea in said person, the way we do things.) It's just indicative of a level of comfort and relaxed familiarity. It's the perfect expression of "making yourself at home" and I love it.
posted by Dysk at 6:32 AM on May 31, 2022 [5 favorites]
Little makes me happier than the first time someone feels comfortable enough to ask "tea?" and get up to go the kitchen when they're round. (I can guarantee you it is never because we haven't poured enough tea in said person, the way we do things.) It's just indicative of a level of comfort and relaxed familiarity. It's the perfect expression of "making yourself at home" and I love it.
posted by Dysk at 6:32 AM on May 31, 2022 [5 favorites]
I lived (extremely happily 99.9% of the time, this is not a big criticism) in a heavy-hospitality, "you've got to eat what I put before you and you'd better eat a lot because it's fancy" culture. That aspect was awful! I dreaded visits because, despite being kind of fat, I really can't eat more than one big rich meal a day or I feel extremely sick and also, I don't like to drink alcohol. I also get migraines and trying to eat during a migraine is really unpleasant (this was before triptans were available, so I couldn't do anything about it.) But you couldn't not-eat! These were serious meals at someone's home and people had gone to trouble and often expense to prepare them! So with the exception of a few informal visits for family-style lunch, I knew that if I was invited to someone's house I was going to feel sick afterward.
I particularly remember visiting someone who gave me a bunch of [a food that I really could not eat, for some reason it made me extremely nauseated] while we were on the move for the day and I didn't have a big bag. So I was carrying around all of this stuff that I could not eat, I was on a several day long visit and and I had to bring this stuff with me everywhere we went, by hand. I really, really wished they had not given it to me.
In the grand scheme of things obviously this is barely even a problem, but it has always given me pause when people talk about how they just have to give guests food to take away, how people just have to eat when they come over because this is the iron law of being a good person, etc. Really, assuming that there is no massive financial inequality between us and there are no food shortages, the pleasure of your company is enough.
posted by Frowner at 6:56 AM on May 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
I particularly remember visiting someone who gave me a bunch of [a food that I really could not eat, for some reason it made me extremely nauseated] while we were on the move for the day and I didn't have a big bag. So I was carrying around all of this stuff that I could not eat, I was on a several day long visit and and I had to bring this stuff with me everywhere we went, by hand. I really, really wished they had not given it to me.
In the grand scheme of things obviously this is barely even a problem, but it has always given me pause when people talk about how they just have to give guests food to take away, how people just have to eat when they come over because this is the iron law of being a good person, etc. Really, assuming that there is no massive financial inequality between us and there are no food shortages, the pleasure of your company is enough.
posted by Frowner at 6:56 AM on May 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
In the 70s and 80s in small town California, absent special arrangement, you would DEFINITELY not feed the neighbors’ kid, and in fact you would politely push him out the door around 5:30 to make sure he was home for dinner.
Cocktail parties without food other than maybe peanuts and pretzels, which were expressly understood to be a preface to dinner somewhere else with someone else and where the bar closed at 7 or 7:30, were still a thing in NYC when I got there in the late 90s. Now you basically can’t host a cocktail party without a full hot buffet or keeping the bar open until at least 8 if not later is expected.
posted by MattD at 7:03 AM on May 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
Cocktail parties without food other than maybe peanuts and pretzels, which were expressly understood to be a preface to dinner somewhere else with someone else and where the bar closed at 7 or 7:30, were still a thing in NYC when I got there in the late 90s. Now you basically can’t host a cocktail party without a full hot buffet or keeping the bar open until at least 8 if not later is expected.
posted by MattD at 7:03 AM on May 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
Coincidentally, I just saw this Europe-specific Twitter thread: Will you receive food at as a guest at someone's house.
I lived in Germany as a kid and observed that Germans *always* offered food to guests. We lived in Southern Germany by the French border, and there were a lot of tortes and marzipan figures involved. At the very, very least, an unexpected guest at an usual time (like a kid tagging home with a schoolmate) would be offered butterbrot. I suppose it might be different in different areas of Germany, but we traveled a bit inside the country and my memory seems to be of always being offered food.
posted by Flock of Cynthiabirds at 7:10 AM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
I lived in Germany as a kid and observed that Germans *always* offered food to guests. We lived in Southern Germany by the French border, and there were a lot of tortes and marzipan figures involved. At the very, very least, an unexpected guest at an usual time (like a kid tagging home with a schoolmate) would be offered butterbrot. I suppose it might be different in different areas of Germany, but we traveled a bit inside the country and my memory seems to be of always being offered food.
posted by Flock of Cynthiabirds at 7:10 AM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
Oh wow, this brings back memories from when I was in college and visited a friend in Poland and, in trying to be polite and refusing their mom's offer to cook when I arrived near midnight, I unintentionally mortally offended their mom and she refused to offer us any prepared food for the rest of my stay. The upside was that it forced me to overcome what had to that point been a lifelong hatred of tomatoes as I existed for a week on basically bread, tomatoes, and chocolate.
posted by TwoStride at 7:41 AM on May 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by TwoStride at 7:41 AM on May 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
In the 70s and 80s in small town California, absent special arrangement, you would DEFINITELY not feed the neighbors’ kid, and in fact you would politely push him out the door around 5:30 to make sure he was home for dinner.
My memories of that time (also west coast US) were that it was pretty normal for a friend to eat over, or to eat at a friend's house, but there was always some level of coordination involved with the respective parent(s) since the default expectation was that you were supposed to be home for dinner. And sometimes when a parent was called, the answer would be "no, you need to come home" -- in hindsight, maybe to avoid a sense of imposing or created obligation?
Versus a system where whatever kids happen to be around get fed as a matter of course, and if your kids are elsewhere you can safely assume they are being fed.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:54 AM on May 31, 2022 [6 favorites]
My memories of that time (also west coast US) were that it was pretty normal for a friend to eat over, or to eat at a friend's house, but there was always some level of coordination involved with the respective parent(s) since the default expectation was that you were supposed to be home for dinner. And sometimes when a parent was called, the answer would be "no, you need to come home" -- in hindsight, maybe to avoid a sense of imposing or created obligation?
Versus a system where whatever kids happen to be around get fed as a matter of course, and if your kids are elsewhere you can safely assume they are being fed.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:54 AM on May 31, 2022 [6 favorites]
In my experience during that time, nobody ate dinner at 5:30, and yes kids are still sent home because most middle-class families (at least) do eat dinner together as a family at like 8:00pm. If a kid was going to eat over (usually a weekend or Friday night) then there would be coordination,ie: a phone call or now a text.
Kids eat though - if they've been over more than once, they raid the pantry on their own.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:00 AM on May 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
Kids eat though - if they've been over more than once, they raid the pantry on their own.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:00 AM on May 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
If the kid doesn’t go home on their own accord, or the parents don’t call or come around, and a friend of your kid is around at mealtime, that kid gets fed. The only exception would be if the kids’ parents had requested that the kid would be sent home around dinner time. This is absolutely non-negotiable as a cultural norm in the Nordic countries which I’m familiar with, and that it’s not in Sweden is shocking to me.
I grew up in Finland in the eighties and you would not generally be offered food if you were at a friend's house during meal times. Furthermore, if you for some reason ate at the friend't house you'd be scared to tell your parents that you already ate and then just eat again.
I sent the food offered/ not offered map to my WhatsApp friends group consisting of now-middle-aged-guys living in Finland (except me). They first protested how the map was incorrect, etc., but didn't really disagree when I reminded how it used to be in our childhood. They changed their positions and said that nowadays it is different with their own kids and their friends. (I almost believe them.)
posted by zeikka at 8:04 AM on May 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
I grew up in Finland in the eighties and you would not generally be offered food if you were at a friend's house during meal times. Furthermore, if you for some reason ate at the friend't house you'd be scared to tell your parents that you already ate and then just eat again.
I sent the food offered/ not offered map to my WhatsApp friends group consisting of now-middle-aged-guys living in Finland (except me). They first protested how the map was incorrect, etc., but didn't really disagree when I reminded how it used to be in our childhood. They changed their positions and said that nowadays it is different with their own kids and their friends. (I almost believe them.)
posted by zeikka at 8:04 AM on May 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
In my experience during that time, nobody ate dinner at 5:30, and yes kids are still sent home because most middle-class families (at least) do eat dinner together as a family at like 8:00pm. If a kid was going to eat over (usually a weekend or Friday night) then there would be coordination,ie: a phone call or now a text.
This was 100% my experience growing up in the 80s/90s in middle class, surburbanish North Carolina. Everyone's parents worked by the time we were 7-8 years old, and dinner time fell no earlier than 7 in most households. These, though, were the days of the kids in the neighborhood pretty much wandering unencumbered into other people's houses and (to a certain degree) availing themselves of whoever had the pantry with best after-school snack situation or whoever's frazzled mother might just agree to let us stay over and get pizza delivered when she got home from work.
I remember once getting perma-banned from a the household of the only kid who had a stay at home mom (also the wife of an evangelical minister) who was horrified by the fact 1) we were hooligans who would be so bold as to look in someone else's fridge 2) our mothers were such heathens as to not have a nutritious dinner on the table for us every night by 5 and 3) we did not pray over our doritos. (Seriously, who prays over doritos?).
For all that guess culture is predicated on a fear of rejection/fear of forcing someone to reject you, there is a whole portion that operates--especially in kid world-- under the assumption that you can probably get away with it unless someone tells you upfront that it is explicitly forbidden. It's sort of a more apologies/less asking for permission situation.
posted by thivaia at 8:28 AM on May 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
This was 100% my experience growing up in the 80s/90s in middle class, surburbanish North Carolina. Everyone's parents worked by the time we were 7-8 years old, and dinner time fell no earlier than 7 in most households. These, though, were the days of the kids in the neighborhood pretty much wandering unencumbered into other people's houses and (to a certain degree) availing themselves of whoever had the pantry with best after-school snack situation or whoever's frazzled mother might just agree to let us stay over and get pizza delivered when she got home from work.
I remember once getting perma-banned from a the household of the only kid who had a stay at home mom (also the wife of an evangelical minister) who was horrified by the fact 1) we were hooligans who would be so bold as to look in someone else's fridge 2) our mothers were such heathens as to not have a nutritious dinner on the table for us every night by 5 and 3) we did not pray over our doritos. (Seriously, who prays over doritos?).
For all that guess culture is predicated on a fear of rejection/fear of forcing someone to reject you, there is a whole portion that operates--especially in kid world-- under the assumption that you can probably get away with it unless someone tells you upfront that it is explicitly forbidden. It's sort of a more apologies/less asking for permission situation.
posted by thivaia at 8:28 AM on May 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
One thing missing from this discussion is what you’d be eating at someone else’s house. I feel like cultures where there’s lots of food offered to guests also have (gross generalisation ahoy) much stronger shared idea of what food is between different households.
Whereas I, an English person, have absolutely no clue what my countrymen actually eat on the average day. My recollection of eating at friend’s houses as a kid is awkward dinner routines, food I didn’t like (because y’know, kids are fussy) and it generally all being a lot of drama.
posted by grahamparks at 8:49 AM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
Whereas I, an English person, have absolutely no clue what my countrymen actually eat on the average day. My recollection of eating at friend’s houses as a kid is awkward dinner routines, food I didn’t like (because y’know, kids are fussy) and it generally all being a lot of drama.
posted by grahamparks at 8:49 AM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
zeikka: I sent the food offered/ not offered map to my WhatsApp friends group consisting of now-middle-aged-guys living in Finland (except me)
That’s really interesting, because my wife had the opposite experience growing up in Finland in the 80s. Friends would eat at her place and vice versa. And the same goes with Finnish friends of ours of the same age.
She grew up near Tampere, incidentally. She’s only heard about kids not being offered food at mealtimes from people who grew up in Ostrobothnia.
posted by Kattullus at 9:07 AM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
That’s really interesting, because my wife had the opposite experience growing up in Finland in the 80s. Friends would eat at her place and vice versa. And the same goes with Finnish friends of ours of the same age.
She grew up near Tampere, incidentally. She’s only heard about kids not being offered food at mealtimes from people who grew up in Ostrobothnia.
posted by Kattullus at 9:07 AM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
I grew-up in Järvenpää ~ 30 mins outside of Helsinki.
posted by zeikka at 10:15 AM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by zeikka at 10:15 AM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
Metafilter: he wanted to enjoy both cake and approval
posted by bendy at 11:22 AM on May 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by bendy at 11:22 AM on May 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
The twitter thread kind of touches on it but I think a large part of the Nordic aversion to basic hospitality (yes, the friends sits and watches while the family eats really is a thing) lies, sadly, in the success of social democratic policies in offloading social responsiblity on the state. I see this (as a LONG-time resident outsider) in all kinds of things, from littering culture to crowd management. I once expressed to my inlaws a desire to have a country place primarily so I could host friends there for general revelry and they were AGHAST at the idea. Showing off! (They really equate hospitality with showing off.) Oh, suddenly we're butting up against Jante Law which would totally derail this thread.
posted by St. Oops at 12:23 PM on May 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by St. Oops at 12:23 PM on May 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
Irish person: I loved the neighborhood boy who would come to our house and quietly but directly ask my mother if the bowl of apples were for family only or like for sharing?
posted by recklessbrother at 12:40 PM on May 31, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by recklessbrother at 12:40 PM on May 31, 2022 [5 favorites]
I agree with the observation way above that Host/Guest etiquette is often drawing from but is not the same as Ask/Guess cultures.
In Korean homes, refreshments (cut up seasonal fruit is the standard) were just automatic, the (female) host often just appeared with a plate of freshly peeled fruit (Asian pears or apples usually) without even making an offer first. The first summer I spent in Seoul I ate so much yellow melon that I still kinda dread it to this day.
I'm a picky eater who is scared of crustaceans but I felt honor bound in my role as a guest at a friends' family friend's apartment to eat them when confronted with a giant platter of freshly steamed prawns.
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:45 PM on May 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
In Korean homes, refreshments (cut up seasonal fruit is the standard) were just automatic, the (female) host often just appeared with a plate of freshly peeled fruit (Asian pears or apples usually) without even making an offer first. The first summer I spent in Seoul I ate so much yellow melon that I still kinda dread it to this day.
I'm a picky eater who is scared of crustaceans but I felt honor bound in my role as a guest at a friends' family friend's apartment to eat them when confronted with a giant platter of freshly steamed prawns.
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:45 PM on May 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
There's also pragmatic differences in the hosts' likelihood in offering home-cooked food. Apartments in Seoul are small, so few people entertain at home. Ovens are rare in apartment kitchens, bakery chains are plentiful.
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:49 PM on May 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:49 PM on May 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
Here's a YouTube copy of the video in case you don't like Twitter.
posted by WalkingAround at 3:11 PM on May 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by WalkingAround at 3:11 PM on May 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
There's also pragmatic differences in the hosts' likelihood in offering home-cooked food
Yeah, at least in parts of Asia I'm familiar with the hospitality custom doesn't automatically mean the food is homecooked by that household. The economic ecosystem of hawkers, street food, and home cooks means even back in the day it really can be a matter of nipping outside or calling for an order, which the western takeout concept slots neatly into. I don't think I realised what that meant until living in other places that doesn't have this prevalent food culture.
That said where I am the hospitality feels much more relaxed here and less insistent - the bare minimum is cool plain water not even tea.
posted by cendawanita at 5:14 PM on May 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
Yeah, at least in parts of Asia I'm familiar with the hospitality custom doesn't automatically mean the food is homecooked by that household. The economic ecosystem of hawkers, street food, and home cooks means even back in the day it really can be a matter of nipping outside or calling for an order, which the western takeout concept slots neatly into. I don't think I realised what that meant until living in other places that doesn't have this prevalent food culture.
That said where I am the hospitality feels much more relaxed here and less insistent - the bare minimum is cool plain water not even tea.
posted by cendawanita at 5:14 PM on May 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
bigendian: Europe-specific Twitter thread: Will you receive food at as a guest at someone's house.
TIL that one cookie is apparently not food. (Yes, I'm in the Netherlands.)
The 'just make sure you take only one cookie in a Dutch house' thing is mostly true. We have all been taught from early childhood that one cookie is the right ratio for one cup of coffee (tea, glass of lemonade). When I saw (in a Spiderman comic) a boy being given a glass of milk and a plate of cookies my first thought was 'what an odd combination' immediately followed by 'A WHOLE PLATE OF COOKIES?! That's not right! Why would cookies be on a plate anyway?'
Cookies, like all things, are a land of contrasts.
However:
If we're having friends over, we will generally have planned in advance whether a meal is part of the visit; it usually will be. If someone drops by unexpectedly (which is uncomon, the universe be praised), and we're having a good time that nobody wants to end, and they are still present when dinner time approaches, we will see whether our planned meal can be stretched to fit. And if it can't, we will order something.
We may be Dutch, but we're not barbarians.
posted by Too-Ticky at 1:30 AM on June 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
TIL that one cookie is apparently not food. (Yes, I'm in the Netherlands.)
The 'just make sure you take only one cookie in a Dutch house' thing is mostly true. We have all been taught from early childhood that one cookie is the right ratio for one cup of coffee (tea, glass of lemonade). When I saw (in a Spiderman comic) a boy being given a glass of milk and a plate of cookies my first thought was 'what an odd combination' immediately followed by 'A WHOLE PLATE OF COOKIES?! That's not right! Why would cookies be on a plate anyway?'
Cookies, like all things, are a land of contrasts.
However:
If we're having friends over, we will generally have planned in advance whether a meal is part of the visit; it usually will be. If someone drops by unexpectedly (which is uncomon, the universe be praised), and we're having a good time that nobody wants to end, and they are still present when dinner time approaches, we will see whether our planned meal can be stretched to fit. And if it can't, we will order something.
We may be Dutch, but we're not barbarians.
posted by Too-Ticky at 1:30 AM on June 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
I talked with an Icelander who traveled quite a lot as a teen and young woman around Norway in the 70s and 80s. She said that in the 70s, she would sometimes run into this kind of behavior, people being very inhospitable, but that by the 80s, this had completely changed. Which supports Frowner’s take about this having been a mid-century thing, and also explains why people of my generation didn’t experience it. As an Icelander, this inhospitality was quite shocking to her at the time.
I’ll note that she also traveled to Finland in the early 70s with her mother, and was absolutely stuffed full of food wherever she went, but she was staying with members of local housewives’ associations, so that may not have been an entirely representative sample.
posted by Kattullus at 2:01 AM on June 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
I’ll note that she also traveled to Finland in the early 70s with her mother, and was absolutely stuffed full of food wherever she went, but she was staying with members of local housewives’ associations, so that may not have been an entirely representative sample.
posted by Kattullus at 2:01 AM on June 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
I traveled a bit around Iceland and Denmark in the late 1980s. In both places, going into someone's house always meant being offered food (often a lot of it, sometimes strange to my tastes at the time but almost always really good). But -- I was a foreign visitor, and I was young, so I don't know if you could take any general lessons from that, since I might well have been treated differently compared to whatever was considered normal with their neighbors. And if I offered to help with the after dinner clean up, the initial answer would be no, but if I asked again I'd be allowed to assist.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:10 AM on June 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Dip Flash at 7:10 AM on June 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
My memories of that time (also west coast US) were that it was pretty normal for a friend to eat over, or to eat at a friend's house, but there was always some level of coordination involved with the respective parent(s) since the default expectation was that you were supposed to be home for dinner.
I'm a Northern Californian of that era, and my memory is that while it was most common that when dinner time approached whoever was the visitor would say "oh, I gotta get home for dinner", there were also times when we'd phone home to say "I'm over at Jen's and gonna stay for dinner, will be home before dark."
Occasionally whichever parent I was talking to would reply "Tell them to send you home if you're being a bother." I would relay the message, my friend's parents would laugh, and we'd all have dinner.
posted by Lexica at 10:57 AM on June 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
I'm a Northern Californian of that era, and my memory is that while it was most common that when dinner time approached whoever was the visitor would say "oh, I gotta get home for dinner", there were also times when we'd phone home to say "I'm over at Jen's and gonna stay for dinner, will be home before dark."
Occasionally whichever parent I was talking to would reply "Tell them to send you home if you're being a bother." I would relay the message, my friend's parents would laugh, and we'd all have dinner.
posted by Lexica at 10:57 AM on June 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
I grew up in a very Scandinavian family and the Irish response seems entirely appropriate. My wife's family is all German but in some ways they seem to have been assimilated into the Midwestern guess thinking. There's always three nos when kuchen is offered.
There's a diner chain out of Bismarck ND named Kroll's that has German origins and is known for having some German specialties on the menu. On their menu and marketing materials, there is often a photo of two stern Germanic women with the legend "sit down and eat". No guessing there.
We were in Sweden in the 90s. It was in the fall and every home we visited we were offered sumptuous apple deserts. And not just one, but three. They certainly expected to hear no three times with eventual capitulation. And oh god, it was all so good.
posted by Ber at 11:45 AM on June 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
There's a diner chain out of Bismarck ND named Kroll's that has German origins and is known for having some German specialties on the menu. On their menu and marketing materials, there is often a photo of two stern Germanic women with the legend "sit down and eat". No guessing there.
We were in Sweden in the 90s. It was in the fall and every home we visited we were offered sumptuous apple deserts. And not just one, but three. They certainly expected to hear no three times with eventual capitulation. And oh god, it was all so good.
posted by Ber at 11:45 AM on June 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
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“Are your sure?” is a phrase scorned in this household.
posted by BostonTerrier at 1:44 PM on May 30, 2022 [8 favorites]