Irish Culture and Customs | Social Etiquette

hi welcome to my channel i thought i'd do a video on irish social etiquette and our culture and customs if you're ever visiting ireland hopefully some of these things will help you if you like this kind of stuff please give this video a like and subscribe for more and let's get started so first up is going for a pint ireland has a big pop culture most of our socializing is done in pubs and when someone says to you are you going for a pint they never mean are you just going for one drink they mean kind of three drinks and if someone says are you going for a few pints they really mean are you coming out for the night and a good rule of thumb is to take the amount of points they're suggesting and multiply it by three so you get a general idea of what they're really talking about it would be very rare that an irish person would go to the pub for one drink and then leave it doesn't really happen and then this leads to the next one which is rounds usually when you go to the pub with friends you do rounds so one person goes up get around for everyone in the group and then you take it in turns doing that and it is really really bad social etiquette to let yourself be included and around if you're not going to stay and do your own range as well if you're not planning to stay out long just say oh no i won't be including the rhinestones i'll do my own another thing to keep in mind with the rounds is that um if you don't want to get too drunk maybe don't do rounds because the pace is always set by the fastest drinkers so if you're kind of a slower drinker or can't keep up with the pace then maybe do your own thing otherwise it's going to be a very sloppy night next up is tipping tipping in ireland is at your discretion it's not mandatory and it's seen as a bonus for a good job done and you usually always tip in restaurants and taxis things like that and it's usually 10 to 15 and for food delivery you might tip a couple of euro and then in hotels and things you really only tip if someone goes above and beyond and i know whenever i go to america i just feel like i'm tipping everyone for everything but in ireland it's not like that it's kind of um just seen as a bonus next up is running late we're not the best timekeepers in ireland if you're meeting a group of friends you're always guaranteed that someone will be running late and it's not really a big deal it's not that unusual for someone to be half an hour or even an hour late and i was raised by a canadian mother so growing up i was always the first to arrive at everything and i'm still punctual today so it's not unusual for me to be sitting at a table for 40 minutes waiting for my friends to arrive but it's just a more relaxed attitude towards time keeping in ireland and running late it happens all the time and it's just not a big deal the next one is please and thank you the irish are very polite and we say please and thank you all the time to everyone and but the most important person to thank is always the bus driver you always say thank you to the bus driver or some kind of acknowledgement and when you get off the bus either cheers or a thanks or a good luck and it's a sin in ireland to not thank the bus driver that's a very important one the next one is slagging this can be very confusing for people outside of ireland and to really understand but slagging is making fun of someone or being mean to someone but in a loving way in a fun way because you're friends so and it's usually the meaner you are the more close of friendship you have with them so and someone saying to a bald man hey baldi is actually just nice it's fun as weird as that sounds or um like my friends for example i'm notoriously bad um with my tea making skills so if i ever offer someone a cup of tea they kind of say uh are you making it or don't let her near the kettle and i know it's just because they love me so it might come across as friends just being really mean to each other but it's not meant like that it's meant like in a nice way i know this sounds weird and as i said i'm not great with them my tea making abilities but the next one is tea tea is very important in ireland as soon as someone walks into your house the first thing you do is offer them tea if you have a workman or gardener around and you offer them a cup of tea if someone gets bad news the first thing a person says is will i make you a cup of tea tea makes everything better and it solves a lot of irish people's problems there's also a big debate about lions vs barry's tea which one is better and that's open to interpretation but it's a very important topic because tea is a very important part of irish culture the next one is dining etiquette i think um the dining etiquette in ireland is the same you know the same table matters for a lot of western countries things like when you're dining you don't start your food until every single person at the table has their food in front of them and you don't chew with your mouth open you don't talk with food in your mouth if you've got a mouthful of food you kind of until you're finished eating and then you speak and you don't blow your nose at the table i remember someone blew their nose and at my grandmother's house at the table and uh she nearly had a heart attack and it's still spoken about to this day so don't blow your nose at the table and don't put your elbows on the table you know kind of i think a lot of these are just kind of the standard table manners for most western countries the next one is sorry in ireland sorry is not always an apology can also just mean excuse me and so if someone drops something you want to get their attention you say sorry and but this also changes depending on the tone if someone you know if you're in a queue and someone cuts you and skips the cue and if you say sorry in that tone it means what the hell do you think you're doing and and that leads me to my next one which is queuing in ireland queuing is observed pretty much everywhere where there is some kind of service and it's very very bad etiquette to skip a queue you always join at the end of the queue you know i've been to some countries where and if you queue you will be there all day because it's not observed and people just all go to the front it's not like that in ireland queuing is very important and bus stops um you know restaurants hotels uh shops markets all that stuff cueing is very important the only place there isn't really official cues is in pubs or bars where everyone kind of scrambles around the bar trying to get the barman's attention but at the same time there's kind of an unwritten rule that you know if you come up to the bar and the barman comes to take your order you do kind of say well he was here first or she's been here longer than me and it'd be very very bad manners to let yourself be served before someone that was waiting there before you the next one is go on in ireland if someone offers you something the custom is to refuse it first and let them insist like um when you have a glass of wine ah no grand thanks ah go on okay i will thanks or um can i join a lift oh no i'm fine walking i'll go on okay thanks even if you really want something you always do a first refusal and let the person insist and i remember one time i was in an airport in america and i was buying a ton of sweets and magazines and this american guy that was beside me and we got chatting and he said to the cashier i'll buy all this for her and i did the polite irish refusal of ah no no grand thanks and i expected him to do the kind of i know i insist and instead he got so offended he was absolutely furious and he stormed off because i was so rude and for blowing him off like that and it was just a really awkward situation i was just trying to do the polite thing i would have loved for him to buy those sweets for me but um yeah so it got pretty awkward next up is greetings when you meet someone for the first time you usually shake hands if you're greeting an acquaintance it's usually a knot of the head and if you're greeting a friend it's usually for girls a hug a kiss on the cheek men usually do that half hug half handshake but that's even if there is any physical contact because the irish people aren't really into public displays of affection and they kind of just like to keep their distance so a lot of the time it's just a howie and leave it at that and then that leads me to my next one which is howie howie is a greeting it's not a question so if someone says how you they're not asking how are you they're just greeting you so don't say oh not great today i did this and i went here and i'm feeling this no one really wants to know that they're just saying howie as high and um you can respond one of two ways to how you can either just say grand or not a bother or you can say howie back at them it's not unusual for two people to say how are you how are you and leave it at that and not answer the question just a greeting by the way i'm saying howie and that's my husband would pronounce it howie and because he's from dublin i'm from wicklow so i'd pronounce it how are you but um it means the same kind of thing the next one is swearing irish people swear a lot and if you're not used to it you might think they're being really rude by using that amount of profanity but irish people don't really consider it profanity and we just swear a lot in our everyday conversations you know we're really passionate or excited about something we'll throw a few swear words in i remember one time listening to my husband and and his friends they were really excited about a plan they were putting together and they were going oh we'll effing go here and we'll ethan pick this up and then we'll f and go here and f and do that and then f into the and i pointed out do you guys realize how much you're swearing and they were like we were swearing like they hadn't even noticed it because it's just part of everyday normal language so um yeah don't don't get offended and don't think it's rude if someone swears a lot at you because it's not really meant as a profanity next one is bye bye bye ireland is known as the land of a thousand welcomes but we're also really good at the thousand buys it's impossible for an irish person to just say bye once you know if we're on the phone and we're ending the conversation it's a bye bye bye bye bye bye and then if you're in the pub and you want to leave you usually say bye about 10 to 15 minutes before you anticipate actually leaving because again you can't just say bye and leave you have to say bye and then get sucked into another conversation say bye and then say oh by the way did you hear this and you kind of have to prepare for the real buy with a load of leading up to advice and then sometimes people get so sucked into all the little boys that in the end they just turn and walk out of the place without saying the real goodbye because um it's all been sucked out of them so um yeah a lot of buys in ireland the next one is waving at strangers in dublin or any bigger cities this might not happen but um whenever you go into the country or rural areas everyone waves at everyone when you're driving around and i didn't know this for a while so when i was younger um and everyone's waving me in the country i just always assumed they thought i was someone else and they thought they knew me so i never waved back and then one day my husband pointed out you're being so rude they're they're being nice waving to you and you're ignoring them and i had never known that so and i love this one i love going to the country now and waving at everyone and everyone waves back it's such a nice thing and it's not it's kind of like a wave like one finger or a few fingers off the steering wheel and other people may do the same to you you don't do a full-on wave and though that that would just be weird the next one is i'll let you go if you're having a conversation with someone and you want to end it the polite way to do it is to say i'll let you go or um sorry i won't keep you any longer if someone says this to you they're really saying i have to go so don't respond to that by oh no you're not keeping me or no i have nowhere to be and just say all right thanks we'll see you but yeah i'll let you go is the nice way of getting out of somewhere where you're kind of finished with so anyway i'll let you go that's it they are my top tips for irish social etiquette and customs and culture and if there's anything that i missed out please let me know below or if there's anything that you notice that i didn't mention please leave in the comments and if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you want to see more please subscribe and thanks for watching bye bye bye bye

Channel: Wolfe Momma

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Keywords: irish culture and customs, irish customs and culture, irish customs, irish culture, irish social etiquette, irish etiquette, irish pub etiquette, irish session etiquette, irish culture and traditions, irish culture video, ireland people lifestyle, ireland lifestyle and culture, ireland lifestyle, ireland etiquette, ireland customs, ireland culture, ireland culture and traditions, ireland culture and lifestyle, ireland customs and traditions, irish traditions and culture

Id: VL9Sq_EBAuE

Length: 11min 56sec (716 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 19 2020